Att PIF(fa) upp ett rykte. Hur svenska sportjournalister förändrade gestaltningen av PIF:s ägarskap av Newcastle United mellan det saudiska köpet 2021 och Carabao Cup-titeln 2025

Sammanfattning

The aim of the thesis was to examine how Swedish media covered the Saudi purchase of Newcastle United 2021, as well as how the ownership was portrayed when Newcastle won their first cup title under the Saudi ownership. The word sportswashing was heavily used internationally during the first phase, and this study aims to investigate how the ownership was framed related to that. This analysis is based on the framing theory, which is used to analyse the news articles and break down which underlying frames could be interpreted. It is heavily based on the work of Robert Entman. Additionally, the theories of sportswashing are mostly rooted in the studies of Jules Boykoff. The collection of news articles was done by going into the news archive “Mediearkivet” and selecting a few newspapers using the codeword Newcastle. Since a lot of them only had to do with transfer rumours et cetera, the variable “undefined” was created to filter them out. The framing theory was then applied, and by using Van Gorp’s four step method a total of eight frames were encountered. The study shows that the harsh criticism settles with time, and that regardless of the Saudi government’s repeated breaches towards human rights, the media’s former condemnation ends when the country becomes irrelevant in the sports world.