The changing emotion discourse in Sweden about Ukrainians fleeing the war to Sweden

Abstract

The thesis aims to investigate the changing discourse surrounding Ukrainians fleeing the war and coming to Sweden within the time frame of 24th February 2022 to 31 st December 2022. Where the aim is to analyze how the discourse surrounding Ukrainians fleeing the war and coming to Sweden has changed. This is being done by doing a critical discourse analysis looking at the two traditional media sources Dagens Nyheter (DN) and Svenska Dagbladet (SvD. The analysis is conducted by using the theories ‘Cultural Emotional Regime’ (Wetter-gren, 2012) ‘Discursive Social Psychology’ (Potter, 2021 as well as ‘Emotional Energy’ (Col-lins, 2004). In addition to the theories, previous research related to emotions, refugees, mi-gration and discourse analysis is used in the analysis as well. Further, some key findings within the study are that the discourse in the two traditional media sources Dagens Nyheter (DN) and Svenska Dagbladet (SvD that a strong sense of solidarity could be observed in the first couple of months, but with time the solidarity slightly started to diminish. A tension be-tween authorities/ government and the civic society decreased with time. Emotions commonly expressed within the discourse were emotions and feelings such as discontent, frustration against authorities and the government. But the discourse that highlighted the relation be-tween volunteers/the civic society with the Ukrainians were feelings and emotions of emo-tional intimacy, kindness. The two media sources Dagens Nyheter (DN) and Svenska Dagbladet, (SvD) expressed rather similar emotions within the discourse surrounding Ukrain-ians fleeing the war to Sweden.