Den medialiserade slutdebatten : En kvantitativ studie av medialisering i slutdebatter och hur det skiljer sig i kommersiella medier och public service

Sammanfattning: In line with the growing importance of today’s media the concept of mediatization has grown. Mediatization is described as the dynamic relationship between media and politics, and the process of change that has increased the influence of media. When it comes to research about mediatization in politics, it is still a somewhat undiscovered field. The previous research that has been made has for the most part focused on the news media’s coverage of the election campaigns, but not so much in other political contexts such as TV-broadcasted debates. This study has focused on the Swedish public service channel SVT and the commercial newspaper Aftonbladet, and their final debate before the Swedish election in 2022. Why these TV-broadcasted debates were focused on in this study, is because of their big impact on the election’s outcome. This impact is something that has grown bigger and bigger, and in today’s society, the final debates are the ones that have the biggest impact during the election campaigns. Because of this, the study is important and relevant for closing a research gap. The main purpose of the study was to compare the two debates, researching in which ways the debates differ in mediatization and looking into if there are any differences between public service and commercial media. To accomplish this, a quantitative content analysis was made, where several different variables designed according to previous studie’s indications on mediatization were looked at in the debates. All these indications that were studied, are indications on mediatization and are good tools to examine when researching mediatization. The results of the study showed that there were a difference between the two media’s when it comes to mediatization in their final debate before the election. Mediatization occurred in both, but the commercial media, Aftonbladet, were more embossed by mediatization. Of the four examined indications of mediatization, three were in favor of Aftonbladet. Interesting though is that the indication which is how commercialized the debate was, the commercial media (Aftonbladet) and the public service (SVT), almost had no difference between them. But looking at the greater picture, the commercial media’s debate was more mediatized and the difference was in the end significant.