The Swedish media representation of China : A frame analysis of the securitization of China in Swedish print media during 2012-2022

Sammanfattning: This study aims to explore the presence of ”China threat” and the securitization of China in Swedish print media. The key objective is to measure the portrayal of China as a threat and if/how that representation has changed during the time period 2012-2022. This is studied through a frame analysis investigating China as an ideological, military, and economic threat. The study shows that the usage of portraying China as an ideological, military and/or economic threat is indeed present and increasing during the period, with a peak of publications in 2019. All frames are used by all studied newspapers, and there is a growing trend visualized through the data. This trend demonstrates that the perspective of China as a threat has become more normative in reporting, proving the notion of that securitization as a speech act is in fact present in the investigated time period. The articles are not portraying China as a direct threat to the readers in Sweden, but rather through ways of causal interpretation and moral evaluation that conceives China as a threat to the liberal international order. The most frequently used attributions are within the ideological threat frame, the second most used frame is the military one closely followed by the usage of attributions from the economic frame. Understanding how China is framed and perceived in Swedish print media can be useful in the exploration of the nuanced phenomena of Sweden-China relations, completed and future policy interventions, and to understand the influences of opinion that the readers might receive to secure an informed, impartial, and globally aware society. This study can be seen as an ignition towards further research in this nestled marvel of securitization and global politics.