"Jag hade fått nog! Av allt man inte fick göra. Av att känna mig som världens sämsta människa" : - En kvalitativ studie i religionssociologi om svensk nyhetsmedias porträttering av kvinnliga avhoppare från Jehovas vittnen

This essay aims to identify and illustrate, in relation to Stig Hjarvards (2013) theory of mediatization, the factors for defection that Swedish news media portray as decisive for women leaving Jehovah´s witnesses. The material consist of six news articles collected from four different news media who all published stories about women which defected from Jehovah´s witnesses. The method of the essay is a transversal text analysis and the program Open Code 4.03 has been used to assess the results. The process of coding was abductive which means, inthis essay, that the categories used in Open Code was mainly created based on the presented previous research on religious defection but also by a thoroughly reading of the articles. This genereted in five overall themes: family, external factors, organizational, world view and mental health. The factors for defection that is brought up by the articles is categorized in these themes. The result was then analyzed based on Hjarvards (2013) theory of mediatization and his explanations to it by these three metaphors of media; media as conduits, media as languages and journalism on media. The analyzed results indicated, among other things, factors for defection regarding deprivation of freedom, prohibition within the movement and unequal conditions for men and women. The results also showed medias aim to enforce factors connected to love and sex to create entertainment value. According to my interpretation of Hjarvards (2013) theory the results shows news medias desire to be an institution that criticalexamines religious organizations that do not fit in with secular norms of Swedish society