Ung knarklangare sökes - Framställningar av ungdomskriminalitet och unga lagöverträdare i svensk nyhetsmedia

Sammanfattning: Youth crime and youth offenders are often brought up as a central problem within the Swedish public debate. Our perception of youth offenders is influenced by the description in media, such as newspapers. The aim of this study was to investigate how youth crime and youth offenders were portrayed in order to investigate emerging and existing discourses concerning this group. The study was based on a qualitative study of newspaper articles published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. The empirical data analyzed reached over a timespan of 13 months, September 2020-November 2021, and consists of totally 38 articles. The method and theory used was critical discourse analysis, supplemented with labeling theory. The analysis of the empirical material was made based on the three-dimensional model established by Norman Fairclough. The most prominent discourses found were divided in two main themes with two subthemes each. The main themes were youth crime as an increasing social problem and youth criminals as a part of a criminal labor market. In the first main theme, we found two different discourses concerning how to face the issue: with retribution and/or prevention work and treatment. In the second main theme, we also found two different discourses portraying youth offenders: as victims and/or willing to contribute. According to the labeling theory, the portrayal of youth crime and youth offenders leads to an internalization of the described criminal attributes. Young boys/men who aren’t involved in criminal activity are more likely to be perceived as a member of this deviating group simply for being young boys/men and living in a neighborhood where crime is recurrent.