Speglar sportsidan staden? En kvantitativ innehållsanalys av hur fotbollsklubbar gestaltas inom sportjournalistiken

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate how the five biggest football clubs in Gothenburg are framed in the local newspaper Göteborgs-Posten. Gothenburg has five clubs in the top two tiers of swedish football (IFK Göteborg, Gais, BK Häcken, Örgryte IS och Utsiktens BK), which makes them unique compared to other swedish cities. Many of the clubs also have a long history, being some of the oldest in the country, making supportership of the clubs a big part of the identity of many citizens in Gothenburg. With Göteborgs-Posten being the biggest newspaper in the city and the first choice for many, it’s therefore relevant to investigate how these clubs are framed within their pages and if there’s possible to find which factors play a part in this. The study is based on the theory of framing. A theory that suggests that people are influenced by how and what they see in news. Being influenced by media, people base their opinions and their knowledge on what they read and see. It’s a way of portraying reality, and the way people perceive reality. Being a quantitative study, 379 articles in total were studied. Articles published in the first week of the months of april-november in the years of 2022-2024. All articles that centered around one of the five clubs during this period was studied, based on a number of questions created with the focus being on how the club were framed in each article. To create frames for the study earlier adaptations of different frames were found and adapted for this study. The result was that IFK Göteborg was seen getting a lot more articles compared to the other clubs. It was also found that most articles were framed as game centered, connected to recent results, this making the gameframe the most used. The biggest factors determining how many articles were getting written was success and popularity.