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Journalistikens nyhetsvärderingar premierar det mest exceptionella och därför har också skjutvåldet och sprängningarna fått en framskjuten plats i medierna under de senaste två decennierna. Under valrörelsen kunde vi iaktta hur den allt överordnade skildringen av våldsbrottsligheten kom att behandlas som en stor nationell kris. En samsyn mellan högersidans partier och Socialdemokraterna som försökte övertrumfa varandra med förslag om hårdare och mer långtgående förslag om straff, var det som framträdde allra tydligast i de olika mediedebatterna. Genom den fokuseringen och ensidigheten krympte utrymmet för andra viktiga framtidsfrågor samman.

The objective of this chapter is to describe and discuss some important political journalism development trends in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The term political journalism traditionally refers to news, commentaries, and other genres related to the coverage of political processes, institutions, and policy questions. It is, however, difficult to draw a clear dividing line between political news and other types of current affairs coverage. While political logic once dominated the discourses of political journalism, the emergence of the news media as an independent institution gave journalists a substantial definitional power and an ability to define the communicative rules of the game, but professional political sources quickly learned to exploit news media logics for their own aims and objectives. During the last decade, the growth of social media networks and the relative weakening of the legacy media has created a less stable situation for the negotiation of control between journalists and their sources.

All political scandals trigger discussions of trust, but in a competitive commercial media climate, both important and minor legal offences and moral transgressions are regularly treated as scandalous media events. Today, actors in social media and mainstream media organizations can collaborate on cases that might develop into scandal news. In this article, which is based on an analysis of 101 political scandals in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden from 2010 to 2016—and a study of political scandals in the wake of the #MeToo movement in 2017–2018—we show that mediated scandals have become a standard feature of political life in Nordic countries. Compared with earlier decades, there has been an exponential rise in the number of scandals; at the same time, the rate of resignations and dismissals following scandals is lower than before. Offences related to economic affairs, including corruption, and personal behavior scandals, such as accusations of sexual harassment, constitute the most prominent scandal types. However, regarding sexually related behavior scandals, there are interesting differences between the Nordic countries. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/7099/2417

The purpose of this book is to spotlight the way in which political scandals in four Nordic countries have been launched, directed, dramatized and interpreted through different genres of journalism – in an interactive tug-of-war between editors and various political actors. News institutions help to build political careers – and to tear them down. A mediated scandalization process can make the path from power to powerlessness, from a top position to exclusion, very short.A number of questions are discussed: How important are the norm violations that have led to political scandals? Have the types of scandals changed over time? How may rivals and political opponents use mediated scandals? Are character assassination and demonization typical traits of a scandalization process? Are male and female politicians treated differently? Scandalous! is based on case studies and content analyses of mediated political scandals in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, including an analysis of the frequencies, types, characteristics and consequences of national political scandals during the period 1980–2010.