Socialt arbete i en modern era : Kritisk diskursanalys om mediers skildring av socialt arbete

Sammanfattning: The main purpose of this study was to analyze how Swedish media portrays social work. The collected material underlying the analysis was published during the period 2007-01-01 to 2017-10-08 in Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter. The study focused on how social services and social workers were constructed in the articles, what discourses could be identified and what power structures were made visible inthe discourses. The chosen method was based on Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis and more specifically his three-dimensional model. Furthermore, the analysis was conducted on the basis of the social constructionist and discourse theoretic perspective that formed the basis for analysis and interpretation of the material. The study's findings of the material showed that the four dominated discourses of social services in the articles were: criticizing the social services, social services bureaucracy, the work environment at social offices and progressive areas of social services. These discourses showed high interdiscursivity, which refers to are production of the current discourse regime. Furthermore, the study showed that Swedish media depreciate social work to a lesser extent in comparison with other countries. However, results showed that Swedish media often tend to portray social work with ill-founded claims, as the previous research also showed.