Black Lives Matter i svensk nyhetsmedia

Sammanfattning: This study analyzes how the social movement Black Lives Matter was portrayed in newspaper articles from the largest Swedish newspapers in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. This was done over a period of four weeks from George Floyd's death and the newspapers included are Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Aftonbladet and Expressen. The study is inspired by previous research and focuses on whether the movement is portrayed as peaceful or violent, which is done with a critical discourse analysis by Norman Fairclough. Since the movement is about social injustice, more specifically structural racism, it is also examined whether the narrative of the articles contribute to reproducing these social structures or not. This is analyzed with the theory of “the other” by Stuart Hall. The results show that articles often contain elements of both denying and legitimizing the movement, but that the majority of the articles portray the movement in a negative way. The study also shows that there are narratives that reproduce and maintain structural racism, which is shown to be problematic.