Women as victims and men as workers : an analysis of how gender is framed in Swedish television news

The aim of this bachelor thesis was to examine how gender is framed in Swedish television news. The research questions we examined were the following: How is the gender balanced in the news reports? What kind of news represent women and what kind of news represent men? How is women and men viewed according to the news reports? What similarities and differences is there in how women and men are portrayed? The bachelor theisis is primarily a qualitative study where we with a visual text analysis, examine in what way women and men are framed in news reports. The study also includes a minor quantitative survey that examines the representation of men and women in news reports in Swedish television during week 49, 2019. To reach this conclusion we analysed 12 news reports from two of Sweden´s leading news broadcasts, Rapport and Aktuellt. By analysing 6 reports from each program we came to the conclusion that men and women were gender balanced the examined week. Apart from this conclusion the main result shows that even though the reports were gender balanced according to the participants, there was an obvious difference in how the sexes were framed. The women were framed in their traditional sex role as the motherly, sensitive and caring victim while the men were framed as the strong and enterprising worker