Den skräddarsydda sanningen: En kvalitativ studie om den alternativa mediesajten Avpixlats strategiska kommunikation

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study is to increase the understanding of how the alternative media site Avpixlat strategically communicates its image of Swedish society, how this image is perceived by its readers and what implications it might have for democracy. With a dialectic approach, the communication has been examined from both sender and reader perspectives, using rhetoric- and reception analyses. The empirical material consists of articles from Avpixlat, including readers’ comments, which have been compiled through qualitative textual analyses and analyzed hermeneutically. The empirical evidence has thereafter been contextualized through relevant theories and concepts within the research fields of social sciences and strategic communi- cation, including public opinion-forming, discourse theory, trust, post-modernism and deliberative democracy. The analysis and the results show that Avpixlat’s democratic potential is reflected in the fact that the site is challenging dominating societal discourses while creating conditions for trust within its group of readers. In tandem, Avpixlat maintains, through its strategic communication, discourses that are strongly characterized by mistrust in different actors in society, which might be democratically problematic. Furthermore, the site is arguing on the basis of positivistic premises, resulting in a lack of shades. This, combined with oppositional voices being actively censored, by not being published in the site’s comment fields, can be said to undermine the possibilities of deliberation and thereby a multifocal exchange of ideas.