Gestaltningen av en massmördare : En kvantitativ innehållsanalys om gestaltningen av Anders Behring Breivik i nordisk media

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to overlook Nordic medias news coverage and framing of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. The study is based on printed editions of Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter and the Finnish newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet set on nine selected dates related to the issue between July 23th 2011 to August 25th 2012.     The study will display how Breivik was framed by each of the Nordic newspapers and even the total amount of news coverage the issue has been given. The media framing part of the study will mainly focus on the media framing of Breiviks personality and political ideology. The study will also investigate each newspapers handling of Breiviks manifesto, which he published only hours before killing 77 people on July 22th 2011.   The study is a quantitative content analysis, containing a total number of 245 articles. Aftenposten featured almost two times the total material of Dagens Nyheter and Hufvudstadsbladet combined. The study is based on news evaluation- and media framing theory.   The result shows that there are only slight differences in each newspapers framing of Breivik. The  most usual description based on our results is that Breivik is a right wing extremist, massmurder or terrorist with a deviant perception of reality. Sensationalism has put its imprint on the news coverage of Breivik by focusing on personal and psychological aspects. The result also shows that newspapers in neighboring countries Sweden and Finland put a larger emphasis on the hatred of the terrorist than domestic newspaper Aftenposten.