Sweden will change even more : Analysing the representation of refugees and immigrants in Aftonbladet before and after the refugee crisis of 2015

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‘Sweden will change even more’

Analysing the representation of refugees and immigrants

in Aftonbladet before and after the refuge

e crisis of 2015

Carym Sonko

International Migration and Ethnic Relations

Bachelor Thesis: 15 credits

Spring 2020: IM245L

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Abstract

This thesis is a qualitative study that seeks to investigate how refugees were represented in the tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet’s reports before and after the 2015 refugee crisis. The aim of the study is to find out if the representation of immigration in Aftonbladet changed after the 2015 refugee crisis and what differences and changes we can see in the media representation of the refugees before and after the crisis. The data used in the paper is comprised of articles from January 2014 and January 2018. The study is done in the light of Stuart Hall’s three representational approaches of reflective, intentional and constructionist to explore the discourse of immigration and scrutinize the periodic differences of such a representation. The findings of this paper indicate that the representation of refugees and immigration has more of a reflective tone to it during the pre-crisis phase and later when the crisis dies down the representation of immigration gets a more constructive nature; and even more wilful.

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1. Introduction

In 2015, the amount of asylum seekers in Sweden reached an all-time high, as the Swedish Migration Agency received 162 877 applications for asylum (Migrationsverket, 2016). In August 2014, a year prior to the peak of the crisis, the then Prime Minister of Sweden, Fredrik Reinfeldt held a speech as the leader of his party Moderaterna to launch the election-year for the party. In the speech he appealed to Swedes to open their hearts and welcome the refugees expected to arrive in the forthcoming years. In November 2015, the government, by now consisting of Socialdemokraterna and Miljöpartiet, imposed border controls between Denmark and Sweden and at the same time limited the possibilities for refugees to be granted permanent residency. Instead a three-year temporary residency permit with the possibility of renewal would be issued to approved applicants. On the 4th of January 2016, ID-controls were imposed on the border between Sweden and Denmark marking the peak of a 180 degree turn in Sweden’s refugee and asylum policies.

During and after the refugee crisis 2015 the description of refugees and immigrants as violent criminals with difficulties to integrate to the Swedish society, became a more common image in the media than before the crisis. According to journalist and author Paul Frigyes (2018) the question remains if this was an expression of diversity in media reporting or an excessive reaction to populism that for a long time had been supressed but now arose and came to the surface. How the refugees and the crisis was described in Swedish newspapers and media is said to have contributed to the swerve in the Swedish politics and influenced policy makers as well as the public as “politicians and other public actors act in a way that is adapted to medias’ rules and possible consequence” (Frigyes, 2018: 41). The aim of the thesis is to analyse the depiction of immigration in the Swedish mass media before and after the crisis of the 2015. The media plays a vital role in shaping and reshaping the horizon and public opinions. With the use of different techniques and methods to influence opinions and of course to effect change, it must turn to different approaches of representation. For example, van Dijk (2000) argues that opinions expressed in news reports and TV programmes very much so contributes to a discourse that might marginalize and exclude minorities with great consequences for whoever that is affected by it. Consequences such as exclusion from the labour-and housing market then becomes reality for immigrants if they can enter the receiving country at all. Public opinion shaped by media, interplays with different types of political decisions and vice-versa.

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1.1. Aim

The aim of this research is to examine how refugees were represented in the tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet’s reports before and after the 2015 refugee crisis. This qualitative study will be done through a themes of representation theory of Stuart Hall. I intend to purport the media picture of immigration during the pre-crisis era; i.e. 2014 and later approach the theme drawing on post-crisis publications of the 2018. The study attempts to employ the three representational approaches of reflective, intentional and constructionist by Stuart Hall to see how the discourse of immigration is seen through these prisms. Furthermore, the study challenges the fixedness of the meaning and claims that meaning is contingent and dependent on how it gets portrayed.

1.2 Research questions

This research paper will study the following questions:

• Has the representation of immigration in Aftonbladet changed after the 2015 refugee crisis?

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2. Background

Looking at the background, there are some relevant areas that make up the motivation of this research paper. First, it is important to look at my own position as a researcher of the study. As I have myself worked as a social worker in various residential care homes (Hem för Vård och Boende, HVB) which accommodated unaccompanied minors, I found myself in the middle of the 2015 crisis working on the ground with the reception of the unaccompanied refugees. Second, one must look at how Sweden has received immigrants and refugees from a historical perspective and third; in what way Sweden has perceived itself and its policies vis-à-vis immigration and refugee reception. The debate whether immigration is benefitting or costly for a country has been going on for many years in most European countries and Sweden is no exception.

2.1 Position of the researcher

My own involvement and experience of the 2015 crisis has encouraged me to conduct this research paper and therefore I will elaborate a little on my position regarding the issue. During the refugee crisis of 2015 I worked as a coordinator in a Hem för Vård och Boende (HVB), which translates into residential care home, within the social services in Malmö municipality. This was one of many HVB homes at the time, set up to manage the massive inflow of refugees to Sweden. Located in the gymnastics hall of a Malmö school, the HVB received unaccompanied refugees at the ages of 15-18 who stayed for a couple of days or weeks before they were designated to other municipalities in Sweden; in other words, it was a transitory institution. The in-and outflow of people was very high and at the peak of the crisis 185 beds or rather mattresses filled the floor of the gym hall. Unaccompanied minors slept, ate and lived in the hall as they waited for the Swedish Migration Agency to handle their asylum case and myself as well as my co-workers worked under a very high pressure trying our best to manage the situation.

As I had been working in HVB homes since 2007 I was used to a rise of asylum seeking unaccompanied minors arriving during the summers, and expected the same also this summer.

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But this year was different. The amount of people arriving were higher already in the spring and at the beginning of the summer the need for more housings was clearly visible.

The high influx of asylum seekers was constant during the autumn until the Swedish government imposed border controls in November 2015. Just as quickly as a great number of temporarily housings had emerged during the summer and autumn, they now as rapidly disappeared as they were dismantled at a very high pace. In hindsight when I’ve met and talked to other colleagues who worked in the field before and after the crisis, it seems as if we all had the feeling of the crisis as something that went on for a very long time but looking at it with sober eyes it was only a few months peaking in October and dying out four months later. I, just like most people followed the news reports daily and remember the reports on the four-year-old boy Alan Kurdi and the image of his lifeless body mediated in all news mediums. I remember how the picture started discussions on how we can aid and what we, as a society and fellow human beings, can do to help the refugees that risked their lives fleeing their war-torn countries. At the same time, I can recall the demands for improved and appropriate age-tests as the age of unaccompanied minors often were questioned in the same media outlets. Discussions on whether we allowed the “right” people to enter Sweden or if some of them were terrorists bluffing their way in, were also occurring in Sweden during the same period.

2.2 Sweden as a refugee receiving country

Immigration has existed since time immemorial and is as such not a modern phenomenon. There has always been a certain number of immigrants coming to Sweden even though it’s, according to Åmark (2013), primarily after World War 2 (WW2) that we can detect and acknowledge any major movements of people seeking either refuge on Swedish soil or improved economic opportunities on the labour market. In the years prior to WW2, Swedish refuge policy and reception had become very restrictive. In 1939 a frenzied debate took place about a proposal that Sweden should accept ten Jewish doctors seeking refuge from the German Nazi regime. Thus, it is quite interesting that only six years later the view on immigration and refugees had changed dramatically as Sweden by the end of the war in 1945 had received and accepted more than 210.000 refugees without any larger discussion whether the country should accept asylum seekers or not (Åmark, 2013).

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It was mainly people from Sweden’s neighbouring countries who had either fled from Hitler’s armies or Stalin’s soldiers who found hope in Sweden’s alleged neutrality and crossed the border seeking refuge. After the war, Scandinavians and people from southern Europe arrived in Sweden as the labor market bloomed and labor migration were encouraged supported by Swedish companies as well as the state itself. While Sweden, in contrast to many other western European countries, only had had smaller colonies for a short period of time, the country never experienced postcolonial immigration of the same proportion as other European countries with a colonial history. Thus, Sweden remained rather cultural and ethnical homogenous until the mid-1960s as lager numbers of non-Nordic labour migrants began to arrive until the end of the 1960s when the government imposed policies to further regulate migration. In the 1970s Sweden received a substantial number of refugees from Latin America, mainly Chile as well as large groups of Assyrians and Syrians fleeing from Lebanon and Turkey. In the 1980s refugees from the Middle East arrived as the ongoing Iran-Iraq war forced people to leave their countries and a vast number of political objectors fled Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime in Iran (Johansson, 2013). It was also towards the mid-and late 80s that Sweden commenced receiving refugees from war torn Eritrea and Somalia and many of the Eastern European states as the communist regimes started to unfold and break down rapidly in the aftermath of the Cold War. The largest effect on Sweden as an asylum country though, was the crumbling of Yugoslavia and the following Balkan War resulting in the largest groups of refugees in Europe since WW2 and as a result 100.000 ex. Yugoslavs, particularly Bosnians, were granted permanent residence in Sweden (Migrationsverket, 2020).

2.3 The Swedish self-image

Historically in the discourse of immigration and refugees, the self-image of Sweden has since the 1960s and onwards been as a progressive country with a highly generous refugee policy. In 1975, the Swedish parliament passed a liberal reform of policies on immigration and migrant integration “based on an equitable welfare system, a liberal universalist conception of citizenship that had social citizenship at its heart and an inclusive multicultural conception of the nation” (Schierup & Ålund, 2011: 47). The reform gave immigrants and non-citizens access to most of the civil, political and social rights enjoyed by Swedes and thus further consolidating Sweden as a welfare-state that gave immigrants access to social benefits and labor rights. This

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self-image has been continually promoted by various politicians and was expressed by the Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in the Statement of Government Policy 2010. The Statement of Government Policy is a presentation of the government’s politics presented yearly by the Prime Minister to the Parliament.

’Något av det mest svenska vi har är vår tradition av öppenhet mot omvärlden. I Sverige har generationer av människor som flytt förtryck och fattigdom fått chans att börja ett nytt liv. De har berikat vårt land, gjort oss klokare och gett oss ett mer utvecklat samhälle. De bidrar till vårt välstånd. Utan denna öppenhet hade Sverige varit ett fattigare land’.

’One of the most Swedish thing we have is our tradition of openness to the rest of the world. Generations of people who have fled persecution and poverty have been given a chance to start a new life in Sweden. They have enriched our country, made us wiser and given us a more developed society. They contribute to our prosperity. Without this openness, Sweden would have been a poorer country.’

(Regeringsförklaringen, October 5th₂₀₁₀₎

Sweden had, in contrast to its Nordic neighbours Denmark and Norway, up until 2010 managed to keep xenophobic parties out of the parliament which further consolidated Sweden as an immigration-friendly country. The above words uttered by the Prime Minister in the Statement of Government Policy was a reaction to the right-wing political party Sverigedemokraterna, making its way into the parliament notching Sweden’s self-image to the edge. The refugee crisis in 2015 had a great effect on Sweden as the country received a large number of the asylum seekers coming to Europe. With its relatively small population of nearly 10 million, Sweden took in far more refugees per capita than any country in Europe as the amount of asylum seekers reached 1.7 percent of the country’s population peaking at 10.000 refugees per week in October 2015 (Migrationsverket, 2020). Sweden’s policies regarding refugees were internationally noticed and its efforts to take in such high numbers were sometimes regarded as lenient, too generous and even naïve by many European countries as well as the U.S. The American journalist James Traub who visited Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city located on the border with Denmark, in November 2015 wrote about the situation in the article “The Death of the Most Generous Nation on Earth”. The article describes the Swedish identity as being in sort of a national crisis as Traub concludes that “the refugee issue has split Sweden’s genteel consensus as no other question has in recent memory” and that this split makes it “very hard to find a middle ground between ‘we must’ and ‘we can’t’.” (Traub, 2016).

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3. Limitations

My study will focus only on articles from the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet. Politically, Aftonbladet describes its editorial as being independent Social Democrat and the news room as being under no political color. It is owned by the Norwegian media group Schibsted and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) and with 3 million daily readers Aftonbladet is Sweden’s largest tabloid and thus I found it proper to delimit the study to it. In this study I’ve selected ten articles from January 2014 as well as eight articles from January 2018 i.e. two years prior to and two years after the crisis. I have chosen January 2016 as a marker of the end of the crisis as it was then that the Swedish government imposed ID-controls, forcing people to provide relevant documentation in order to be allowed to enter Sweden and thus hindering a great majority of refugees to enter. The ID-controls led to a significant reduction of refugees entering the country and thus the influx of refugees came to a drastic halt.

All articles are written about refugees and immigration and deal with topics and problems accompanied with these groups. The chosen articles in this research paper derive from the paper’s editorial, news room, debate and opinion sector. The articles are written by journalists, politicians and other authors who are not necessarily journalists but express their opinion in Aftonbladet’s debate and opinion articles. I have included these different articles since Aftonbladet has decided to reprint them, even though, in some cases they might be reflecting the opinion of the author. I will compare the two periods and seek to find differences in the descriptions of the people who sought refuge in Sweden during these periods. Another reason for basing the study solely on the articles from one tabloid is due to the existing time limit and partly because of the size of the paper.

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4. Previous research

Various researchers have examined Swedish media’s description and portrayal of the refugee crisis in 2015. As early as December 2015, during the height of the crisis, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released a report commissioned by the Cardiff School of Journalism, called “Press Coverage of the Refugee and Migrant Crisis in the EU: A Content Analysis of Five European Countries”. The report came about as an increasing number of refugees fled across the Mediterranean Sea in substandard boats which resulted in thousands of deaths as the often-overcrowded vessels sank frequently. As the UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations pleaded for European countries to do more to help the refugees, they noticed that the European “media was far from united in its response. While some outlets joined the call for more assistance, others were unsympathetic, arguing against increasing rescue operations”. To examine why there were such differences in the media coverage, newspapers in five European countries were investigated whereas Sweden and Aftonbladet was one of them. The report covers the pre-crisis year 2014 as well as the crisis year 2015 and concludes not only that “overall the Swedish press was the most positive towards refugees and migrants” but also that the articles in “Aftonbladet appear largely to focus upon the positive contribution of refugees to Swedish society, concerns about approaches to policing irregular migration and how Sweden might tackle impediments to integration” (Berry et al, 2015: 125). The report published by UNHCR found that Aftonbladet frequently called for sympathy and consideration on the part of the citizens and “invoked a strong sense of ‘humanness’ of the victims by choosing terms such as ‘survivors’ or ‘deceased’ and ‘their relatives’ rather than referring to them merely as refugees” (Berry et al, 2015: 239).

Furthermore, there has been studies on Swedish media’s depiction of unaccompanied minors before and after the 2015 crisis. Paul Frigyes delves into the phenomenon in the 2018 report “Sverigebilden – Om Journalistik och Verklighet” for the Institution for Media Studies. Frigyes (2018) points out that the pre-crisis era signified a broad and unified political consensus, agreeing on a generous migration policy. A political understanding “partly motivated by liberal values about the free movement’s benefit for economy and growth, partly by ideals of international solidarity. And suddenly it all crashed” (Frigyes, 2018: 41). This view was very much visible and reflected in media as a celebrity named Katerina Janouch were interviewed and cited as donating money to aid-organizations and urged for Swedes to help refugees in Sweden as well as in their home countries. Frigyes studied the period 2014-07-01 –

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30 and later found the same celebrity criticizing Sweden’s refugee and asylum policy. Frigyes (2018) concludes that in the pre-crisis period the media were either “nice or neutral” concerning refugees and immigrants while in the post-crisis era media were “nice, neutral or critical” to the same issue and that “an article could be about criminality or accusations of crime and at the same time be characterized by compassion and additionally have an ethical imprint” (Frigyes, 2018: 54).

5. Method

5.1 Collecting the material

This paper intends to study the discourse of immigration pre- and post-immigration crisis of the 2015 in Sweden in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. I have chosen 10 articles from January 2014 and 8 articles from January 2018. The relevant method for this paper would be qualitative method such as textual analysis and discourse analysis

The research material I use in this paper are electronical articles from the Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet. I have limited my paper to merely 18 articles because of the enormity of the subject and limited scope of this paper. I have picked the approach of representation to study and answer my questions in this paper. The approach is optimal for this kind of study for its abstractedness. The articles for this research paper were retrieved from Kungliga Bibloteket’s online service “Svenska Dagstidningar” where numerous Swedish newspapers have been scanned and gathered digitally. The online service makes possible for one to search for a specific newspaper with the desired date.

When using the service, I first searched for Aftonbladet for the time period 01-01 to 2014-01-31. The search engine then listed all the issued papers for the period and I thereafter went through each paper in pursuit of relevant articles for my research paper. I found fifteen articles that were relevant to my subject in January 2014 and from these I chose ten. The reason why I decided to concentrate on ten articles only, was that due to the size of the research, I had to narrow down the number of articles. Had I chosen a larger number of articles it would have been impossible to analyze them with the same profundity and thus risking the analytical part of the paper to turn out to be too superficial.

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I then repeated the same procedure with the post-crisis publications; i.e. 01-01 to 2018-01-31. For this period, I found twelve relevant articles of which I selected only eight. The reason for this was that I found the articles from the period 2018-01-01 – 2018-01-31to be very similar and repetitive mostly dealing with gang criminality and terrorism. These articles did not have as much variation on their angle and ideological standpoint as the January 2014 articles. In total 18 articles were accumulated for both periods. The articles were gathered in a chronological order before I started to read through them more carefully in order to find similarities as well as differences in the wording and language used. Since the articles are published in Swedish, I have translated bits of them as well as some textual pieces.

5.2 Analyzing the material

I have picked articles ranging from editorials, news stories, opinion, debate, document and cultural to broaden both the horizon and the multiplicity of perspectives. One could argue that editorial articles are of more value or weigh heavier than say cultural articles or an opinion post but since the articles in Aftonbladet are all part of the public debate and the tabloid has made a conscious choice to publish them, I have also decided to include them in this paper without any hierarchical ranking. Furthermore, there is always a risk that editorials might be biased even though the media outlet, in this case Aftonbladet, describes its editorial as being independent Social Democrat and the news room as being under no political color. For example, Hellström, Hagelund & Meret (2014), in a paper called ‘Friend or Foe? The role and position of Sweden Democrats, the Danish Peoples Party and the Progress Party in Mainstream Press Editorials’ examined how different editorials depicted the Swedish Democrats (SD). In the paper the authors point out that editorials can have a negative depiction of political parties as they state that ‘it is clear that the editorials in [the] sample describe the party in very negative terms. While the SD in recent years continually has worked to polish its image, these attempts are bluntly discredited by the editorials’ (Hellström et al, 2014: 12). This shows that editorials as well as for example debate articles and opinion articles can and do express the subjective opinion of the author. In addition to this, debate articles and opinion articles can be more politically charged depending on who writes them, for example, I have chosen opinion pieces written respectively by the then politicians Carl Bildt and Gustav Fridolin. Publishing opinion articles by active politicians shows somehow Aftonbladet’s standpoint. The disparity of articles makes

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the arguments both objective and far-reaching. In addition to this, since I have narrowed down the publication period to only one month for 2014 as well as one month for 2018, I didn’t have a choice but to pick the stories based on their contents; i.e. questions of refugees, migration, immigrants and so forth. I have used Stuart Hall’s representation as my theoretical lens and the method employed to study the articles is qualitative. For example, I have taken all three descriptive aspects of representation, i.e. constructive, reflective and intentional to dissect and analyze the articles. The reason behind sticking to such an approach has been to augment the validity of my analyses and present a multi-pronged evaluation. One can say, I haven’t left any stones unturned. Stuart Hall’s representation is the standard guideline in the analysis of media outlets. It equips the researcher with both theoretical richness and analytic prowess. Hall’s representation is like a package deal; it gives you the tools and a user instruction as well. Having studied Hall’s theory of representation, it affected my approach to reading and analyzing media outlets. I have operationalized Hall’s theory of representation based on its relevance to the media studies. For example, representation is the most relevant tool in analyzing media outlets, as it interrogates and breaks down every segment of news stories and episode of media channels. I found this, as the most effective tool to look at the subjects I was studying, immigration and refugees in Sweden. To get a picture of how these phenomena are represented, one couldn’t do it without considering Hall’s representation. Because being an immigrant or immigration as a phenomenon don’t change; but their representation affects their reception in a society; i.e. how they are re-presented. This was one of the reasons, why I chose Hall’s theory of representation to see if the perception of immigration and immigrants have changed in Sweden during the pre- and post-crisis period.

The articles used are listed below in a chronological order with the original Swedish title of the article as well as the English translation. In the list I have also included where the article derives from i.e. debate post, opinion posts, news article, cultural or editorial.

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No. Title Author/Type of

article

Date

1 SW: “Sverige kommer att förändras ännu mer”

EN: “Sweden will change even more”

Peter Kadhammar / Opinion

2014-01-01

2 SW: “Främlingshatets kyla kan inte stoppa våren”

EN: “The coldness of xenophobia can’t stop the spring”

Gustav Fridolin / Debate

2014-01-03

3 SW: “Visst ryms alla under vår flagga”

EN: “Surely everyone can be accommodated under our flag”

Herman Lindqvist / Opinion

2014-01-04

4 SW: “Diskriminera inte asylsökande barn”

EN: “Don’t discriminate asylum seeking children”

Anders Wejryd / Debate

2014-01-06

5 SW: “Vi har inte råd med bludder” EN: “We can’t afford gibberish”

Åsa Linderborg / Cultural

20014-01-08 6 SW: “Vi kan ha välfärd – och

invandring”

EN: “We can have welfare – and immigration” Karin Pettersson / Editorial 2014-01-14 7 SW: “Stridshingsten Reinfeldt vägrar acceptera SD:s värld – respekt!

EN: “Reinfeldt the warhorse refuses to accept SD:s world – respect!

Fredrik Virtanen / Opinion

2014-01-18

8 SW: “Vi har inte råd med fortsatt krig I Syrien”

EN: “We can’t afford a continuing war in Syria”

Carl Bildt / Debate 2014-01-22

9 SW: “Sverige har stått pall mot rasismen”

EN: “Sweden has stood against the racism” Anders Lindberg / Editorial 2014-01-23 10 SW: “Rikemanskommuner måste ta mer ansvar”

EN:”Richman’s municipalities need to take more responsibility”

Elisabet Höglund / Opinion

2014-01-27

11 SW: “En extremt effektiv liga” EN: ”An extremly effective gang”

Evalisa Wallin / News article

2018-01-10 12 SW: “Handgranaterna har blivit

vardag”

EN:”The hand grenades have become commonplace”

Anders Lindberg / Editorial

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ostört”

EN: ”Jihadists can operate totally undisturbed”

Pär Karlsson / News article

2018-01-15

14 SW: “En delad stad – där alla vill vara trygga”

EN: ”A divided city – where everyone wants to be safe”

Peter Kadhammar / Document

2018-01-15

15 SW: “Extremisterna ökar hela tiden”

EN: ” The extremists increase all the time”

Pär Karlsson / News article

2018-01-17

16 SW: “De nyanlända vet inte hur Sverige fungerar”

EN: ”The newly arrived don’t know how Sweden functions”

Annelie Danling Brash / Debate

2018-01-18

17 SW: “Här integreras alla med tuffa metoder”

EN: ”Everyone is integrated with tough methods here”

Peter Kadhammar / Document

2018-01-19

18 SW: “Vårt asylsystem I EU fungerar inte längre”

EN: ”Our asylum system in EU doesn’t work anymore”

Dimitris

Avramopoulos / Debate

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6. Theory

As per the variability of media is concerned, I have chosen representation theory to study and analyze my hypothesis. There are three approaches to representation according to Stuart Hall, reflective, intentional and constructivist (Hall, 2012: 24-25). Representation claims that reality is created by people in social relations. It is a product of mutual understanding within a certain culture. Members of any given society produce and carry knowledge that is seen as common knowledge shared within that specific culture. People attain “most of their knowledge by learning from others - through watching, listening, reading texts written by others” (Moses & Knutsen, 2019: 181). According to this approach, meaning is conveyed through symbolic practices (Hall, 2012: 25). The reflective approach deems meaning to be vested in the object whereas language functions as a mirroring medium of that reality (Hall, 2012: 24). On the other hand, the intentional dimension of representation claims that the author and scribe holds the meaning and they veer and effect changes in the language (Hall, 2012: 25). Finally, the constructionist approach holds that ‘things don’t mean: we construct meaning, using representational systems-concepts and signs’. (Hall, 2012: 25).

The research questions I pose in this paper fit into these prisms of representation as it looks at science as a social activity or a social construction and that ideas are not necessarily true in the “real world” but can be repeated in society until they become “true”. Thus, these ideas are “purely discursive phenomenon…not sustained by empirical evidence but encased in language protected by specific concepts and nourished by norms and values and used to wield power” (Moses & Knutsen, 2019: 184). Thus, they form a material dimension (Hall, 2012: 25); i.e. they give shades of meanings to texts and make them malleable according to its symbolic veneer. In the case of media language, its latent aspect is more potent than its more apparent aspect. Furthermore, Hall (2012: 25) suggests that media representations aren’t reflections of things that already have meaning, but that media are the meaning makers of things that happen in reality. Things that happen in society have no real meaning until they have been represented in media. Media re-presents “reality” giving it meaning and at the same time creating stereotypes when describing for example immigrants. In other words, the reality is already there, that is ‘present’ but can be ‘re’presented. It’s this very ‘representation’ that imposes diversions and changes in the discourse. Hall (2012) takes on Saussure’s legacy of semiotic approach impact on social construction. According to Saussure (in Hall, 2012: 31) meaning depends on language

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where language is a system of signs and each sign is made up of two elements. These elements are the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the physical entity of the word itself, whereas the signified is the mental picture it produces (Hall, 2012: 31). For meaning to be conveyed, both bits are necessary; however, their relation is fixed by cultural and linguistic codes (Hall, 2012: 31). Hall (2012) further suggests that the signifier and the signified can be respectively the denotative and connotative meanings as well. The denotative meaning of the text is its purported wording, basic and descriptive level where as the connotative is the ‘decoding’ or the interpretive level (Hall, 2012: 38).

The constructionist aspect of representation is optimal to study and analyze the questions as I pose in this paper. Because these questions deal with the changeability of the discourse of immigration in the Swedish paper of Aftonbladet. I will study the wording, the text and context and try to compare the pre- and post-crisis era and highlight the changes in the perception of immigration in a collective sense.

7. Analysis and Discussion

7.1. Pre-crisis

During the period of 2014 January 1st tothe 31st, the medias’ outlook was more nuanced and deemed immigration as a social reality which could be processed in the Swedish society. For example, the article ‘Sverige kommer att förändras ännu mer’ by Peter Kadhammar (AB, 2014-01-01) states the glamorous nature of immigration and diversity. It reflects on a picture of immigration in the United Kingdom that how it’s changed the English society positively, in every way. Kadhammar (2014) asks the reader, “what would England be without Indians and Pakistani. And West-Indians! And Chinese! It wouldn’t be England, not the way we imagine the Swedes’ favorite country” (Kadhammar, 2014: 44). Describing England as Swedes’ preferred country to visit, and at the same time insinuating that it would not be the Swedes’ favorite country had it not been for the ethnic diversity England offers its visitors. The author draws on similarities between England and Sweden; however, portrays the Swedish Democrats perception of immigration and diversity as gloomy. For example, according to the author the Swedish Democrats portray Muslim migration as ‘rampant’ (Kadhammar, 2014: 44). The author continues to paint a darker picture of the Swedish Democrats as it elaborates on the

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insularity of their ideology as something negative for Sweden in general. The author continues the article by wondering what determines a large or small number of immigrants. Kadhammar (2014) concludes that it’s in fact the Swedish democrats that are a digression rather than the immigrants.

Furthermore, a debate article by Gustav Fridolin in Aftonbladet dated 2014-01-03 is titled ‘Främlingshatets kyla kan inte stoppa våren’. The very title of the debate article nullifies anti-immigration stance and welcomes anti-immigration as a legitimate phenomenon in our world. The article’s wording emphasizes solidarity of human beings and tries to reflect on our commonness as human beings as Fridolin re-counts the story of a little Syrian refugee youngster. In the story, Fridolin paints a tragic reality of the refugees’ situation in an empathizing manner which gets the reader to see the reality in accordance with the authors presumptions. Of course, such articles and opinion papers have their reverberations and effects on the discourse of immigration.

According to Hall (2012) meaning already lies in the object and its language through which we mirror that reality. For instance, Aftonbladet reads in a debate article by archbishop Anders Wejryd, dated 2014-01-06 from a religious perspective that discriminating against asylum seeking children is prohibited. The article pinpoints to an already established ‘reality’ of child aide (barnbidrag) in Sweden which has been actual since 1948 whereas children of asylum seekers are given day aide (dagbidrag); however, the amount of the day aide hasn’t changed since 1994. The article deems this as injustice and discriminating which goes even against the child convention. The article merely reflects the fact of children rights convention and even draws on the rights of children in general in Sweden regardless of their legal status. In the same vein, Herman Lindqvist writes in an article dated 4th January 2014 that change and malleability is a fact of the Swedish society. He tries to concretize this fact through reflecting on the essentials of this Swedish attribute, i.e. change in a positive way. The article even has a bigger size inlet title that reads ‘sure everyone fits under our flag’. The author elaborates on the melting nature of the Swedish society as it’s absorbed new religions, cultures and ideas in a dialectic manner. Such writings encapsulate all three aspects of representation in a vivid and concrete manner. For example, the factual history is reflected upon by mentioning how Swedes have incorporated and welcomed other cultures. In the same way, the writer intends to build on his intended objectives and willfully draws on them. Furthermore, the writer is aware of the constructed nature of meaning and doesn’t confuse between the material reality of the world and the symbolic significance of the texts wording. This is clear when the author recounts the

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historical importance of immigrants and their contribution socially, economically and even culturally.

The representation of Sweden as a place of congruence with acceptability of immigration is solid and well-defined in every bit of the articles in the pre-crisis period. This is further accentuated in almost every rubric of the articles. The headings of the articles give off an aura of a discourse that tries to paint a picture of Sweden where solidarity and harmony are the bywords. For instance, ‘We can’t afford gibberish’, (Åsa Linderborg, 2014-01-08) ‘The coldness of xenophobia can’t stop the spring’, (Gustav Fridolin, 2014-01-03), ‘Don’t discriminate asylum seeking children’, (Anders Wejryd, 2014-01-06), ‘We can have welfare – and immigration’, (Karin Pettersson, 2014-01-14) or ‘Richman’s municipalities need to take more responsibility’, (Elisabet Höglund, 2014-01-27). These captions are directly related to the systems of representations. Every caption is forming a conceptual picture of the phenomenon. The mental pictures being generated by these captions is reminding us of ‘the signified’ symbols. For example, each caption produces a mental picture in the readers mind of solidarity, harmony, humanity and justice. The pre-crisis articles have a uniformity both in their connotative and denotative meanings. To demonstrate this, one could scrutinize the following text from Karin Pettersson’s article titled (Vi kan ha välfärd och invandring) dated 2014-january14th .

‘Boken ‘Invandrare – vi behöver dem’, kom nyss på svenska. I den går den brittiske ekonomen och skribenten Philippe Legrain igenom de ekonomiska argumenten för migration.

Hans slutsats är entydig. Det finns ingen konflikt mellan välfärd och invandring – tvärtom är öppna samhällen rikare’ (Pettersson, 2014: 2).

‘The book ‘Immigrants - we need them’, was newly published in Swedish. In it, the British economist and writer, Philippe Legrain goes through the economic argument concerning immigration. His conclusion is clear-cut and distinct; there is no conflict between immigration

and the welfare; on the contrary an open society is richer’ (Pettersson, 2014: 2).

Sieving and screening the text in line with the denotative and connotative symbolism of its wording; one could clearly see the far-reaching message of the text. The text uses words such as ‘need’, ‘society’, ‘no conflict’ and ‘distinct’. Each word’s underlying meaning has a direct association with immigration and tries to evoke responsiveness in the reader. Moreover, the tone and script of the articles during the pre-crisis is bridging the gap between what is

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‘Swedish’ and what is ‘not Swedish’. One can read through the lines that the articles are treating immigration as a Swedish societal reality rather than a problem or issue to tackle. This can be vividly seen in the bigger chunks of Anders Lindberg’s article dated 23rd January 2014 titled ‘Sverige har stått pall mot rasismen’ which translates into ‘Sweden has stood against the racism’. The article treats racism as a pariah which tries to sabotage the Swedish societal harmony.

‘Fler ska få stanna. Det som nu ändras är bestämmelsen som gör att människor kan få stanna av humanitära skäl. I dag står det i lagen att det krävs ’synnerligen ömmande omständigheter’.

Ordet ’synnerligen’ betyder för en jurist ’nästan aldrig’ och det är så lagen tillämpas idag’ (Lindberg, 2014: 2).

‘More people shall be granted stay. What changes now is the provision that makes it possible for people to stay for humanitarian reasons. Today the law says that ‘particularly distressing

circumstances’ are required. The word ‘particularly’ means ‘almost never’ to a lawyer and that is how the law is applied today’ (Lindberg, 2014: 2).

Interestingly, the text deems ‘synnerligen’ which means ‘particularly’ in English, as meaning ‘almost never’ in the legal sense. It’s evident that the article’s stance is doing away with treating ‘immigration’ as a problem but a natural course of events in a society’s development. In the same vein, the connotative symbolism in the articles point to the societal attributes of Sweden. They invoke calls of solidarity and oneness. For example, an article dated 27 January 2014 by Elisabet Höglund titled ‘Rikemanskommuner måste ta mer ansvar’ urges solidarity among all the counties in Sweden. The article treats ‘immigration’ not as a problem or challenge but a shared phenomenon where everyone can contribute to harmonize it.

‘De 20 rikaste kommunerna i landet tar emot mindre än en femtedel så många flyktningar som de 20 fattigaste i förhållande till invånarantal. Så tog till exempel den lilla

norrlandskommunen Sorsele med futtiga 2600 invånare emot 69 flyktningar under 2012 och halva 2013. Detta är en skam och svärtar ner bilden av ett Sverige som ett generöst och

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’The 20 richest municipalities in the country receives less than a fifth of the refugees as the 20 poorest do in relation to the population. So received for example the small Norrland municipality Sorsele with a measly population of 2600 people 69 refugees during 2012 and

half 2013. This is a shame and denigrates the image of Sweden as a generous and solidary receiving country’ (Höglund, 2014: 46).

The above text treats the question of immigration not as a digression or a problem in itself, rather it looks at the way some municipalities ascribe to it. The article considers it purely a political standoff between different parties having their mandates in different counties. The article reads that the richer counties don’t do their share of responsibility in shouldering the question of immigration and urges them to align themselves with the core Swedish values of generosity, openness and solidarity.

In general, all the articles published under the span of 2014 that I have glanced over and scrutinized, regard immigration as something positive. In the meantime, most of the articles written about immigration treats it as a harbinger of change in a positive way. Furthermore, an article ‘Vi har inte råd med fortsatt krig i Syrien’ dated January 22nd 2014 by Carl Bildt, draws on solidarity among humans in the global world. The article reflects on our attributes that are plainly explained in the human rights charter. For instance:

‘Av rent humanitära skäl har vi i omvärlden ett ansvar att göra vad vi kan för freden’ (Bildt, 2014: 3).

’For pure humanitarian reasons, we have a responsibility in the world to do what we can for peace’. (Bildt, 2014: 3).

The words of the sentence draw a picture of immigration as something not to deal with but to see to and heal it. Throughout these articles published during the pre-crisis, one sees a

unilateral line of normalization. The articles are trying to construct a picture of immigration harmonious with status quo; they are even slumming the politics of the Swedish right parties. It can be illustrated by yet another article dated 18th January 2014 titled ‘Stridshingsten

Reinfeldt vägrar acceptera SD:s värld-respekt!’. The article represents the then Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, as a hero who doesn’t succumb to the anti-immigration lobbies of the Swedish democrats.

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‘Därför är Fredrik Reinfeldt stor. Han vägrar. Han tänker inte spela Sverigedemokraternas sjuka spel…SD:s falska problem-och omvärldsbeskrivning gäller inte’ (Virtanen, 2014: 3).

Therefore Fredrik Reinfeldt is great. He refuses. He’s not going to play the Swedish democrats’ sick games…SD:s false problem-and world description does not apply’ (Virtanen,

2014: 3).

In the article, the author refers to the politics of the Swedish Democrats as a ‘sick game’ (Virtanen, 2014: 3) and Reinfeldt as the battle horse fighting for ‘real’ problems such as jobs and unemployment and at the same time opposing the ‘false’ narratives of immigration presented by the Swedish Democrats.

7.2. Post-crisis

Delving into the articles and stories published in Aftonbladet after the crisis of the 2015; during the period of 2018 january 1st_{to 31}st_{, one gets a diametrically different picture of the situation.}

The stories and articles treat immigration as a thorny issue that has led to manifold societal problems. It no longer calls upon the Swedish values of solidarity, generosity or openness. Instead of seeing the positive in the immigration, the articles of the post-crisis draw on a dystopic picture of the aftermaths of immigration and its societal repercussions. The stories are getting narrower in their scope and scrutinize migration with magnifying glasses to find all its shortcomings. The news-article ‘En extremt effektiv liga’ (Evalisa Wallin, 2018-01-10), describes a criminal gang specialized in stealing BMW auto-parts. According to the article, the ring is based outside of Sweden and have brought the stolen parts with them to different European countries. The journalist interviews an operative analyst within the police that states that ‘it is too easy to travel in and out of Sweden. We are not adjusted to the crimes of today’ (Wallin, 2018:17). These two statements from the police analyst implies that anyone can enter the country and that the police are not able to manage the threat coming from outside Sweden. ‘The crimes of today’ implies a change, from something in the past that was manageable and possible to deal with police-wise, to a rather new phenomenon that is more or less unstoppable since ‘it is too easy to travel in and out of Sweden’ meaning that the police are confronted with a problem that are above them. The same implications are also seen in Anders Lindberg’s editorial article published 10th_{January 2018 titled ‘Handgranaterna har blivit vardag’. The}

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article is published the same day as Wallin’s aforementioned article and as well treats migration as a thorny matter leading to complications for the Swedish society. When writing about a man who found a hand grenade that detonated when he picked it up from the ground, Lindberg commences the article with the words ‘something has definitely broken in Sweden’ and continues to say that ‘the hand grenade…was of Yugoslavian type’ (Lindberg, 2018: 2). Just as the previous article described a change in society due to a menace from the outside of Sweden, this article as well sees a turn to something ‘broken’ due to an outside threat i.e. a Yugoslavian hand grenade coming from the Balkans with a weapons-smuggler that was able to cross the border since ‘it is too easy to travel in and out of Sweden’ (Wallin, 2018: 17).

One can see that immigration has turned into a bait for different political parties to feed and use it as an excuse for their agendas. One of the most potent theme that appear in the print media of the post-crisis is the question of terrorism; especially that of the Islamists. For instance, an article by Pär Karlsson published 15th_{January 2018 titled ‘Jihadister kan verka helt ostört’,}

dramatically paint a gloomy and dystopic picture of the situation. The following excerpts are from the news article:

‘Jihadister möter nästan inget motstånd när de försöker nå unga med sitt våldsbejakande budskap. Idag kan de verka helt ostört’ (Karlsson, 2018: 8).

‘Jihadists barely meet any resistance when trying to reach the youth with their violence-affirmed message. Today they can operate totally undisturbed’ (Karlsson, 2018: 8).

The excerpt from the paper is direct and reflects on security issues. The underlying meaning of the text already associates it with immigration as ‘Jihadister’ are almost invariably Muslim who have caused both societal and security problem in Sweden. Paradoxically, the text laments the openness of the Swedish society, compared to maintaining it in the pre-crisis period, as it becomes both a springboard and a source of nurture for terrorists. For instance, the words ‘verka helt ostört’, meaning to operate undisturbed, pinpoints to the negative repercussions of the Swedish openness. Furthermore, words such as ‘motstånd’ and

våldsbejakande budskap’ which means ‘resistance and violence-affirmed message’ arouse the attributes of ‘otherness’ in immigration. The underlying meaning of ‘resistance’ is to oppose harmony and create frictions; in the same way, ‘violence-affirmed message’ is more

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suggestive and one does get the meaning effortlessly. Furthermore, the picture imagery of the article aggrandises its overtones as it mirrors black-clothed men holding the IS flags with their AK47. The imagery evokes a sense of threat and fear in the reader. It automatically sends chills of insecurity. Two days later on January 17th, Aftonbladet publishes another article written by Pär Karlsson titled ‘The extremists increase all the time’. In the article, Karlsson interviews Anders Thornberg, the head of the Swedish Security police (SÄPO) as he

expresses his concern about the increasing number of extremists in Sweden. Phrases like ‘the growth of radical islamists’ and ‘harder and harder to combat…large volumes of individuals’ (Karlsson, 2018: 15) again suggest an ongoing war against an enemy that with its growing numbers makes it tougher to defeat.

Moreover, the articles of the post-crisis period use different terminologies compared to the pre-crisis publications. The pre-crisis journals had a more reflective representation of the realties. It described the phenomenon as such and reflected upon it from a Swedish perspective. Often, this perspective was laden with values that welcomed otherness and emphasized the positive attributes of diversity. On the other hand, the post-crisis journals are having a more constructivist representation of the phenomenon they portray. They are more selective in their story telling as they pick one particular digressive incident and construct their build on it. They are trying to attune their stance with that of the global agenda; i.e. terrorism has engulfed the world and challenges it in a deceptive way that is hard to get. Evidently, the societal maladies ensued by immigration comprise the bigger chunks of the publications of the post-crisis period. The article published on 15th January 2018 mentions this fact succinctly as the title reads, ‘En delad stad-där alla vill vara trygga’ (Kadhammar, 2018: 14-15). The caption translates as follows ‘A divided city-where everyone wants to be safe’ as it describes Sweden’s third largest city, Malmö, as being divided. It’s interesting to see how the title plays with words. It already considers the ‘city’ as ‘divided’ and it connotes to all its societal problems. Of course, ‘divided’ means something close to ‘fallen apart’ here; and the residents seek safety. As one reads the title, one immediately gets struck that something is wrong here. Safety doesn’t reign in the cities and it’s something wished for.

The stark representational shift of immigration in the post-crisis publications is noteworthy as it touches upon every societal aspect. The eight articles from 2018, contrary to ten articles in 2014 fuse together the negative range of immigration effects. The pre-crisis publications mostly evoked solidarity and bode on a well-integrated society; whereas the post-crisis writings paint a gloomy picture and highlight the hinders and obstacles in integration. For

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instance, an article dated 18th January 2018 titled ‘De nyanlända vet inte hur Sverige fungerar’(Danling Brash, 2018: 3), meaning ‘the newly arrived don’t know how Sweden functions’. The title starkly draws the line of otherness and already deems immigrants as ‘aliens’ who have difficulty integrating in the Swedish society. As one further read the article, its undertones are aggrandising otherness. For example:

‘Under dessa föreläsningar varje vecka tar jag upp frågor som handlar om ämnen som vår demokrati, vårt skattesystem, homosexualitet, jämställdhet, ateism, olika religioner, vad lagen

säger i frågor om könsstympning, hedersrelaterat våld och månggifte’ (Danling Brash, 2018: 3).

'During these lectures each week, I address issues related to topics such as our democracy, our tax system, homosexuality, gender equality, atheism, various religions, what the law says in matters of genital mutilation, honor-related violence and polygamy' (Danling Brash, 2018: 3)

The wording and message of the piece draws a blunt line of differences and otherness. It treats democracy and the tax system as core Swedish values that are unbeknown to the immigrants. Furthermore, it takes it for granted that homosexuality, gender equality and atheism are the realities of a Swedish context; whereas the immigrants need to be detached from ‘their’ routines of genital mutilation, honor related violence and polygamy. The piece constructs a representational difference in what is Swedish and what is not Swedish where the reader distinctly can differentiate. It’s interesting to know that the article is written from a Swedish teacher’s perspective. It tells a lot about a change in the societal discourse about immigrants. The article further adds:

‘Mitt förslag är att införa ett nationellt program för värdegrundsarbetet i våra skolor då okunskapen är enorm och detta kan leda till segregering, utanförskap och extremism. Vi kan inte förvänta oss att integrationen löser sig av sig själv. Vår demokrati behöver försvaras och

återtas varje dag, varje minut, varje sekund’ (Danling Brash, 2018: 3).

'My suggestion is to introduce a national program for core values to work in our schools since ignorance is huge and this can lead to segregation, exclusion and extremism. We cannot expect integration to solve itself. Our democracy needs to be defended and taken back every

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It describes the current status quo as that of a struggle against the ignorance of immigrants. It urges a hands-on approach to tackle the ‘problem’. Immigrants cannot integrate themselves; they need to be taken care of and introduced by the Swedes. The immigrants are represented as objects being swayed and handled by their Swedish subjects. They are represented both as victims and threats at the same time. Their victimized nature is due to their ignorance and lack of values such as democracy, equality and so on. On the other hand, they are deemed as threats as well; because of their ‘unswedish’ values such as violence, polygamy, and

extremism. The country should be defended every day, every minute and second as if there is an actual and existential threat.

The constructionist approach of representing immigrants as others and pariahs became a more acceptable discourse during the post-crisis period. Another piece dated 19th_{January 2018}

reads’ Här integreras alla med tuffa metoder’ (Kadhammar, 2018: 26–27). ‘Everyone is integrated with tough methods here’. The excerpt further reads:

‘Man ska behandla folk olika, man måste möta människor på den nivå de befinner sig’ (Kadhammar, 2018: 26-27).

‘You have to treat people differently, you have to meet people at the level they are’ (Kadhammar, 2018: 26-27).

These statements connote the otherness of immigrants and their difficulty in integrating in the Swedish society. It blatantly states that humans are different and thus the treatment of them should be in line with that difference.

Such a diametrically changed stance to that of the ten articles from 2014 pinpoints to immigration as an existential threat to what is Swedish and what is not. The underlying arguments for such a stark and different stance include political, social, cultural and economic motives. Furthermore, the eight articles from 2018 draws a gloomy stance on immigration on a global level as well. To illustrate this, an article titled ‘Our asylum system in EU doesn’t work anymore’ (Avramopoulos, 2018: 3) dated 25th January 2018 reads in its inlet:

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‘EU kommissionären för migration, flyktingar ska inte få välja vilket land de söker asyl’ (Avramopoulos, 2018: 3).

’The EU commissioner for migration, refugees should not be able to choose which country to seek asylum in’ (Avramopoulos, 2018: 3).

This is a stark statement which goes against the set norms and constructs a wilful picture of otherness. It nullifies the subjectivity of the refugees and question their free movement. The word ‘choose’ in a negative sense has the connotations of restrictions and inabilities. It already impairs the refugees of both movement and subjectivity.

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8. Conclusion

This paper attempted to answer questions regarding immigration and its differing perceptions during the pre-crisis period of 2015 and post-crisis period. Through analyzing 10 articles from January 2014 and 8 articles from January 2018, the analysis found out that the 2014 picture of immigration in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet was neutral, and acceptable reality and even accommodating in every possible manner be it political, economic, social or cultural. The wording and textual analysis showed that the authors picked a non-political stance in studying the immigration phenomenon. The focal aspect of the pre-crisis period i.e. January 2014, dealt with immigration from a more humane angle where their needs and desires were mirrored. This mirroring and representation was constructed in a way to give voice to the refugees and make them into subjects of their actions. Despite the non-physical representation of refugees; i.e. a refugee writing for the paper; but the authors have tried to consider the refugees standpoints and see and analyze them in the light of the Swedish realities of the pre-crisis period. One could claim the same about the January 2018 representation; as Marx once had said ‘they can’t represent themselves; they must be represented’ (Said,2003). This quote is fitting with the findings of this paper for the publications during January 2018. The January 2018 representation was more of a different nature in its portrayal of refugees and

immigration in general. It objectified immigration and trying to delve into the maladies caused by immigration. The language got harsher, alienating and the focus was laid on social attributes where one can draw the line between us and them.

The findings of this paper agree well with the findings of previous research done in the same field. A similar pattern of an optimistic sense regarding refugees in the pre-crisis Aftonbladet articles were also found in the UNHCR report of 2016 as well as in Frigyes research. Both pinpointing how the pre-crisis era articles described the positive influence of refugees in Sweden and often had a humane angle to them while the post-crisis era was more critical of immigration and refugees.

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9. References

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Aftonbladet articles

Avramopoulos, D. (2018, January 25th). Jihadister kan verka helt ostört. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-10 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Bildt, C. (2014, January 22nd_{). Vi har inte råd med fortsatt krig i Syrien. Aftonbladet. Retrieved}

2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Danling Brash, A. (2018, January 18th_{). De nyanlända vet inte hur Sverige fungerar.}

Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-10 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Fridolin, G. (2014, January 3rd_{). Främlingshatets kyla kan inte stoppa våren. Aftonbladet.}

Retrieved 2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Höglund, E. (2014, January 27th). Rikemanskommuner måste ta mer ansvar. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

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Kadhammar, P. (2014, January 1st). Sverige kommer att förändras ännu mer. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Kadhammar, P. (2018, January 15th). En delad stad där alla vill vara trygga. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-10 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Kadhammar, P. (2018, January 19th). Här integreras alla med tuffa metoder. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-10 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Karlsson, P. (2018, January 15th_{). Jihadister kan verka helt ostört. Aftonbladet. Retrieved}

Karlsson, P. (2018, January 17th_{). Extremisterna ökar hela tiden. Aftonbladet. Retrieved}

Lindberg, A. (2014, January 23rd). Sverige har stått pall mor rasismen. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Lindberg, A. (2018, January 10th). Handgranaterna har blivit vardag. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Linderborg, Å. (2014, January 8th). Vi har inte råd med bludder. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Lindqvist, H. (2014, January 4th). Visst ryms alla under vår flagga. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Pettersson, K. (2014, January 14th). Vi kan ha välfärd - och invandring. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Virtanen, F. (2014, January 18th). Stridshingsten Reinfeldt vägrar acceptera SD:s värld – respekt!. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Wallin, E. (2018, January 10th). En extremt effektiv liga. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Wejryd, A. (2014, January 6th). Diskriminera inte asylsökande barn. Aftonbladet. Retrieved 2020-05-09 from: https://tidningar.kb.se/

Sweden will change even more : Analysing the representation of refugees and immigrants in Aftonbladet before and after the refugee crisis of 2015