This study is focusing on how the media feature the reorganization of the Swedish police authority during September 2016. More specifically, we have analyzed articles obtained from the two biggest daily newspapers in Sweden, namely Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. The purpose of this study is to examine how the media coverage portray the rearrangements within the Swedish police authority and broaden our knowledge about how the media choose to represent the Swedish police authority.
The approach of this study is based on analysis concepts from the critical discourse analysis (CDA). The theoretical frameworks of this study are the framing theory, the theory of news evaluation, and also media logic theory. With help from the method (CDA) nine themes were developed and used while analyzing the material. The analyze was completed with different tools such as operators, metaphors, implications, choice of words and the nine themes.
Based on the results from the analyze several conclusions can be made, for instance all of the articles include the theme criticism of the reorganization and there is in general a clear negative tone when reporting about the reorganization. The most visible operators were politicians and the national police chief that in several of the articles attack or accuse each other. In a lot of their statements they try to explain the reason for the worsening results or deny that the results has been affected by the reorganization. The articles contain several promises about future actions. None of the analyzed articles were classified as positive, but all 12 of them had a negative tone when writing about the reorganization.