Swedish coverage of the EU – a democracy problem? : A quantitative examination of the Swedish local news media's coverage of the EU

The purpose of this study was to examine if the criticism aimed at the Swedish media was justified or not. The Swedish media’s coverage of the EU is a heavily debated subject between scientists and politicians alike. The coverage has come under fire for being irregular and for only focusing on the national part of the European union. The study has it stand point in the following research questions: “How frequent is the coverage of the EU”, “what differs in the reporting from an election year and a regular year”, “How much space is the EU given in the newspapers”, “Who is behind the information” and “What subjects is the coverage about and who gets to talk”. The study aimed itself at Swedish local newspapers from three different regions of Sweden. The study used a quantitative content analysis to identify the difference in the reporting during week 22 through the years 2013, 2014 and 2015. By doing this the study found that there was a major difference in the reporting from the election year, 2014, and the other two years where there were no elections. It also found that politics and economics where popular subjects to cover and that Swedish EU-politicians were the most popular persons in the articles. The study also aimed to see if the criticism the media got for only covering the national part of news in from the EU. This the study found was mostly true when it came to local newspapers and also that the EU news mostly took up a large piece of space in the papers because of all the information that had to be in the articles to explain the complexity of the European union. The conclusion of this study is that the Swedish local news media’s coverage of the EU is underwhelming but also hard to improve because the EU also has problems in its information flow and that the Swedish local media tends to use the national angle to sell the news