Native advertising - att bedra eller förädla? : en fallstudie om journalistikens moderna gråzon

This thesis aims to address the similarities and differences between journalism and native advertising. Is native advertising a business model for the media industry or is it simply a new way for journalists to write? The case study is based on a series of native advertising articles from the Swedish news site "Omni". The empirical data was collected both by a quantitative and qualitative method to ensure that the results are as reliable as possible. Apart from this, the study also builds on a few relevant and important theories. Commodification, press ethics and professionalization theory has had a great impact on this thesis and its results. We argue that native advertising is commodified journalism. The purpose of native advertising is to make commercial content look like a regular article, to prevent that the audience avoids it. Therefore native advertising is intentionally misleading. Our study shows that it's not compatible with Swedish press ethics nor theories about journalism as a profession. For future studies it would be of great importance to study how native advertising effects the credibility for journalism in general