ETT GÄNG DEFINITIONER En diskursanalys om medias framställning av gängkriminalitet.

Sammanfattning: According to politicians, experts and journalists a wave of gang related crime has washed over Sweden and is a threat to the country’s safety, welfare and unity. With media as a tool, it is described both as a social problem as well as an urgent national crisis. This essay concerns discourses on the portrayal of gang related crime in the media. The general aim has been to study and analyse how the involved participants have been displayed in the discourse. Furthermore, other objectives have been to study who has the most power to speak up in the debates and also who the scape goats are. That includes what solutions are being suggested to solve the problems and who is seen as problematic. Another aim of the study has been to understand how gang related crime is defined both in terms of explicit and implicit forms throughout media. We, authors of this essay, have chosen to analyse what media and politicians think seems to be the cause of this wave of gang related crime in a way that the country has lost all control. Through media, strong voices seem to be fixed on the idea that the phenomenon is closely connected to “lack of integration”, alienation and parallel structures in our society. The empiric material consists of articles about gang crime from Sweden’s biggest newspapers: two daily papers and two tabloids. The theoretical frame is based on social constructivism and social problems with categorizations and stereotypes. Our analytical frame has therefore been discourse analysis. The analysis shows that discourses of gang related crime in media give politicians frequent opportunities to speak out but also that the rhetoric used by them are far from neutral. Instead, many of those who share their opinion do it in a hostile war rhetoric such as “crush” or “destroy” the criminal gangs. In regard to this we also have noticed that the debate in our articles has turned xenophobic in terms of more restricted migration politics suggested as a solution. As politicians blame immigrants and other “cultures” for gang related crime, the statements aimed at the population risks an increased structural racism. In terms of social problems, gang related crime has caught more attention these past years even though a distinct definition is missing not only in the police, but also in other authorities as well. In spite of this, more people than ever seem to engage in the discourse. All but the gangs themselves. It also seems like more people and entire areas are at risk of being labelled negative by a dominant and xenophobic elite.