Dagspress, sport och doping – medieskandaler i ett samtida Sverige

Sammanfattning: The study analyses how the Swedish press dealt with doping and transgressions of the doping rules within international professional sports between 1996 and 2004. Three main research questions have been used in the research process: (1) What characterizes these media texts about sports and doping? (2) How is the social order pictured in the media texts? (3) What do media scandals about sport stars and the social construction of their transgressions tell us about our own historical present? A quantitative content analysis of 969 articles is used to study media coverage during the first fourteen days after each doping case came to light. Five of the cases are considered media scandals and 121 articles about these cases are studied in two other text analyses focusing mainly on themes and intertextuality. The theoretical background to the study derives from four complementary angles. The first is about society, media and social order and deals with ideas about the challenges and characteristics of modernity. The second angle is about sports and doping. The third angle is about media and sports. The fourth angle consists of theories and concepts about media sports scandals. Media scandals are useful when investigating norms since they can be seen as an occasion when the socially constructed public morality might be intensified, negotiated or challenged. By studying media scandals we can gain in-depth insights into our society.