"Så lustiga de är i ditt land." : En kvalitativ semiotisk analys av relationen mellan journalisten och samhället i Tintin Blå Lotus

Sammanfattning: The aim of this paper is to compare the Tintin album The Blue Lotus with the practise of comics journalism, framing and news evaluation to see if the album is indeed an early version of comic journalism. This has been done with the help of a qualitative semiotic analysis of both the text and the art by Hergé. Hergé was a Belgian journalist and cartoonist who wrote the Tintin albums during the 30th, 40th and 50th and had them published in a few different newspapers. The adventure of The Blue Lotus differentiates itself from his other works because it is grounded in a way the others are not. The album takes place in a war-torn China and Shanghai occupied by Japan during the 1930th.     To decide if the album can be perceived as comics journalism a few different aspects were examined. The meaning of different kinds of symbolism, the textual context, and the cultural context. The Journalistic way of telling a story has also been examined.   The conclusion is that Hergé had been following the journalistic way of producing a story even if the characters in that story are fictional. The political climate and some the events in the album are based on real life events. He did his research of the country he was sending his young fictional journalist too and he interviewed and became close friends with a young Chinese art student during the process.    But his way of portraying some of the characters in the story are closer to caricature then real-life likeness. This breaks the transparency between the author, the reader and the story is no longer impartial. That, if one overlooks the story itself being fictional, means the album lacks certain criteria for it to be comics journalism