Erik Knudsen

Title: PhD Candidate

Phone: +47 55 58 91 05

E-mail: Erik.Knudsen@infomedia.uib.no

Visiting address: Fosswinckelsgt. 6

Room number: 541

The working title of the project is “Norwegian Welfare on the Agenda – a Content Analysis of the media coverage of The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV)”. The project is a case study that examines how information from the newly established Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, «NAV», is presented to the public, how NAV is covered in the media and the relation between the media coverage and the public’s perception of NAV. This will be illustrated with theories regarding mediatization, the media’s social contract and framing theory.

I will carry out a quantitative content analysis to examine the media coverage. I have selected four Norwegian newspapers and one online newspaper, and chosen strategically selected periods (21 months) during the period 2005-2011. Furthermore I will investigate how both NAV and the welfare-users are portrayed in the media, and whether the media coverage has been biased to the advantage of critics. Using qualitative interviews with relevant actors, I will also investigate how NAV is treated as a source and how journalists and NAV employees perceive their role in the media coverage. To investigate the relation between the media coverage and the public’s perception of NAV, I will compare the results of the content analysis with analysis of satisfaction-surveys regarding NAV and its services (in particular the Rokkan Centre's research on user satisfaction in NAV).

The project will also focus on issues pertaining to the application of quantitative content analysis on internet news articles, and seek to provide new perspectives on this scientific method.  

     Journalism, news, framing and quantitative content analysis

Publications in Cristin

Conference Papers:

Knudsen, Erik (2012) Combining Induction and Deduction: Studying Issue-specific News Frames Quantitatively, Master Class for PhD-students at Stockholm University, the Department of Media Studies, Karlavägen 104, April 24.-27 Knudsen, Erik (2012)

Et vitenskapsteoretisk paradoks: induksjon som premissleverandør for deduksjon, Obligatorisk vitenskapsteoretisk essay for PhD-graden, Institutt for informasjons- og medievitenskap, Universitet i Bergen

Popular science

Knudsen, Erik (2012) "Analyseprogram avdekker nettavisenes prioriteringer". Vox Publica [Internet] 26.03.2012 

Master Thesis:   Monster Journalism - The Media coverage of the "Hardanger case" (Norwegian only)

2011-2015: PhD project: “Norwegian Welfare on the Agenda – a Content Analysis of the media coverage of The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV)”