Lyser färgerna igenom? : En kvantitativ studie om kvällstidningarna Aftonbladet och Expressens nyhetsrapportering under valet 2022

Sammanfattning: The news media has a great responsibility when reporting about politics, especially during elections. To maintain a democratic society a neutral news reporting is crucial, in order to give people trustworthy information that gives them the opportunity to make political decisions themselves. Swedish news media represent themselves as neutral in their news reporting but are associated with different political ideologies. Therefore, this study examines the coverage of the Swedish tabloid newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen during a five-week period (280822-250922) of the Swedish election in 2022. Based on framing theory and agenda setting and using quantitative content analysis, the study compares if there is a difference in the reporting based on the political ideology of both newspapers.  The results show that the newspapers’ coverage was neutral during the election in Sweden 2022, revealing no differences in the reporting between the two newspapers. They both follow a similar way of setting the agenda and framing the articles about the two political ideologies during the whole election period. Aftonbladet and Expressen gave the three parties with the highest votes Socialdemokraterna, Sverigedemokraterna and Moderatern the biggest exposure. The liberal parties were mostly framed in a competitive frame in both newspapers compared to the socialist parties that had a higher rate of articles that were framed with the factual matter.  The results also show that the agenda due to the subject of matter in both newspapers were the election campaign, economy and question of law. This shows that they have been following the happenings and outplace of the Swedish election 2022 seen to agenda and framing. To summarize, Aftonbladet and Expressens news coverage during the five-week period during the election 2022 were neutral and had no beneficial agenda or framing of any political party.