”Kallblodiga dubbelmördaren” och ”Våldsamma expojkvännen” : En kvantitativ och kvalitativ innehållsanalys om hur Johanna Möller och Billy Fagerström gestaltas i lokalpress

Sammanfattning: This study examines how local newspapers frame female and male murderers. Thestudy specifies two murder cases that recieved a lot of media coverage, and themurderers are Johanna Möller and Billy Fagerström. The purpose is to see how the localnewspapers for each case, Vestmanlands Läns Tidning and Hudiksvalls Tidning, framethe murderers in terms of characteristics, description, name and personal facts and howthe differences appear between them. The research question awoke because the localnewspapers have a position in the society that can impact how people view the worldand murderers as a phenomenon. The news is the first source for the citizens oninformation about crimes and therefore have a significant impact on how people buildtheir perceptions about female and male killers. Research regarding crime journalism ona local level is relatively unexplored concerning crime journalism on a higher level, forexample, in the Swedish evening press. This study has used qualitative and quantitativetext analysis to answer these questions. The study has analyzed two local newspapersabout two convicted murderers, one male and one female, to see how media frames murderers in relation to their gender. The study has profound support from the framing-theory, gender-theory and Yvonne Jewkes stereotypes. Among other things, our results show that the local newspapers frame Johanna as controlling, manipulating, threatening,and lacking of empathy. Johanna's background, such as profession, upbringing,motherhood has a much more significant part in the articles in contrast to articles aboutBilly. Johanna is portrayed like this because she committed a crime and is also a womanand is therefore not only deviating once but twice from the female stereotype. This didnot appear in the analysis of Billy, who was portrayed mainly as a violent ex-boyfriend,which is nothing new in how the media frames a man who kills his ex-girlfriend.