Den rödbrusige öldansken
En kvalitativ underso?kning om hur danskar framsta?lls i tre svenska tidningar
RepresentationStereotypeDiscourseDenmarkDanish peopleSwedenSwedishNordicSportSydsvenska DagbladetDagens NyheterAftonbladet
The aim of this study was to examine how the Danish people and Denmark are represented in the daily Swedish press. We wanted to examine how the Danish people were represented, the characteristics given to the Danes and the differences we see between the different genres. We used theories about discourse, representation, stereotype and national community, too see what underlying messages was hidden in the texts. We analysed 30 texts from three Swedish daily newspapers: Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten, Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet. The method we used was discourse analysis based on Faircloughs theories and methods.One of the most interesting results we found was that the Danish people often were represented as different kinds of stereotypes. We found the following stereotypes that we named: the drunken Danish, the racist, the laidback Danish and the criminal Danish. The drunk Danish stereotype is mostly seen in the text about sports when the journalists are writing about the Danish football supporters. In these texts the supporters are given properties like drunk and that they like to drink a lot of beer when they are watching football. The stereotype that we named the racist, we mostly see in the texts that were about politics and about the Dansk Folkeparti. The laidback Danish is particularly evident in texts that describe the Danish culture. The fourth stereotype, the criminal, we see in the texts about gang violence.Our study also showed that the Danish people and Denmark are represented through people that are not Danish. In many of the texts we could see that Swedish journalists interviewed other Swedish people about Denmark and the Danish people.