Misstänkta mörderskor i svensk press

Abstract

There is an ideal picture of how women should be, and female offenders deviate from these conceptions linked to normative femininity (Lander, 2003). Women who commit murder are therefore considered unusual and often attract extensive media-coverage. Previous research in the field shows that the media's portrayal of criminal women has been based on a stereotypical picture of women. This study is based on a Swedish case where a young woman disappeared in Vetlanda in October 2022. Later, two young women who were acquaintances of the victim were arrested for the murder. The aim of this study is to examine the media's reporting about the case from a gender perspective. The study's research questions are:

How are the perpetrator's character-traits described by the media? How are the suspected perpetrators' motives for the crime described? How is the perpetrator's background described by the media? How is the perpetrator's relationship to the victim described? Are there differences in how Vetlanda-Posten, Göteborgs-Posten and Aftonbladet report on the perpetrators from a gender perspective? Is there any difference in the portrayal of the suspected perpetrators over time? This study was executed by using a qualitative method called Ethnographic Content Analysis, made by David Altheide. This study's results are based on three different newspapers. The newspapers used in the study were Vetlanda-Posten, Göteborgs-Posten and Aftonbladet. We divided the descriptions of the perpetrators based on five different themes: character-traits, relationships, motive, background and expert-opinions. The conclusion of the analysis in this study is that women are described in a stereotypical manner, and the descriptions of women closely align with normative femininity.