Konstruktionen av Jehovas vittnen : En jämförande diskursanalys om medias framställning av Jehovas vittnen med samfundets egen självuppfattning

This study wants to look into how Swedish newspapers (daily and evenings papers) report on Jehovah´s Witnesses and then contrast that image with the organization’s own view about themselves. This I done through a discourse analysis. Further, this study wants to show what consequences this has for the members of the organization and for the majority society. In the analysis of the collected material, four main discourses have been discovered; Love and sexual relations, exclusion and honor issues, blood transfusions and Jehovah´s Witnesses as a separate community. The result of the study shows certain patterns that have been identified, such as the fact that most of the published articles report on previous disappointed members, who do not have an objective attitude towards Jehovah´s Witnesses. Another discovery is how the media tend to report from a secular point of view, which becomes problematic when writing about a religious community with other rules of life and traditions than the secular. The consequences of this is that the media in involved in constructing the image of Jehovah´s Witnesses as a deviant and sometimes dangerous sect