Särprägel eller likriktning? En kvantitativ studie om public service- och kommersiella mediers nyhetsurval på Instagram

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine how public service- and commercial medias news selection are affected when news is published on social media platforms. The study seeks to examine this through a quantitative content analysis of news selection, on the social media platform Instagram, by the Swedish public service outlet SVT and its commercial counterpart TV4. The quantitative content analysis is based on prior research and the theoretical framework of network media logic and the theory of political information environment. In total 338 Instagram posts from week 41 of 2024 to week 40 of 2025 were selected for analysis through a systematic probability sampling method. 161 of the posts were from “SVT Nyheter”, SVT’s Instagram account for news, and 177 posts were from “TV4 Nyheterna”, TV4’s Instagram account for news. The findings of the study show that SVT and TV4 have similar news selection on Instagram. Compared to TV4, SVT doesn’t present a larger amount of hard news covered, informational value or international coverage. This can be seen in contrast to the situation on their companyowned platforms where public service media presents a higher percentage of hard news topics than commercial media. Despite the overall similarity there are some differences between the designs of SVT’s and TV4’s news selection. SVT shows a more even distribution between news topics, while TV4 to a greater extent prioritizes news topics that generate engagement, such as crime, celebrities and animals. TV4 also presents a greater amount of Swedish political news while SVT has a smaller but more international political news selection. The distinctiveness that could justify the unfair competition advantage befitting public service medias is thus less clear but still present on social media platforms.