Skattefrågor, opinionsmätningar och militärskämt : Hur Aftonbladet och Svenska Dagbladet gestaltade den amerikanska valrörelsen 2012

During a political election the public’s interest in politics and political journalism increases significantly. During the American presidential election in 2012 a big amount of articles on that topic were published in two of Sweden’s largest newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet. Political journalism tends to frame politics as sports, game and scandals rather than focusing on the political issues. This has been researched before but has mainly focused on local elections rather than elections in another country. Even though American politics and political journalism is often seen as a predecessor to Swedish politics and political journalism few studies have been made in this area. The purpose of this study was to find out how the American presidential election in 2012 was framed in Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet. Our objective was to see the extent to which the politics was framed as a political game and as a political issue in the two newspaper of our choice. Furthermore we also wanted to say something about how the newspapers were influenced by the media logic. This study has used a quantitative content and the newspapers included were Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet, the last 33 days before the election. The result showed that the framing of politics as a game or as a scandal was more common in the tabloid Aftonbladet than in the national daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. This could indicate that Aftonbladet was more influenced by the media logic than Svenska Dagbladet