“He chose his victims. Those who have darker skin have been attacked.” : The school attack in Trollhättan – a comparison between Aftonbladet and TTELA

On the 22nd October 2015 Anton Lundin Pettersson attacked students with a sword at Kronan elementary school, in the Swedish city of Trollhättan. The school is locally known to have many students with different immigrant backgrounds. When the police arrived at the school they shot the perpetrator and after an investigation the police claimed that the perpetrator had racist motives with the attack. Four persons died in the attack, including the perpetrator. The aim of this study was to compare how a local newspaper and a national newspaper covered and framed the school attack in Trollhättan. Our research questions were: How was the attack framed in the articles? How were the victims and the perpetrator framed in the articles? And are there any differences and/or similarities in the newspaper's coverage of the event? In this study we made a qualitative text analysis to examine the comparison between newspapers TTELA (local) and Aftonbladet (national). The timeframe we analysed for the news coverage was from the day of the attack (October 22nd) and one month forward (November 23rd). Totally 29 articles were examined where 17 was from Aftonbladet and 12 was from TTELA. The results showed that both newspapers framed the attack as something that no one saw coming and they both used the words “attack” or “deed” to describe the incident. The newspapers framed some victims as heroes and others as helpless people. Both newspapers framed the perpetrator as a racist, but only the national newspaper (Aftonbladet) framed him as a “lone wolf”. The results showed that the newspapers reported from different forms of othering.