"80 gånger är sjukligt många gånger" : En kritisk diskursanalys av hur Christopher Wollters sexmissbruk och ansvar konstrueras i svensk opinionsjournalistik

Sammanfattning

A major media debate emerged following the publication of a book by Christopher Wollter and Julia Dufvenius, in which they describe how they salvaged their marriage after Wollter’s numerous extramarital affairs and his diagnosis of sex addiction. The media debate revealed divergent perspectives on how the diagnosis and the couple’s marriage should – or should not – be understood. This study aims to illuminate the discourses that were activated in the debate and to examine how responsibility for actions associated with sex addiction was attributed. To address these questions, a critical discourse analysis was conducted of six opinion journalism articles published in three of Sweden’s largest newspapers, analysing the texts across three analytical layers. The findings indicate that three dominant discourses – a moral discourse, a medical discourse, and a feminist discourse – interacted and were negotiated in different ways to construct the diagnosis as, among other things, either an illegitimate explanatory tool or a legitimate medical description. Analysis of subject positioning further showed that responsibility attribution varied depending on which discourse was activated in the construction of sex addiction. Overall, Wollter was predominantly attributed individual responsibility for his actions, while Dufvenius was most often positioned as a victim of those actions.