'Visst är det skillnad på flyktingar!' : En komparativ studie om hur flyktingar konstruerats i kommentarsfält på Facebook

Recent studies have shown how social media platforms provide online spaces for people to express negativity and hate towards refugees, especially those who fled during the refugee crisis of 2015. With a theoretical framework of postcolonialism, orientalism, eurocentrism and a linguistic power perspective this study examines whether the same applies to Ukrainian refugees that fled during the Russian-Ukrainian war that started in February of 2022. The aim is to ascertain how both the groups of refugees that fled during the refugee crisis and the Russian-Ukrainian war were constructed by Swedish Facebook users. Through critical discourse analysis 61 comments written on the Swedish newspaper Expressen's Facebook page were analyzed in this study. The results show how six out of seven discourses contributed to the construction of a negative image of refugees that fled during the refugee crisis. The most common discourse show how they constantly were being mistrusted and accused of lying as opposed to the Ukrainian refugees who were constructed in a more positive manner. There was a presence of eurocentrism and the “Us” and “Them” construction in the comments. Refugees that fled during the refugee crisis constantly were being distanced while Ukrainian refugees were constructed as a part of the European “Us”.