What about a change? : A discourse analysis of how privatisation of libraries is portrayed in Biblioteksbladet

The subject of this master thesis concerns the area of change in libraries, with special orientation towards privatisation. Its aim is to investigate how privatisation is portrayed in one of Sweden’s largest library magazines, Biblioteksbladet, in order to gain insight into why these portrayals are what they are, and what consequences they might get. Three theoretical viewpoints create the general base of the thesis; first, Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) theory on the relations between text and society; second, Audunsson’s theory concerning how change is dealt with in public libraries; and third, a conceptual framework on privatisation consisting of definitions and perspectives of the phenomenon. Fairclough’s CDA is also used as the methodological approach for this study. The analysis has evolved around four analytical strategies, namely wordmeanings, modality, metaphors and interactional control. These strategies have unveiled different sides of the depiction of privatisation, where four dominating portrayals could be seen. These portrayals were named as follows: privatisation as leaving the past, as a matter of basic values, as a matter of economy and as a debate. The material also showed a division in different perspectives, where the advocating and the questioning perspective dominated. These perspectives could be seen in the various portrayals of privatisation, where privatisation as leaving the past was exclusively advocating while privatisation as a matter of basic values was strictly questioning. This emphasized the importance of library values when it comes to the attitude towards change