How to Frame a Terrorist Swedish Newspapers' Reporting on Acts of Terror in the Nordic Countries during the 2010s Carl William Bravinger Peace and Conflict Studies Bachelor of Arts 12 Credits Spring 2020 Supervisor: Kristian Steiner Abstract During the 2010s what could be described as a new “terror-wave” went through Europe, the Nordic countries included, and for a while it was the primary concern for many young Europeans. At the same period, an influx of right-wing parties has gained popularity, both within the European Union and on a national level. This arose the curiosity to investigate how the news coverage on some of the terror attacks differ based on the terrorist’s background. To explore this the thesis conducts a quantitative content analysis on 863 news articles from the four largest newspapers in Sweden. Six acts of terror committed in any of the Nordic countries during the 2010s were ultimately compared and analysed by coding the articles abductively, basing the codes on Entman’s theory of framing. To raise the validity of the study, an external validity was assessed using a representative sample of the Swedish newspapers landscape, and through conducting the coding twice with some space in between resulting in similar conclusions. The analysis demonstrates that there are obvious differences in the framing of the attack, the terrorist and the proposed measures when comparing the coverage of the acts of terror. Key words: Terrorism, Framing, Newspapers, Sweden, Content Analysis Word Count: 13 337 2 List of Tables: 3.1: Model of Media Coverage of Terror Events p.18 6.1: Framing of Attack – Trollhättan p.33 6.2: Framing of Attack – Bærum p.33 6.3: Avg. Frequency of "Illustrative" Words Describing the Attack p.35 6.4: Avg. Amount of References to Prev. Attacks per Article p.35 6.5: Avg. Amount of References to Terror Networks per Article p.36 6.6: Total amount of Connections to Terror Networks p.36 6.7: Average Amount of References to the Perpetrators’ Religious Beliefs p.37 6.8: Framing of National & Ethnic Identity – Manshaus, Abdulwahab & El-Hussein p.38 6.9: Framing of National & Ethnic Identity – Akilov & Bouanane p.38 6.10: Framing of Personality – Abdulwahab & El-Hussein p.39 6.11: Framing of Personality – Akilov & Bouanane p.40 6.12: Framing of Personality – Lundin Pettersson & Manshaus p.40 6.13: Comparing Framing of Personality – “Internal” vs External Other” p.41 6.14: Framed Causes of the Attack p.41 6.15: Framed Motivations of the Attack p.42 6.16: Distribution of Codes Regarding Mental Health p.43 6.17: Comparison of Terrorist vs. Perpetrator p.44 6.18: Avg. Amount of References to National Leaders per Attack p.45 6.19: Framing of Victims p.46 6.20: Comparison of Proposed Responses p.47 6.21: Proposed Responses to Trollhättan p.48 6.22: Average Amount of Proposed Responses per Article p.48 6.23: Proposed Responses – Comparison of the “External” and “Internal Other” p.49 6.24: Avg. Amount of Responses – Comparison of the “External” and “Internal Other” p.49 3 Table of Contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 6 1.1 Research Problem ............................................................................................... 6 1.2 Aim and Research Question ............................................................................... 8 1.3 Relevance to Peace and Conflict Studies ........................................................... 9 1.4 Disposition of Thesis .......................................................................................... 9 2 Background ........................................................................................................... 11 2.1 Stockholm, Sweden 2010 ................................................................................. 11 2.2 Copenhagen, Denmark 2015 ............................................................................ 12 2.3 Trollhättan, Sweden 2015 ................................................................................ 12 2.4 Stockholm, Sweden 2017 ................................................................................. 13 2.5 Turku, Finland 2017 ......................................................................................... 13 2.6 Bærum, Norway 2019 ...................................................................................... 14 2.7 Newspapers ...................................................................................................... 15 3 Literature Review ................................................................................................. 16 3.1 The Symbiosis of Terrorism, Media, and Politics ............................................ 16 3.2 Framing Terrorism ........................................................................................... 18 3.3 Muslims as the Western “Other” ...................................................................... 20 4 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................ 22 4.1 Depiction of the Attack .................................................................................... 22 4.2 The Portrayal of the Terrorist ........................................................................... 23 4.3 Description of the Casual Actors ..................................................................... 24 4.3.1 Leaders ..................................................................................................... 24 4.3.2 Victims ..................................................................................................... 25 4.4 Proposed Responses ......................................................................................... 25 5 Methodology .......................................................................................................... 27 5.1 Research Design ............................................................................................... 27 5.2 Gathering and Selection Process of Data ......................................................... 27 5.3 Selection of Cases ............................................................................................ 28 5.4 Quantitative Content Analysis ......................................................................... 30 5.4.1 Reflection on Quantitative Content Analysis ........................................... 31 5.4.2 Operationalisation of Codes ..................................................................... 32 4 6 Analysis .................................................................................................................. 34 6.1 Framing of the Attack: ..................................................................................... 35 6.1.1 “Illustrative” Words ................................................................................. 36 6.1.2 Links to Terror Groups and Previous Attacks .......................................... 37 6.2 Framing of the Perpetrator ............................................................................... 39 6.2.1 Religion, Nationality, and Ethnic Identity ............................................... 39 6.2.2 Personality ................................................................................................ 41 6.2.3 Causes and Motivations behind the Attack .............................................. 43 6.2.4 Mental Health ........................................................................................... 45 6.2.5 Terrorist or Perpetrator ............................................................................. 45 6.3 The Portrayal of the Casual Actors .................................................................. 46 6.3.1 National Leaders ...................................................................................... 47 6.3.2 Victims ..................................................................................................... 48 6.4 Proposed Responses ......................................................................................... 49 7 Discussion .............................................................................................................. 52 7.1 Framing of the Attack ...................................................................................... 52 7.2 Framing of the Terrorist ................................................................................... 53 7.3 Framing of the Proposed Responses ................................................................ 55 8 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 56 Appendix 1: Physical Newspapers ............................................................................... 58 References ...................................................................................................................... 59 5 1 Introduction 1.1 Research Problem Growing up as a teenager and young adult during the 2010s, it at one point felt like there was a new terror attack every week in Europe. It often felt surreal to read the news and see the horrible pictures of otherwise popular tourist destinations, many of which I had visited, such as the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, the London Bridge, La Rambla in Barcelona, and Drottninggatan in my hometown Stockholm, to mention a few. According to a survey in 2017 of 20,000 young people across the globe, 83% answered that they are the most afraid of terrorism, more