Att gestalta en mördare : En studie om mediernas gestaltning av Thomas Quick

Sammanfattning: Media has a big actuating power over the public opinion. The image of reality that media choose to reproduce will affect the recipient view of reality. The case about Thomas Quick and its associated news coverage has been used as an example to illustrate the problematization regarding media imag-es and media framing attempt. The purpose of this essay was to illuminate how daily and evening newspapers works with various framing methods.The theoretical framework for this essay will discuss the media framing theory and its ramification attribute framing theory. This laid the foundation for the research question. The study also highlights research within media and crime as they hold a strong connection to each other. Then we de-scribe the theory of cognitive schemas and how they affect the way we think. Further we discuss journalist’s responsibility, which then leads to an account of the daily and evening press and their different working approaches.Through a quantitative content analysis study this study has sought answers to how Thomas Quick was framed at different time-periods, and if there are any differences and/or similarities between them. A coding was constructed and 408 articles from Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter were encoded. The articles were taken from Retrievers media archive and consist of a selection from the periods 1994-2001 and 2007-2014. The results were analyzed and presented in tables and graphs by using cross-tabulations and frequency charts made in SPSS just to create an overview of the figures the analysis resulted in. The results showed a lower use of attributes than expected, but despite this, the results indicated a journalism that dramatize and angles to create buzz and excitement. The usage of attributes was significantly higher in 1994-2001 than in 2007-2014. There was a clear lack of positive attributes which points to journalism that has a tendency to give negative angled news coverage. There are also clear signs of excessive selection of attributes. The results also show that evening and morning newspapers are not that far apart in their way of working. They both have an equal usage of attributes and uses sources in the same way.