Cannabisdiskurser i svensk press : En kvantitativ innehållsanalys av förändringen mellan 2012 och 2020

Sammanfattning: While the western world is in the midst of a liberalisation trend where laws concerning cannabis are frequently changed in favour of a more permissive stance, the characteristic Swedish objective for “a drug-free society” remains. Based on five different cannabis discourses in Swedish press, which have been identified in previous research, this paper uses a quantitative content analysis to examine how often these discourses appear, and the scope they are given, in four of Sweden’s largest newspapers. This was done with the purpose of finding out if there has been a change in the way media portrays cannabis in 2012 compared to 2020. Social constructionism has been used as a theoretical framework, and 120 articles for each year have been encoded and analysed using discourse- and agenda-setting theory. The results show that the legal discourse continues to be dominant, that the medical discourse has become more nuanced, and that the financial and recreational discourse have been given more room in the media. Furthermore they show that the discourse regarding social problems has conspicuously decreased. Based on the international trends, the key role of the media as an actor for social change, and tendencies among the population, it is suggested in the discussion of the results that research in this area continues. Additionally, an ongoing discussion regarding the role of social work as it pertains to societal development is encouraged.