Vem förtjänar sympati? En kvalitativ textanalys om hur den gängkriminella individen konstrueras i Aftonbladet.

Sammanfattning: This study contains a document analysis of articles in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. It's a social constructionist analysis with a discourse theory. The empirical material is published articles from the newspaper Aftonbladet between the dates 18th of October till 17th of November. Every article that contained the words “gang crime” and “gun violence” was selected. 36 articles have been read and analyzed with Donileen Loseke's (2003) discourse theory together with Erving Goffman's (2020) concept of stigma. The chosen theory is written by Loseke (2010) and it’s about how we construct people with social problems in two categories based on our presumptions, conditions, and values. Either we construct people as a victim or a villain depending on whether we feel sympathy for them or not. The analysis has been steered through themes that we could see while we were reading. Then we studied our empirical material using the theoretical framework and chosen themes. The results are that the construction of both villains and victims appears in the empirical material. With this study, we identified factors that have a part in the social construction of a villain in Aftonbladet's articles. For instance, you might be constructed as a villain if you have a cultural background that differs from the Swedish community. Or maybe if you are socially active in an area that is viewed poorly. But you can be constructed as a victim based on your age if you are a child, or if you’re a product of dysfunctional family relationships, loss of education or maybe have been growing up in a socioeconomically disadvantaged area. These conclusions are based on the analysis that has been done on news- and debate articles. We problematize the fact that gang criminals are portrayed as victims and the risks associated with extending the construction of villains to innocent people.