“CRISIS AND CRISIS FOR WHOM?” - A critical discourse analysis of how Swedish and British editorials framed the refugee crisis during the autumn of 2015

Abstract

This Master thesis aims to conduct a critical discourse analysis of how Swedish and British editorials covered the so-called "refugee crisis" during the autumn of 2015, specifically from Aug 1 to Dec 31 st. The overall aim is to investigate the discursive construction of the crisis, which entails investigating how the editorials framed the “crisis” and in what way it is a crisis: how the term was conceptualised. By making a comparison between two countries, the aim is to get a better understanding of the so-called crisis and the discursive construction surrounding it in various societal contexts. Two newspapers were picked in both of the countries from the UK was The Daily Telegraph, and The Guardian picked and in Sweden was Dagens Nyheter, and Svenska Dagbladet picked. Two theories was applied Framing theory and the securitization theory. The analysis and results showed that the editorials framed the crisis in accordance to the literature that was reviewed. More specifically, in both countries the crisis was described as being an effect of the excessive number of refugees that entered the European borders. The framing focused on the crisis from a European perspective where most of the themes did not consider the perspective of the refugees. Moreover, the results show that the refugee crisis was in fact securitized due to the editorial coverage of the crisis. Furthermore, as a consequence of concluding the aim of this paper the result of the study will hopefully be used as a stepping stone for further research.