Who gets to participate in the debate? : A quantitative content analysis of the debate journalism in the Swedish press

This study aims to show who the most common participants of the debates in the Swedish press are, when it comes to gender, social status and the subjects that are debated. To investigate this, a quantitative content analysis was used, counting and analysing all the debate articles from ten swedish newspapers between 1st April 2018 and 31st May 2018. There were 723 articles included in our study, and debate articles that were replies to other debates and those which were less than 1500 digits were excluded. The articles were analysed according to their length, which newspaper they came from, what gender the debator had, what the subject of the debate was, the actuality of the debate and the debators social status. The result of the study shows that men are more frequently appearing in the debates than women, and the most common debator in the Swedish press is a politician that debates politics and political proposals. It also shows that men and women tend to debate different subjects, as men are more frequent debators in subjects like trade and industry, international affairs and immigration, and women are more frequent when it comes to healthcare, education and environmental issues