Den typiske missbrukaren : en jämförelsestudie av svensk medias rapportering om alkohol- och drogmissbruk

This study analysed 80 different articles from two Swedish newspapers: the evening paper Expressen and morning paper Dagens Nyheter, evenly divided between articles found with the search words drug addiction (drogmissbruk) and alcohol addiction (alkoholmissbruk). All of them published during 2018. By using a quantitative method to collect and code data and a social constructive and a political mediation perspective to analyse the results. The purpose of the study was to get a better understanding of Swedish newspapers coverage of the addictions and the addicts. This was done through analysing the generally described identity of the addicts, the focus of the articles and a comparison of the results given by the evening paper and the morning paper. The questions at issue was answered by reading the articles and some by analysing them with the help of keywords assorted into categories. A bias of the addicts became clear in terms of gender, age and socioeconomic status, a result that was consistent between the different papers and addictions. The study found connections between the articles mentioning some form of criminality in combination with the different addictions, especially drug addiction. This outcome matches the Swedish statistics that indicates an increasing trend in the connection between criminality and drug addiction. The focus of the articles collected from Expressen concerning alcohol addiction was a considerate amount empathetic, helping and supportive words and had mostly an individual perspective. Whilst the largest number of keywords that had more of a critically examining focus and a community perspective was found in the articles published in Dagens Nyheter and those concerning drug addiction in Expressen. Comparing the types of paper, a difference was discovered in the amount of information published regarding the addicts. The total results showed more inequalities between the papers than between the different kinds of addictions even though the study also found inequalities between the different kinds of addictions. Considering the papers have various groups of readers which in turn get access to various kind of information we find this problematic