Sverige är hotat och den enda lösningen är Nato. En kritisk diskursanalys av den svenska nyhetsrapporteringen före Sveriges Natomedlemskap 2022–2024

Abstract

Title: Sweden is under threat and the only solution is NATO – A Critical Discourse Analysis of the news reporting in Swedish media before the Swedish NATO membership 2022–2024 Authors: Alexandra Aggerstam, Sara Fernholm and Sofia Jäger Level: Bachelor thesis in Journalism Term: HT 2024 Supervisor: Amanda Ramsälv The media reporting on Sweden’s NATO membership process has been criticized for being skewed in favour of groups supporting a Swedish NATO membership. Some great research has been carried out on the topic, however the most relevant published article, by Hagström (2021), is solely focused on newspaper op-eds. We approached this topic with an interest in news articles, so set out to uncover the discourses present in news articles during this period, in order to get a better sense of how Sweden and its security is explicitly and implicitly communicated in Swedish news media. In this essay we have analysed three news articles published in the Swedish tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet in order to answer three research questions: 1) How is Sweden portrayed in the news media during the NATO membership process? 2) How is Sweden’s security situation portrayed? 3) How is the solution to Sweden’s security situation portrayed? We will do this from a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) perspective. Critical Discourse Analysis is useful both as a theory and a method for uncovering and discussing implicit discourses and meanings in media texts. During our analysis of the three news articles, we uncovered a total of eight discourses: 1. Sweden is threatened, 2. Sweden's security is a military issue (first text), 3. Sweden is moving towards a community, 4. Sweden and NATO are threatened 5. Sweden's security is a military issue (second text), 6. Sweden is under time pressure 7. Sweden is strong together with NATO, 8. Sweden's security is primarily a political issue. These eight discourses revealed the answers to our research questions. In short, 1) Sweden is portrayed as both weak and strong (stronger with NATO), 2) Sweden is under threat and its security is most often a military issue and 3) The only security solution is NATO. Our findings contribute to the current media and journalism research on national identity discourses, fear and threat discourses, and the more general research on Swedish media.