Fallet Wilma Andersson : En kvalitativ undersökning av tabloidiseringens prägel på rapporteringen av ett mordfall

In 2017 a 17-year-old girl called Wilma Andersson went missing in the Swedish town Uddevalla. A few weeks later the police made a discovery that confirmed that she was dead. Her former boyfriend Tishko Ahmed was prosecuted and convicted for her murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison. The murder of Wilma Andersson is a murder case that touched a lot of people and was very big in Swedish news media. This study ́s purpose was to investigate how tabloidization effect crime journalism. Four research questions were asked in order to investigate this. The questions were: 1. How is Wilma Andersson framed in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter? 2. How is Tishko Ahmed framed in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter? 3. What similarities and differences are there in how Wilma Andersson and Tishko Ahmed are framed in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter? 3a. How does tabloidization effect the framing and the crime journalism? The results of this study show that Wilma Andersson is framed as an innocent, kind and orderly girl by the tabloid paper Aftonbladet. The findings also show that Aftonbladet framed the perpetrator, Tishko Ahmed, in several ways. He is framed as a normal guy that no one thought would be capable of murder, but he is also framed as a violent boyfriend and mentally unstable. The broad sheet paper, Dagens Nyheter, framed Wilma Andersson as a vulnerable girl who had a difficult life situation and the perpetrator Tishko was framed as mentally unstable and unreliable. The result of the study show that the tabloid newspaper framed the victim and perpetrator in a more personal and dramatic way by using writing technique and personal sources. The tabloid newspaper also used pictures more than the broad sheet, which empathized the dramatic and personal framing. The findings in this study show that tabloidization effect crime journalism by making it more dramatic and entertaining in order to attract readers and make money.