Klimatfrågan -från en kritisk händelse till en politisk modefråga?

Sammanfattning: Few issues have been exposed in media recently as much as the climate change issue. Afterthe documentary film “An Inconvenient Thruth” presented by Al Gore was released in 2006,most of the world saw a lot of attention directed towards global warming. This was a turningpoint that is refered to in this dissertation an history-graded critical event, which is assumed tohave a significant impact on peoples lives.The purpose of this dissertation is to examine whether or not political parties in Swedenresponded to this critical event in the way that they, in their party programmes, haveformulated policies related to climate change. Alternatively if media produces an image ofpolitical activity which does not comport with the forming of actual political standpoints. Themain objective is to determine whether the climate change issue constitutes a political trendissue in Sweden or not.The theories used in this dissertation are demand attributes by Gunnar Sjöblom that explainswhich characteristics within a voter demand a party must deal with, and the Filipp’spsychological theory about critical events.The conclusion of this dissertation is that the development of the climate change issue in theparty programmes in Sweden do not respond to the critical event of 2006. The climatepolicies were rather developed several years before the critical event took place, which leavesthe conclusion that Swedish political parties preceded media in addressing this issue.