TT and the foreign picture : A quantitative study of the foreign picture in Sweden´s largest news agency.

The purpose of this study was to examine the foreign news flow in Sweden´s largest news agency TT. Since TT has an important position as a news provider to most of Sweden´s local and national news outlets, it was important to examine exactly what their news stories consisted of. The theoretical background of this study consist of theories of news values, agenda setting, dependency theory and the theory about the “news shadow” a lack of coverage leads to. In our quantitative study we have looked at 506 articles taken from the TT news flow during two weeks In November 2013. We have studied which continents and countries the news origins from, who have supplied the text, the topics of the news, which one gets to speak in the text and what general tone the story has. The study shows that the supply of news follows the criteria of news values. It also shows that in some regions of the world the coverage is almost nonexistent. Because of this a media shadow has been cast over regions that have little relationship with Sweden. It also shows that TT depends on other international news agencies for a lot of their foreign news. And that the news is elite centered. Furthermore the study shows that negative news stories are the most common ones. And that more negative news spread from third world countries