The aim of this thesis is to analyze the representation of honor crimes in Swedish media. The thesis is based upon an examination of two Swedish national newspapers to understand and identify if this representation is in stereotypical or non-stereotypical direction. The selected newspapers that has been used are Aftonbladet and Expressen, and the focus is on articles reported from the year 2002 up to 2019. The study is a single case descriptive study and qualitative content analysis has been conducted. Carol Bacchi's theory of "What's the problem represented to be?" was considered to be the most appropriate theory to this study. But in order to be able to investigate the research question we have applied the theory of media representation together with a theory of stereotypes. By combining these theories we have been able to answer our research questions of: "what’s the problem with respect to honor crimes represented to be, what’s the probable cause of the problem represented to be, and what is the proposed solution to the problem represented to be.”

The analysis has shown that in describing crimes related to honor culture in two selected newspapers, the way they portray crimes as a global gender-based issue indicates the characteristics of domestic violence in a non-stereotypical representation. And regarding stereotypical representation both were emphasizing honor related crimes to people from other countries. The analysis of causes of the problem from a stereotypical perspective describes that some factors such as culture, religion, ethnic background and Islamic patriarchy are the main causes of committing honor crimes. And from a non-stereotypical perspective the lack of research about the perpetrators of honor crimes as well as the economic powerlessness of women are presented as causes of committing honor crimes. Regarding stereotypical representation both were emphasizing honor related crimes in associating with immigrant people and from a policy point of view both advocates a policy solution based on the idea of stricter punishments.