What is hiding behind the covers?  : A qualitative picture and text analysis of the magazine Hänt Bild’s first pages.

Sammanfattning:

Title: What is hiding behind the covers - A qualitative picture and textual analysis of the newspaper Hänt Bild

The news found on a magazine cover is for the audience to become interested to buy the magazine. When it was discovered that there is news that gives a misleading message to sell more, there is a research problem. The purpose of the essay is to study the message of the news on Hänt Bild’s covers and then be compared to the messages that the related articles provides.

Total of 28 news where analyzed in four issues of the magazine published the year 2013. The essay was based on a qualitative visual and textual analysis with the theoretical frameworks sensational journalism, framing, image context and semiotics. The analysis was divided into three different themes to distinguish the news which gave misleading, genuine or double messages. The results of this study indicate that there are news with a misleading message in each issue of the magazine. This news was mostly about divorces, pregnancies and infidelity. The analysis also indicated that images played a major role in what messages the news gave. It was also discovered that the news on the covers which contained only text and no images angled the message so that readers would believe the article was about something else, even though the text on the cover gave a genuine message to the related article. Although it was discovered to be misleading news on the covers, there was also genuine news to the related articles.

To summarize there where 14 news that gave a misleading message, 8 news gave a genuine message and 6 news gave a double message to the related articles. The result shows that the audience is misled by some news on the cover of a magazine with the aim of the editors to sell more.

Keywords: tabloids, frontpage, sensational journalism, framing, semiotics, Hänt Bild