Kanye West i liberal och konservativ media : Antisemitens gestaltning

Sammanfattning: Anti-Semitism is still very much alive in the United States and has increased in the pastyears (ADL, 2023). Anti-Semitic rhetoric was brought to light by the world-famousrapper Kanye West, who in the fall of 2022 committed several anti-Semitic acts on hissocial platforms. When a person with great influence on the public sphere expresseshimself anti-Semitic, people can copy the behavior and believe that it is accepted. Thestudy's purpose is to expand the understanding of how American media frames antiSemitic rhetoric depending on their political ideology. This essay examines how KanyeWest was portrayed in American media in the end of 2022, where all articles found inthe timeperiod that included Kanye and antisemitism were collected. A total of 120articles were collected from four different news sources; New York Post and Fow Newthat are righwinged as well as CNN and NBC that are leftwinged. The applied methodis a mixed method with a focus on qualitative thematic content analysis. The methodhas been applied by finding patterns (themes) in the articles to answer the study'squestions: (1) When Kanye expressed anti-Semitic rhetoric, how was he framed inAmerican media? (2) How does the media's political ideological background affect theportrayal? (3) Has Kanye's anti-Semitism influenced the rise of anti-Semitism in theUS? This study does not examine media outside of the United States and no other mediathan written articles by journalists. The limitation gives a clear result of framing in thecontext of politics in one country. Existing research of Entman (1993, 2007, 2010) isused in the study to show the impact that framing has on the public and how it affectspolitics. The result shows that Kanye was framed primarily as an artist but also as ananti-semite and half of the material had negative frames of Kanye. The comparisonbetween the rightwinged and leftwinged media, showed that the left focused more onhow Kanye affected antisemitism in the U.S. and how antisemitism has increased. Thestudy concluded that Kanye had a big part in spreading antisemitism in the U.S