Statsministern och städerskan : En framinganalys av en svensk skandal

Sammanfattning: This study examines the coverage of the Swedish scandal concerning Swedish prime minister Magdalena Andersson and the undocumented immigrant who got arrested outside Andersson’s house on December 21, 2021. Research on scandals suggest that political pundits and editorial writers have the power to shape the framing of a scandal, and therefore affect how the public perceive it. However, the research on how scandals are framed, and how the opinion journalists are shaping the events is still in its early stages and needs more concern. Therefore, this study aims to understand how a political scandal in Sweden can be framed by political commentators and editorial writers. The research question is as follows:  How was the scandal surrounding Magdalena Andersson and the cleaner framed in Swedish opinion journalism in the weeks after its unfolding? To answer the question, all editorials, columns, comments and analyses in the Swedish printed press released between January 8 and January 22 regarding the scandal were analysed. To uncover the frames, a mix of an inductive and deductive framing analysis was applied, using Robert Entman's (1993) method to discover issue-specific frames and Semetko & Valkenburg's (2000) method to discover generic frames. Framing and scandal theory was applied to analyse the different frames. The results show that the scandal was framed in a few different ways. The main issue-specific frames were security and societal problems. The main generic frame was responsibility. The results differed somewhat from previous research suggesting that scandals often get person oriented. In this case, more light was shed on bigger societal and institutional questions.