The climate crisis and Dagens Nyheter : How does swedish news media cover one of the greatest challenges of our generation?

In October 2020 Peter Wolodarski, the editor-in-chief of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), announced that he wanted to improve the news coverage of the climate crisis. The aim of this study is to investigate whether DN has changed their way of reporting on the climate crisis through text and pictures within six months, and if so what those changes are. Framing theory is central in this study as it identifies the usage of generic and theme specific frames in DN’s articles. This is done by comparing all articles in September 2020 and March 2021 that contain the topic “climate crisis” published on their online service. The usage of pictures was also studied for additional context. In order to study this the methods qualitative text analysis and semiotic image analysis were used. To provide results the data then underwent a quantitative analysis as well as qualitative analysis.The findings of the study show that DN has shifted their usage of generic frames, meaning a change in which scale the climate crisis is portrayed, and an increased and widened usage of specific frames in their articles. However, the usage of pictures has not changed notably. In conclusion, does DN in fact seem to have changed their overall reporting on the climate crisis within the studied period. The study contribution is an added understanding of papers reporting on the clime crisis online as well as media’s usage of frames and how those can change in a relatively short period of time