The Poet from Denmark: Dangerous and Ingenious, Exotic and Mad : A qualitative content analysis of how Swedish cultural journalists represented the poet Yahya Hassan

This study examines how cultural journalists in Sweden represented the Danish poet Yahya Hassan from when his first collection of poems was published until the year before his death. In 2013 the Danish-Palestinian poet published his first collection of poems which sold over 100 000 copies, which makes him the most sold debutant in Denmark. In conjunction with the debut a debate occurred in both Denmark and Sweden surrounding the poet and his work. Critical voices in Sweden said the poet contributed to a hostile discourse regarding the muslim community while others tributed the poet and his works arguing the literary artefact was of extaordinary excellence. Previous research about cultural journalism suggests the cultural pages contributes to the political discourse in society and that it is an undervalued form of journalism which needs further investigation to clearly untangle the impact cultural journalism possesses. This study uses qualitative content analysis and the studied material contains 18 articles published in the cultural section of four of Sweden's largest newspapers; Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. The purpose of this study was to analyze how cultural journalists represented, and possibly stereotyped, Yahya Hassan. The study also aimed to disentangle the infected debate of work and person, which has arised in the later years, using Yahya Hassan as subject. This was achieved with the theoretical basis of representation theory, stereotyping, mythologising, and Roland Barthes and Michel Foucalts reasoning regarding work and person. The results show that cultural journalists in Sweden represented Yahya Hassan based on three main themes: savage vs talent, the critics' relationship with the literary artifact and the literary artifact is the person. The journalists did not separate the person from the work, these were rather intertwined with each other. The journalists stereotyped the poet as an ‘immigrant from a criminal suburban area’ and also mythologised the poet. The articles where the literary artifact was in somewhat main focus the tone was overall more positive, while in the articles where the person Yahya Hassan was the main focus the tone was more negative