”Man känner sig en aning bekymrad” : En statsvetenskaplig studie av hur svensk media problematiserar övervakning

This thesis examines how Swedish newspaper media problematize surveillance. This is done by analysing the media reports from two major surveillance events: the debate in 2008 about the legislation concerning the expansion of the rights of Försvarets Radioanstalt to monitor internet and telephone traffic crossing the Swedish borders, and the revealing of an ethnically based index including over 4000 individuals created by the Swedish police. The thesis sets out to expand the knowledge about media’s role as a interpreting source of information concerning how people understand and relate to surveillance (Barnard-Wills, 2011; Carlsson, 2009; Greenberg & Hier, 2009). The thesis attempts to answer the question whether Swedish media problematizations regarding the abovementioned surveillance events correlates with the most common theories of surveillance critique. In addition the thesis examines who are allowed to express their views on the issues. By analysing the material using a qualitative content analysis the result show that there are great differences between the way media problematize the two events. The debate regarding FRA almost exclusively focuses on how the surveillance is perceived as a threat to the personal integrity whilst the coverage of the index complied by the Swedish police this problematization is close to absent. Instead the news media focuses on problematizations of the discriminatory aspect of the ethnically based index and the fact that it raises uncomfortable feelings. In the material on the FRA legislation most of the problemsatizations are carried out by journalists whilst they are presented by civil individuals in the coverage of the police index