Rättens rykte – En undersökning av mediernas påverkan på förtroendet för domstolarna

Sammanfattning: Studies show that a majority of the Swedish population has the media as their primary source regarding information about the courts. Because an individual's trust in the function of the courts correlates with his or her knowledge of the courts’ dealings, the question of to what extent the media depictions of courts affects the public’s trust in them can be asked. Trust in social institutions is important from several aspects, mainly for efficiency-related issues, but a lack of trust may also have more profound implications regarding the legitimacy of the in-stitutions and the whole social order. The purpose of this essay has been to examine how the media affects public confidence in the courts. To fulfill this purpose, questions have been answered about the importance of trust in the courts, how the courts are described in the media, and if this description in some way can be connected to what kind of trust the public holds for the courts. Based on a socio-legal method, this essay describes the definition, meaning and statistics of trust, based on the Trust Inquiry Report (Förtroendeutredningen), SOU 2008:106. It furthermore describes the relat-ionship between the media and the judicial system. The essay has also conducted a content analysis of four documentary crime shows, by looking at the conditions that precede their media content, how the current media content is designed and what effect this media content may have on its audience. The content analysis has been conducted to see if it is possible to say anything about the way in which the courts and their function are depicted in the various shows and whether it is possible to discern some attitudes or opinions that are mediated through these. The conditions of the shows have been analyzed on the basis of news values, media formats and the context in which the shows have been created. Media content has been reviewed by identifying positive, neutral and negative points and the media effects have been analyzed with the starting point in different theories on media effects, and the values that have been set up in SOU 2008:106 as particularly important for achieving and maintaining confi-dence in the courts. The survey finds that the analyzed shows depict the courts in a neutral to negative way, and that the positive portrayals are almost completely absent. The analysis that has been con-ducted of the depictions of the courts in relation to the values set up by the Trust Inquiry shows that these values are not represented to any great extent in the four different programs.