Islamic Takeover and Selling Out Sweden

This chapter presents the results from a narrative analysis of Sputnik and RT news coverage about Sweden from July 1, 2019, to January 31, 2021, and focuses on how the coverage explains how Sweden is taken over by Islamism and how Swedish values and traditions are downgraded. It aims to make manifest how disinformation is constructed by Russian state news media targeting an international audience and argues that Islamism was a central issue used to denigrate Sweden. The narrative analysis identified four sub-narratives: Muslims: A vulnerable group to be protected or the enemy within?; Threats against Swedish traditional values; Attacks against Christians; and Swedish celebrities and national icons caving in. Taken together the sub-narratives made manifest different articulations of the threat of Islamism and the Islamization of Sweden and depicted how the Swedish authorities responded. In contrast to the public, who’s views were represented mainly through Tweets, the authorities be they the Church of Sweden, the government or major Swedish companies were reported to disregard the threat against Swedish values, heritage, and traditions and even occasionally unwilling to defend them. By using story telling techniques such as polarization, misuse of and the stirring of controversies around concepts, and mockery by way of citations the news narrative can be said to deviate from liberal journalism and be referred to as disinformation.