Tabloidisering i kristid
En jämförande kvantitativ fallstudie av Vestmanlands Läns Tidning och Aftonbladets rapportering under den stora skogsbranden i Västmanland sommaren 2014
This essay concerns the possible tabloidization of Swedish daily newspapers. To investigate if tabloidization theory could be supported, a case-study is made using the isolated crisis of an especially big forest-fire in the county of Västmanland in Sweden in the summer of 2014. One local paper of the daily press, Vestmanlands Läns Tidning and one tabloid-paper with a national spread, Aftonbladet, are compared using quantitative content analysis to see whether there are similarities or differences enough to support or reject that the daily press is under influence of tabloidization. The results of the two papers news coverage of the fire are compared in three main categories; Theme, Source and Value-words. These categories represent three of tabloidization?s main criteria; ?soft news?, personification of sources and more use of words that connote strong values as signs of a lower quality in journalism. If the results of the lesser considered tabloid-paper and the higher regarded daily paper are similar, it would be a sign of the daily papers tabloidization.The results of the case-study are supporting the view of tabloidization of the daily paper with all three categories supporting it in general. The newspapers showed similar numbers in personification and soft news in both categories of Theme and Source. And even though the tabloid-paper used more value-words than the daily-paper in total, it could be explained by the tabloid-papers greater number in words in total. All in all the case-study supports tabloidization theory based on the similar results in the two different newspapers.