Mediernas skildring av terrordådet på Drottninggatan : En kvalitativ kritisk diskursanalys och jämförelse mellan alternativmediet Fria Tider och kvällstidningen Aftonbladet

Sammanfattning: This study is a comparative critical discourse analysis between one of Sweden’s biggest newspapers Aftonbladet and one of Sweden’s biggest alternative web newspapers Fria Tider. The comparative analysis will focus on both media outlets coverage of the terrorist attack on Drottninggatan in Stockholm, Sweden on the 7th of April 2017. The terrorist attack on Drottninggatan was one of the biggest of its kind in Swedish history where five people died and over a dozen were severely injured. The attack was performed by an assailant by the name of Rakhmat Akilov who described himself as a Muslim and would later claim to have sympathy for the Islamic State. The attack was widely covered in Sweden by all sorts of media outlets ranging from the more well-established newspapers to social media and alternative media sources. Former researchers have studied different types of alternative media in a variety of ways but there has not been a study on how the news coverage in an alternative media differs from that of the traditional and more well-established media. The material studied in this research are a total of 32 articles gathered from the web archive of Aftonbladet and Fria Tider. All articles were published between the 7th of April and the 12th of April 2017, and they all covered events related to the terrorist attack on Drottninggatan. The articles were analyzed with the help of four predetermined steps of critical discourse analytical criteria that were established beforehand to minimize the risk of our own presuppositions interfering with the reliability of the study. The purpose of the study was to analyze the ways in which the coverage of the terrorist attack on Drottninggatan differed between a right leaning alternative media and one of the biggest newspapers in Sweden. This was achieved with the theoretical basis of theories of alternative media, othering, framing theory, hegemonic theories, and orientalism. The results of the study show that there are both a lot of similarities between the news coverage between both media outlets but also a lot of stark differences. The similarities occur when the factual basis of the text does not leave things open to interpretation. Where the differences lie between Aftonbladet and Fria Tider are in the construction of certain events and in the construction of the assailant Rakhmat Akilov. This occurs when the opportunity presents itself for Fria Tider to apply their political and societal beliefs.