Forever victim or always aggressor? : The representation of immigrants in the daily newspapers online reporting

The purpose of this study is to examine how immigrants are portrayed in the Swedish daily newspapers online reporting. The essay investigates in what context immigrants, as individuals, are made visible and how they and their origins are reproduced. The study focuses on the roles victim and aggressor, and is also investigating potential differences between morning and evening newspapers. Present theories are discursive discrimination, critical discourse analysis, cultural racism, stereotypes and structural discrimination. Adopted methods are qualitative and quantitative content analysis, based on the Global Media Monitoring Project-tool. The results show that immigrants are not individually stereotyped or depicted negatively, but that their immigrant origins often have a central part of the story, that they are mentioned mainly in connection with negative news and that negatively charged words occur frequently.