The Quran burnings 2023, where lies the Crisis?

Abstract

The Quran burnings in Sweden have made international headlines and have taken its place as one of the most controversial happenings of the year 2023. Due to this, the phenomena have made its way into the political arena of Sweden, being widely discussed by the main political actors of the country. This study aims to analyze Magdalena Andersson (Social Democrats) and Jimmie Åkesson’s (Sweden Democrats) communication regarding the matter with the key objective to analyze the usage of Populism as well as Blame and responsibility when the two actors speak about the Quran crisis. The thesis main method will be a rhetorical analysis. The study found that both Andersson and Åkessons communication regarding the Quran burnings contains populistic traits. Andersson uses more blame in her communication and Åkesson more accountability. Åkesson does unlike Andersson not construct the Quran burnings themselves as a crisis, but rather the sequence of events the phenomena consequently started as such. Due to the results in how blame is communicated, recommended suggestions of further studies could be analyzing if the Swedish political communication has become more hostile by doing a comparative analysis on the present and previous years of political actors communicating