Responsibility, Uncertainty, and Threat : The Framing of the Örebro School Shooting in Swedish Public Service Media

This study examines how Sweden’s public service broadcasters SVT and SR framed the Örebro school shooting in February 2025. In the absence of clear factual-based information and an unknown motive. The study aims to understand how the event was defined through early media coverage and how the public service media broadcasters SVT & SR defined the problem in their framing of the Örebro school shooting. The empirical material for the study consists of a selection of news pieces, including written articles, radio reports and televised segments published in the days and weeks after the event. The method is a qualitative case study utilizing critical discourse analysis, with a theoretical grounding in framing theory, Hall’s encoding/decoding model and Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis. Three main themes emerged from the analysis of the data set: Responsibility, Uncertainty and Threat. The findings show that responsibility was distributed unevenly across the different actors involved, uncertainty was being framed as a threat, calling for stabilization through official discourse. Lastly, threat was constructed via institutional actors, legitimizing increased security measures and policy changes. The study highlights how public service media contribute to the shaping of meaning during the earliest and most uncertain phases of a national crisis – in the absence of previous experiences, within the Swedish context.