Psychopaths in the media : Criminals, madmen or hidden among us?

Sammanfattning: When society is viewed in a social constructive manner, the social worker is as affected as the general population by the media and the image it portrays. A prejudice or bias social worker will not be as effective in his work as his intentions are. The purpose of this thesis was to discover if there are any visible cultural differences in the usage and description of the concept of psychopathy or a psychopath himself in the media, more specifically, daily newspapers. There are three American newspapers and three Swedish newspapers examined in this study. The study is based on a quantiative content analysis of articles published between 1st of January 2008 and 1st of July 2012. The collected data is categorized where the articles can fall under one or more of five available categories. Even though no clear results occurred, some interesting indications are visible between American newspapers and Swedish newspapers, but more so between different American newspapers. Psychopaths, people with an Antisocial Personality Disorder, are most frequently mentioned as criminals or maniacs/madmen in both countries with a modestly higher percentage for the United States of America.