Sweden will change even more : Analysing the representation of refugees and immigrants in Aftonbladet before and after the refugee crisis of 2015

This thesis is a qualitative study that seeks to investigate how refugees were represented in the tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet’s reports before and after the 2015 refugee crisis. The aim of the study is to find out if the representation of immigration in Aftonbladet changed after the 2015 refugee crisis and what differences and changes we can see in the media representation of the refugees before and after the crisis. The data used in the paper is comprised of articles from January 2014 and January 2018. The study is done in the light of Stuart Hall’s three representational approaches of reflective, intentional and constructionist to explore the discourse of immigration and scrutinize the periodic differences of such a representation. The findings of this paper indicate that the representation of refugees and immigration has more of a reflective tone to it during the pre-crisis phase and later when the crisis dies down the representation of immigration gets a more constructive nature; and even more wilful