Medias presentation of the police in Malmö. A thematic analysis of three Swedish newspapers

Abstract: The media can arguably be seen to have an important part in how the public view the police. A negative presentation is seen to have several grave consequences and is argued to influence the public’s confidence in the police's legitimacy. The police in Malmö have during the last decade received much attention and media coverage because of their severe issues with criminality and violence. The aim of this thesis was partly to examine how the police in Malmö is presented in printed news and what the consequences of this might be, but also to examine if the presentation of the police changed since the reorganisation of the police force in Sweden. The method used to achieve this was a thematic analysis which was used on 193 articles from three newspapers. This included a search for themes which were later compiled into measurable figures so an examination of potential trends over the covered period, the 1st of January in 2013 to the 31st December in 2016, was possible. The results showed that 71 articles were positive, 112 articles were negative and 10 articles were neutral or ambiguous. Thus, there were 41 more negative articles than positive which shows that there is a more negative presentation of the police. When examining the trends over time it showed that a change in the presentation occurs the year that the reorganisation of the police force takes effect, however, the change differs between the newspapers.