To handle a pandemic : A study on how Swedens management in handling COVID-19 has been framed in American media.

At the end of 2019 the world saw its first case of the virus called COVID-19. That was the beginning of a pandemic which has now cost more than 1,7 million lives all over the world. Several nations imposed severe restrictions on their countries, for example many countries imposed a lockdown, Sweden stood out from the other nations. They weren’t able to impose a lockdown, due to their fundamental law and instead trusted their citizens to comply with the restrictions which were established. In Sweden, the number of infected increased rapidly and they soon had the fourth highest number of deaths in COVID-19 per capita in the EU. Due to the high number of infections and because of different management in handling the coronavirus, several nations were critical to how Sweden has managed the situation, among others the USA. The aim of this bachelor study has been to examine how the american media has framed the Swedish government's strategy in handling the coronavirus through examining The New York Times, New York Post, Los Angeles Times andBreitbart. By combining a quantitative content analysis and qualitative semiotic analysis as a methodological approach and with the help of Ulrich Beck's Risksociety, Framing Theory and Agenda-setting theory the aim was to answer our research questions, that is; · How has Sweden’s strategy and management of COVID-19 been framed in the american media? · Which sources and quotes are the most frequent in the articles? · How has the Swedish strategy been framed in pictures? Previous research has shown that frames that are commonly used to frame a pandemic like COVID-19 or H1N1 are usually alarming. Our studies results indicate the same thing, the most frequent frames that were used were alarming and the swedes were portrayed as irresponsible, mostly due to the pictures used in the articles. Government people and experts, like Anders Tegnell, were framed as responsible for the outcome of the pandemic and most frequently quoted. In conclusion we could see that the government was framed in a way that indicated that they allowed the virus to spread, and the american media has portrayed the strategy as inadequate and irresponsible towards human life