Tidningen Dagens Nyheters uppfattning om vildsvinen (Sus scrofa)? : en innehållsanalys av en rikstäckande nyhetstidning

Abstract: Since the wild boars (Sus scrofa) escaped from their enclosures in the 1970s, their numbers has increased dramatically. It is an animal that is currently involved in many traffic accidents. The wild boar is a popular animal to hunt. As the population has grown so has the hunting. But, unfortunately, there have also been an increased numbers of attacks on hunters. Wild boars are also involved in much destruction of particular crops and they create fear in people that they might get hurt or lose their crops. But what the public thinks of the wild boars is poorly documented. This report provides insight into how the public think of the wild boars. The purpose of this report is to provide a content analysis of newspaper Dagens Nyheter to investigate how the boars are portrayed in Swedish media. The growth of the Swedish wild boar population has exploded in recent years. A further aim is to find out whether this increase in the wild population has changed the magazine's writing about the wild boars and if the numbers of articles have changed between the years 2003, 2007 and 2012. The results show a clear increase in the number of amount of articles from 2003 until 2012. The contents of articles have shown that for nine years, the public has developed a more negative attitude towards the wild boars. Articles have shown that farmers often blames the hunters for feeding wildlife during the winter but otherwise no one seems to know direct whose responsibility it is to keep the population stable. Articles also revealed that some hunters, farmers and some individuals felt that hunting was the best solution to keep the population stable. However, researchers and the transport department are trying to coming up with new things that could prevent for example some type of accidents. But also to establish a functioning management plan between landowners and hunters to control the wild boar populations and as results perhaps change the public attitudes towards wild boars.