Reportagets rika repertoar : en studie av verklighetsbild och berättarteknik i sju reportageböcker

Sammanfattning: Reportage is a journalistic genre with a far larger range of possibilities than many journalists realize. To explore some of those potentialities seven Swedish books of reportage from two Asian countries, India and Afghanistan, are discussed. The books are analyzed from two perspectives: firstly an historical and social science perspective with a focus on content and, secondly, the perspective of literary criticism and rhetoric, with an emphasis on form.The analysis from the historical and social science perspective concentrates on how the reporter uses his sources: his own observations and first-hand experiences, personal informants, and textual sources. Even the different kinds of explanations, explicit or implicit, the author offers, are analyzed. The forms of explanation are largely the same as those we encounter in various branches of science such as causal versus teleological explanations, and conflict versus consensus.The analyzis from the perspective of literary criticism and rhetoric consentrates on such dimensions as the structure of narrative, the degree of abstraction or concreteness, the use of metaphor och the use of comparison and contrast, and the difficulty and compexity of the text.No general conclusions are drawn regarding the texts examined. Rather these texts are used to constructively exemplify different possible journalistic strategies for interpreting and representing social reality. The thesis concludes with a systematic presentation of the methodolgies availiable for journalistic reportage.