A study of the Parken Zoo incident in media : A quantitative and a qualitative analysis of the Parken Zoo incident in the media

The purpose of this study was to investigate how media has followed the Parken Zoo incident and analyse how media convey the issue about the Parken Zoo incident. The different results have been compared. To answer the purpose of the study three issues has been formulated: how do the different media relate to the ideal of objectivity? Who come across and get to speak in the different media? What differences and similarities are in the media? The theories that have been used in this study are mainly McCombs theory of agenda setting, Strömbäck’s theory of framing and theory of media logic, Kovach & Rosenstiel theories of journalism and Manning’s theory of objectivity. The methods that have been used are a combination of a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative semiotic analysis. The material that has been observed in this study is newspaper articles, television news reports and television programs. The results of the quantitative analysis showed that articles of Eskiltuna Kuriren, news reports of SVT1 and the program Debatt had most objectivity in there reporting. The news reports of TV4 and program Kalla Fakta had most biased reporting of the incident. The qualitative analysis showed that SVT1 news broadcast was more objective and TV4 news broadcast was more biased. The mainly sources in the media that has been used was the other media, the president to Parken Zoo and veterinaries. The newspapers used sources from other media, like the program Kalla Fakta, then also former employees from Parken Zoo and veterinaries. SVT1 and program Debatt used more other sources, more sources from Parken Zoo. In the qualitative analysis the result showed that the news broadcast from TV4 had the focus on how the Parken Zoo takes care of the animals, that they have put to death pumas and that Helena Olsson had lied to TV4. The broadcast from SVT1 focused on the mistakes Parken Zoo had done but also how they are going to fix the problems that they have. The news broadcasts gave different kind of framing effects to the viewers.