The purpose of this scientific study was to do a literary content analysis to determine whether daily respective evening newspapers configure in the same or different ways when writing about a specific subject and to what extent. The specific subject in question regarding this study is the murder of the former Prime Minister of Sweden, Olof Palme. His murder went unsolved for thirty-six years. Therefore an abnormally large range of text regarding his murder was written. Thus this study was able to follow the newspapers coverage of the murderer for over 3 decades. The newspapers analyzed in this study were Dagens Nyheter (daily newspaper) and Expressen (evening newspaper). To solve the issues presented and fulfill the study’s purpose a qualitative study was implemented.
The method used in this study to identify the contracts between the different newspapers was to analyze one text from each newspaper every fourth year. From each text significant words were noted, the context in which the police were mentioned, who of the many murder suspects that were mentioned, and lastly the tonality of the entirety of the text.
The results showed that the newspapers configured in similar ways to a large extent. In conclusion, the greatest contrast between the newspapers was the attitude in the text considering the police. Also that a majority of the results of this study could be motivated by the different newspapers’ economic interests as well as the contrasting roles of the newspapers in the media industry.