Socialarbetaren i tidningen - en diskursanalys av hur socialarbetare framställs i svenska dags- och kvällspressen

Abstract Author: Elin Eisenschmidt Title: The social worker in the newspaper – a discourse analysis of the portrayals of social workers in Swedish national and local papers. Supervisor: Anders Olsson The purpose of this study was to examine the portrayals of social workers in Swedish newspapers. The method used in the study was discourse analysis inspired by Faircloughs tools for text analysis. Articles from national newspapers, local papers and tabloids during a six months period were analysed. Portrayals found in the newspaper articles were: social workers in collaboration, the hard life of being a social worker, social worker as bywork, the controlling role of social workers, social workers as experts, the decision making role of the social worker and social workers unability to do right. The theory of Malcolm Payne about three views on social work was used to understand the portrayals that had been found in the articles. One conclusion was that different discourses are existing together at the same time in the newspapers. Another conclusion was that the individualist-reformist and the socialistcollectivist views on social work are the ones showing in the portrayals. Keywords: social worker, media, portrayal, discourse, discourse analysi