Gender stereotypes in political news journalism : The portrayal of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in Swedish media from a gender perspective

The 2016 presidential election in USA was extraordinary from several point of views and the election was majorly covered by swedish media. The aim of this research was to examine how Swedish newspapers portrayed Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump from a gender perspective during the 2016 presidential election. We also wanted to analyse how other common political news frames were used to portray Clinton and Trump. This is a qualitative framing analysis of 14 strategically selected articles, seven that were published by Aftonbladet and seven by Dagens Nyheter. The results showed tendencies of several gendered stereotypes that are being retained by the frames the newspapers use. Frames such as gendered traits and gendered issue emphases, but also game frames were offered to the reader. We discovered that Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter offered a more positive opinion of Clinton than of Trump. While Clinton was framed as an experienced, emotional and compassionate candidate, Trump was framed as an inexperienced, insensitive and aggressive candidate. Clinton was framed with gendered issue emphases in both the public and private sphere, while Trump was framed with gendered issue emphases in only the public sphere. Furthermore, game frames showed that the newspapers had a tendency of polarizing and personifying the candidates