Thieves, cops and forgotten victims : A content analysis of the helicopter robbery in Swedish tabloids between 2009 and 2010

The purpose of the study was to examine how Sweden’s two biggest tabloids, Aftonbladet and Expressen, frame spectacular crime and specifically how they covered the Helicopter robbery that occurred in 2009. We identified three main participants in the story, the police, the culprits and the victims. We examined how much and what kind of space the identified participants were given and how the two newspapers constructed the participants in a dramaturgic sense. Using a quantitative content analysis method we found that the time period included 433 articles in both newspapers. From the original articles, we picked and examined 19 articles with a qualitative content analysis method and also used framing theory in order to be able to examine how the participants were portrayed in Aftonbladet and Expressen. The culprits were given far most space in both Aftonbladet and Expressen. The study show that the police was given second most space and that the victims were hardly ever written about at all, in contrast to recent studies showing that victims of crime often are depicted as the main character in articles regarding crime. The results also show that the story as a whole carried a lot of resemblance to the classic Hollywood movie plot. The police were portrayed as incompetent, creating a conflict within the justice system community. The culprits were portrayed as the protagonist of the story with highly competent features, whilst the victims were portrayed as scared and helpless.