Vi och dem, folket mot eliten och så vidare

Sammanfattning

The purpose of this study is to explore if media populism can be observed within threeprogrammes of Swedish public service media, which is grounded in ideals of neutrality andimpartiality. The aim is to investigate which populistic indicators can be identified, in whatcontext, and whether they are influenced by political ideology or media format. Using anexploratory content analysis we analyzed three Swedish public service programs in thespecific context of the 2022 election. This, with the intention of creating a descriptivemapping of populistic indications in the material in order to understand the use of populismin this particular context.Using theoretical frameworks developed by Benjamin Krämer, Christian Andersson andSteven E. Clayman, we operationalize the concept of media populism by developingindicators based on the most common populistic elements. These theories, together withprevious research, enable a more nuanced analysis and interpertation of both the indicatorsand the contexts in which they occur.The findings show that elements of populism can be observed in all of the analyzedinterviews. However certain elements are more common than others. The most observedbeing populistic blame and simplification of complex problems. The study finds similaritiesbetween these elements and typical journalistic practices by analyzing the questions that wereused when populism was coded. Furthermore, the study found no substantial differencebetween the programs although minor differences were observed between some politicalparties and the attitudes in which the journalists used against them.