| Summary: | Sportbladet writes about the Swedish women’s football national team when the results are good and when the matches are not that far away How has Sportbladet been reporting about the Swedish women’s football national team during their European and World Championships in the past 15 years? I have done a quantitative content analysis in which I have looked into how the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, in their sport edition Sportbladet, has reported on the Swedish women’s national team in football during their European and World Championships for the past 15 years. In order to do this, I have read all the editions of Sportbladet during the last eight big tournaments that the women’s national team have been playing in. In total, I have read around 170 editions of Sportbladet. While reading these newspapers, I have been looking at a number of various aspects, for example, what these articles have been about, how big they have been and also which person is most commonly interviewed. As well as the quantitative content analysis, I have also done a series of interviews with both football personalities and journalists from Sportbladet. In total I have interviewed two former coaches of the national team, one former player with 118 games for the Swedish women’s national team caps and three journalists that have covered these tournaments for Sportbladet. In this study these six people have been given the opportunity to reflect over Sportbladets contribution during these championships. The resultat of this study was pretty much what I expected. Sportbladet have covered the most successful championships with the highest intensity and the number of articles has been raised for every year. This progress is probably because of a increased interest from Sportbladet’s readers. All the interviewees were more or less satisfied with the performance and deliverance from Sportbladet, even though most of them thought it would be great if more women got the chance to write as well as men. All of them said that there was and is a professional relationship between the newspaper and the national team and that everybody involved knows for what reason both parts are present. A tough but honest relationship exists. Keywords: football, women, Sportbladet, national team, Sweden, sports journalism.
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