Murdered girls’ status as a victim

The aim of the study was to examine how two young female victims was represented in Swedish commercial news press, if and how their relations to the perpetrator would affect their representation and what similarities and differences there were in the representation between the two. We examined the coverage of Lisa Holm, who was murdered by a stranger, and Tova Moberg, who was murdered by her abusing ex- boyfriend. The method used was a critical discourse analysis. We searched for different discourse themes in a total of twelve news articles from Aftonbladet and Expressen. We analyzed the themes and came to the conclusion that the murder victims were represented very much alike, well-liked, ambitious and good-hearted. The main difference is that Tova Moberg was not represented as innocent as Lisa Holm by the journalism because of her relationship with her ex-boyfriend. The journalism partly blamed Tova Moberg for not preventing her own death since she was aware of the danger. We found that as soon as any kind of relations between the victim and perpetrator was mentioned the victim’s status as an ideal victim decreased