Kallt och jävligt – eller skevt och jävigt?: en kvalitativ studie om mediernas porträttering av Västerbottens glesbygd

Sammanfattning: The main purpose of the thesis is to study how rural Västerbotten is represented in the Swedish newspapers ‘Dagens Nyheter’ and ‘Aftonbladet’ from a perspective of power. Research was performed on six months’ worth of journalistic material from 2015. It has been analysed through the use of Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model for critical discourse analysis in order to answer our questions as to when news was actually reported from rural Västerbotten, as well as how rural Västerbotten is represented.
Based on the 17 articles that were analysed, we were able to draw certain conclusions. To begin with, it was quickly apparent that the material was complex and not hegemonic. A variety of topics could be seen in the material, but certain themes occurred more frequently and were more dominant than others. The coverage of rural Västerbotten often focused on nature, solitude and sparseness, but that these attributes are often described in a negative context; nature is described by its harshness, solitude as being unbearable and sparseness as lacking in civilisation. At the same time, the material showed considerable complexity. Many of the descriptions could have both negative as well as positive interpretations.