Den svenska berättelsen om alternativ utbildning. En kritisk diskursanalys av alternativ utbildning i svensk media.

Homeschooling and distance education have had a tricky past in Sweden. During the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns people were made to work/study from home in a capacity they had never tried before. This opened the Swedish eyes to the pros and cons of alternative education. The aim of this study was to investigate how Swedes who follow an educational path alternative to the normal Swedish state school are perceived and depicted. The study analyzes 21 news articles published between 2017 and 2022 in three of Sweden's biggest commercial newspapers Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Expressen. The method and theory that made up the analysis was based in the critical discourse analysis according to Norman Fairclough's three dimensional model: text, discourse and social practice. The two most prominent discourses found were the parent presented as the villain and the child presented as the victim. The parent as the villain was broken down into two themes: the parent as a fanatic and the parent as a criminal. The child as the victim was broken down into four themes based on who/what the child was a victim under: under the parents tyranny, under their own disorder, under a school form that can't handle them and under a societal phenomenon. Parallel to these main discourses emerged two countering discourses challenging their negative portrayal of swedes choosing alternative education. These were: the parent as the hero and the healthy child. These counter discourses were yet again broken into themes. The first discourse in two: the parent saving the child from being hurt by the school and the parent knowing their child better than the school. The second discourse in two: the genius child and the regular school pupil. From the analysis the conclusion was drawn that the portrayal in Swedish media of people choosing alternative education is in general negative. They create and reproduce a power structure where this group becomes the outsider. The consequences of this is that these peo