OLIKA SPELPLANER? En kvalitativ studie om hur SVT:s sportjournalister upplever deras rapportering och framställning av svenska dam- och herrfotbollslandslagen.

Sammanfattning

This bachelor thesis examines how sport journalists at the Swedish public service Television (SVT)perceive the coverage and representation of the Swedish women’s and men’s national football teamswithin a public service context. National team football holds a central position in Swedishsportjournalism and plays an important role in constructing meanings related to gender, performance,and national identity. Despite explicit public service commitments to equality, previous researchshows that sport media remain shaped by gendered norms in which men’s football often functions asthe implicit standard.The aim of the study is to investigate which factors journalists perceive as influencing both thereporting and the portrayal of the women’s and men’s national football teams. The analysis is guidedby media logic and representation theory, which together illuminate how journalistic practices andplatform conditions shape gender representation in everyday editorial work. The study is based on aqualitative research design using six semi-structured interviews with journalists in different roles atSVT Sport and contributes a production-oriented perspective that complements earlier researchdominated by content analyses.The findings show that coverage of the national football teams is strongly influenced by audienceconsiderations, platform logics, and practical production conditions, even within public servicejournalism. Journalists describe a tension between reflecting existing audience interest and recognisingjournalism’s capacity to generate interest through editorial prioritisation. Digital platforms influenceboth news selection and storytelling practices, while access to players, media rights, and visualmaterial shape which stories can be produced and how nuanced representations become. Womenplayers are more frequently associated with responsibilities related to gender equality, while men’sfootball more often functions as a normative reference point. Although gender balance is monitoredthrough quantitative targets such as a 50/50 goal, qualitative aspects of representation receive lesssystematic attention.Taken together, the results indicate that men’s national team football continues to be prioritised as thedefault reference within sport journalism, despite explicit public service ideals of equality. Genderedhierarchies are thus not only a matter of unequal visibility, but are reproduced through everydayeditorial routines, evaluative criteria, and assumptions about audience relevance.Overall, the study demonstrates that gender representation in public service sport journalism iscontinuously negotiated in practice and shaped by the conditions of a digital media environment.