Mechanisms of media stigmatisation: Colonial discourse and the racialisation of Swedish suburbs

• Using Sweden and Swedish newspapers as our case, we analyse 16 years of news reports on stigmatised areas. Particular attention is paid to what we refer to as mechanisms of stigma, in other words; news media techniques of representing place and residents in a stigmatising manner. These consist of firstly grouping neighbourhoods together based on common traits; second, comparing and contrasting places with each other; and thirdly, racialised blame, which constructs ethnic minorities as problems. Mechanisms of stigma are placed in the context of dominant themes of news media reporting on stigmatised neighbourhoods, where we identified categories of hopelessness, violence and colonial representations as the most common framings of the news stories. In addition, the thematic analysis has allowed us to observe the increase of stories of violence and terrorism in news reports on stigmatised neighbourhoods, in turn connected to the overall inflation of islamophobia and nationalism, with focus on Muslims and Islam as threats to integration, safety and national unity.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Stigmatisation

suburb

racialisation

colonialism

news media

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)