Flyktingvågen 2015 – En samhällsbelastning eller en humanitär kris? : En kvantitativ och kvalitativ innehållsanalys av hur flyktingkrisen gestaltades i svensk nyhetsjournalistik.

Sammanfattning: This thesis examines how four of the national newspapers in Sweden portray the events in late 2015 referred to as the refugee crisis. According to previous research, theimmigration received a lot of media attention and has often been portrayed negatively. Due to the size of the wave and the time it lasted, it is necessary to narrow the selection of published news articles about the topic to a specific time frame and event, which is the introduction of temporary border controls in Sweden, that became a turning point during the wave. The selection makes this thesis unique among the broad previous research. The framing theory is a substantial part of this study, that uses both qualitative framing analysis and quantitative content analysis in order to examine whether the events are portrayed by newspapers through a crisis frame or a human interest frame. The mentioned frames mean that the wave is either portrayed as a negative impact on the country or that the media focuses on the humanitarian situation. The study will alsotake into consideration whether the Swedish newspapers frame politics as strategy andgame. As well as who is quoted in the articles and whether there are differences between news coverage before and after the introduction of temporary border controls. The examined newspapers most often portray the refugee wave as a burden to the society. Framing of the events is rarely done through the human interest frame while the crisis frame is applied in most articles. In addition, most of the quotes come from politicians and political commentators and it is only occasionally that quotes from the refugees occur. The applied framing can be then seen as one of politics as strategy andgame, where there are political winners and losers. The analysis showed no significant difference between news coverage before and after the introduction of border controls.