I demokratins tjänst?- En komparativ lingvistisk textanalys av nyhetsförmedlingen i Dagens Nyheter och Dala-Demokraten av EMU-valet 2003
News coverageMediaObjectivityLinguistic text analysisEMU-electionSocial sciencesSamhällsvetenskaperPolitical and administrative sciencesStatsvetenskapFörvaltningskunskapSocial SciencesLaw and Political Science
This comparative linguistic textstudy focuses on the relationship between a newspapers own outspoken political standpoint and it´s ambition of being an unbiased provider of objective information. This connection becomes particulary interestering in times of election when a newspapers role as provider of information is of great importance for the citizens. When a newspaper reports an event to the public, the reporter always has to choose from a small selection of possible linguistic forms when representing the story. Through linguistic analysis of these forms we can see that the final choice is often not a complete arbitrary one. We compared two daily newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Dala-Demokraten, that stod on opposite sides in the Swedish EMU-elections 2003. By comparing their newscoverage of the same events we could see that there were apparent differences in the way these two papers chose to report the same events to the public. This gives a newspaper a position as a creator of public opinion instead of being an unbiased provider of information.