Har Expressen fått pippi?
En kritisk diskurs analys av Expressens rapportering kring fa?gelinfluensa
AbstractTITLE Birdflu in the press ? a critical discourse analysis on the tabloidnewspaper ExpressenAUTHOR Per VågebrantSUPERVISOR Malin SveningssonPURPOSE The purpose of this essay is to find out how the Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen writes about the birdflu H5N1. To be more precise the purpose is to find out how the discourse is constructed. The Birdflu or H5N1 witch is its real name is something that could affect us all, yet very few people know a lot about it. To achieve this purpose I constructed one primary research question:o How has Expressen, in the public media discourse, treated the phenomena we know as the birdflu?This primary research question holds three more specified research questions:o What does Expressens discourse about the birdflu look like?o What actors are participating in the articles?o Why does the discourse look like this?THEORY The theory chapter of the essay contains four different parts. First I give the reader a lesson on the critical discourse analysis. This is followed by an explanation of the discourse concept. Then I turn to Kent Asp to explain what kind of power the media possesses. The last part of this chapter deals with the social constructionist perspective.METHOD To answer my questions I used a type of text analysis called the critical discourse analysis. I used the critical discourse analysis to analyse articles about the birdflu written between the first of January 2006 and the fiftieth of February 2006.CONCLUSION The discourse resembles on many occasions to that of fiction and imaginative literature. The journalists use different strategies to make this happen: personification, expertise actors, colourful language, intertextuallity and last but not least a feeling of ?we and them?. The reason to why the discourse look like this has to do with the commercialisation of the media. It?s more important to sell then to write ?proper? articles.