Hot eller offer? - En analys av hur klimatflyktingar framställs i svensk media

Sammanfattning: Studies have shown that refugees have been described in Swedish media as either victims or threats. Those stereotypical images affect how people understand refugees. It has also an impact on how professional social workers act when they meet them. We were interested in studying the discourse around a new phenomenon: climate refugees. Climate refugees have been a topic in Swedish media for the last decade. We wanted to study in what way climate refugees were described in Swedish newspapers. The starting point of our investigation was two questions: • How are climate refugees defined in Swedish media? • How are climate refugees portrayed in Swedish media? We have done a discourse analyze on 105 articles from Swedish newspapers that contained the word climate refugee. In this analyze we have been using a social constructionist perspective. The following theoretical concepts have been used: claims making, ideal victims, discourse and finally We/the Others. We found that climate refugees often are described as either a threat or a victim. Both of these descriptions mean that climate refugees risk to be conceived as abstract and impersonal. We also found that climate refugees are described as the Others, as something that is different from Us.