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The purpose of this study is to examine how tabletop roleplaying games were portrayed in Swedish newspapers during the 1980s and the 1990s. to examine this a total of 48 articles from various Swedish newspapers have been analysed. The aim is to see how they were portrayed within the articles and to apply a model regarding moral panics to the descriptions. The method used is text analysis of the articles, and the theoretical framework used is Stanley Cohens theory regarding moral panics and folk devils. The model used is created by Tommy Gustafsson and Klara Arnberg’s and is used to find roles and mechanism present in a moral panic. The model is based on the theoretical framework designed by Cohen. The result showed that all roles and mechanisms described in Gustafsson and Arnberg’s model were present in the descriptions of roleplaying games in Swedish newspapers during this period. During both the 1980s and the 1990s the descriptions contained both positive and negative aspects of roleplaying games and its effect on the youth. During the 1980s the negative descriptions were reliant on the satanic panic in the United States, and during the 1990s several cases involving suicide, murder and crimes in Sweden were blamed on the roleplaying games. This created a fear of roleplaying games and what effect it had on the children and young adults that played these games. It also created a need to understand the contents of these games and why the young wanted to play them. Key words: roleplaying games, newspaper analysis, moral panics, Stanley Cohen, folk devils |
