Varför var det så svårt?
En flermetodsanalys av läsbarhet av nyhetsartiklar i Dagens Nyheter under 15 år
The aim of this study was to examine the readability of news articles published in the Swedish national newspaper Dagens Nyheter during the years 1999 - 2013. Our hypothesis was that the written language in newspapers is simpler today than it was 15 years ago. To measure the possible change of the written language in a quantitative study we chose to use a method to calculate the readability of 30 news articles, two from each year. We could not see any development of the language level so we chose to do a complementary qualitative study of the layout and presentation of the news articles. This secondary study showed a significant change in how news is presented throughout the years. The articles from 2003 and forth were presented with more space and more pictures and photos than the articles in our sample published before 2003. We used different theories to support the cause of our study and to analyse and make conclusions from the results. We used the social responsibility theory to support our hypothesis and prove why this problem is relevant and worth studying. The other theories we used to analyse the articles and make conclusions to answer our questions were the framing theory and theories about informational texts, like news articles, and news values.