Negativ publicitet och ökade opinionssiffror : En studie om medias bevakning av Sverigedemokraterna

The study aims to show how the publicity surrounding the Sweden Democrats have been during November in 2012 when polls for the party rose. The method that has been used is quantitative content analysis and a total of 215 articles from tabloids Expressen and Aftonbladet are encoded. The period of the encoded material has been in November 2012 and the variables have been designed to answer how much publicity Sweden Democrats have received during that period, any topic that the articles touched on, the actors that have been cited, if players have received criticism or praise, how the party looked like and if certain words were used in the articles.The theories of the study are based on agenda setting, priming, “The spiral of silence” and democratic role of the media. They concern, among other things, how media sets the agenda for what people think is important and how after being exposed to something, subconsciously creates a feedback about the phenomenon.The results show that the Sweden Democrats have received much negative publicity at a time when their poll numbers increase, which goes against the established truth that says that positive publicity is beneficial to the parties while the negative publicity is adverse.Validerat; 20130627 (global_studentproject_submitter