?Då läser jag hellre kvällspressen ifall jag vill få lite spänning?
En studie om gymnasieelevers påverkan av kvällstidningarnas brottsrapportering
Media is a big part of our society and plays a major role in the socialization of young people. It sets the agenda for what?s important and newsworthy. In media coverage today crime and violence occupies a lot of the space. The evening press like Aftonbladet, Expressen and GT often use crime to sell their papers. The purpose of this study is to see what impact these crime reports have on high school students and how the education in the subject civic studiescould be designed from this point of view. In order to examine the reactions from the students concerning crime reports in the media I have applied the following questions: What does students state about their reaction to the crime reports in the evening papers? Which opinion do students have on media studies in civic studies? How can the media education be outlinedto meet the students needs? To answer the questions above I have conducted interviews with students and asked them what they think about evening papers and media in general. I started each interview by letting the student read an article from the evening paper Aftonbladet and then we discussed how heor she reacted to the article. It was a typical crime article from the evening papers which contained many of the ingredients that they usually have. Media professor Peter Dahlgren claims that crime articles in the evening papers follow a specific pattern that enables the reader to feel familiar with the contents of the text. During the interviews I also asked the students how they thought that the media education in civic studies should be conducted. The students had different opinions about the evening press. Some of them thought that it israther good and that they especially like the crime reports. Other students didn?t like those papers as much and thought that they were full of lies and exaggerations. The crime reports´ impact on the students however was pretty clear and some of them explained how this affected their everyday life. They all agreed that media education is important and that they wanted to learn more so they can interpret media in a way that enables them to tell what?s trueand what?s not.Key words: Evening papers, Media and Media education