Riding the wave : En tematisk textanalys av framställningen av sydkoreansk populärkultur inom svensk journalistik

Sammanfattning: This qualitative study has chosen to examine how South Korea and its popular culture isbeing portrayed in Swedish journalistic and how it may come to play a role in theportrayal of South Korea as a society. Our aim with the research was to see how SouthKorean popular culture is portrayed in Swedish journalism and to investigate whetherthe Swedish presentation of South Korean popular culture also can be used to shareperspectives regarding societal standards, and how popular culture is used engagediscussions about South Korea as a society. The chosen method was a qualitativetextual as well as a thematic analysis when analysing our empirical material. We haveused theories of framing, cultural globalization, semiotics, news value and culturaljournalism.Our analysis shows how South Korea and the Korean wave, also known as Hallyu, hasbeen on a rise to fame during the last two decades. From mega pop bands to Oscaraward winning movies such as Parasite, South Korea has come to be one of the mostrecognized countries in terms of movie, TV, and music. Parallel to this an interest hasgrown around the world and Sweden for the Swedish media to report on differentinstances regarding the South Korean popular culture. The majority of our discussionrevolves around how the articles are offering us as researchers an interpretation as wellas where and if there is a difference in reporting on various subjects regarding bothSouth Korea's perceived image as a country and how their popular culture andcelebrities have come to have played a role in this.The result from this study suggests that there is a difference in where the focus of SouthKoreas popular culture lies depending on the subject of the article and that there is notonly one type of portrayal. The results also show that celebrities make out a huge part ofthe subjects that are being published regardless of aim.Keywords: text, culture, globalization, hallyu, article, society, media