Sekulariseringsprocessens inflytande på framställningen av satanism i svenska dagstidningar och läroböcker : En historisk översikt mellan 1980–2020

Sammanfattning: The process of secularization has brought significant changes to the religious landscape in Sweden. The influence of the dominant Lutheran Church has diminished, paving the way for individual belief systems such as Satanism. Secularization has made the mediatization of religion possible, which in turn has anticipated changes in the public representation of religion. Media has played a crucial part in the public representation of Satanism in Sweden, mainly during the 1990s, which created the phenomenon Satanic panic. The Satanic panic spread through media outlets which reported crimes such as church and graveyard vandalisms and connected them to satanists. The panic was in some cases based on actual incidents; however, the cases were often merely rumors. This study examines how Satanism is portrayed in daily press and Religion education textbooks for Upper Secondary school in Sweden. Further, this study analyzes the change in the portrayal in these text types from 1980 to 2020 and investigates whether the secularization process in Sweden has contributed to the potential change. The reason for including textbooks in the study is to compare them to the daily press in order to discover potential differences in their portrayal of the religious movement, which provides a pedagogical aspect as well.