The Portrait of a Homeland : An Analysis of the Image of Sweden and Swedish Poverty in the Swedish American Post, Year 1887

Abstract: In the late 1800’s, Sweden was undergoing a population growth and had experienced several crop failures. With the majority of the population being farmers, the migration to North America gave Swedish emigrants an economic opportunity that wasn’t available in the homeland. This resulted in a mass exodus. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, around 1.25 million Swedes left their home country in search for a better life in the United States of America. In the year of 1890, around 478,000 Swedes had moved across the sea in search for better yields and economic prosperity.There is no exact number of how many Swedish-language newspapers that were published in North America to cater to the large number of Swedish immigrants, but an estimate says that between 600 and 1,000 Swedish language newspapers were published in the United States. The aim with this thesis is to analyze the representation of Sweden to Swedes who emigrated to look for a better life in the USA. The purpose of the study was to research how Swedish poverty was represented in the news. The research questions focus on how Sweden is represented in the Swedish American Post in 1887; how Swedish poverty is described and represented in the news and what representations of poverty can be seen in the material. The study was conducted through a qualitative text and thematic analysis of 48 newspapers from the Swedish emergency year of 1887, when the emigration hit its peak. The analysis of the data draws on theories of representation and social change, and the theoretical concepts of how the media can influence people’s lives and perceptions. The study found that the newspaper presents a somewhat simplified picture of poverty that rarely goes into underlying factors or societal structures but represents poverty mainly through personal stories of private individuals. The thesis also reveals that the image of Sweden is based on nostalgic, often fictional features of the homeland and news that often focused on accidents and deaths. This is interpreted as that the newspaper, on the one hand, gave the readers a relaxing read which spoke to their possible homesickness, and also contributed to confirm the decision to emigrate to the USA as something positive.