Ordagrann återgivning eller klickbete? Om citatteckenanvändning i tidningsrubriker

Abstract

Most newspaper readers in Sweden today obtain news from websites rather than printed news-papers. As a consequence of this, headlines on newspaper websites are often read without the reader considering the article they correspond to. Do these headlines faithfully reproduce quotes found in the corresponding article, or are they better thought of as clickbaits, containing sensa-tional quotes that do not parallel those given in the article? In this paper, nearly 2,700 headlines from four of the largest Swedish newspapers are analysed to answer this question, as well as the question of how common quotes are in Swedish newspaper headlines. The analysis indicates that headlines with quotations are more common in Swedish newspapers than in previous stud-ies of British, German and Spanish newspapers. Furthermore, a careful analysis of 312 head-lines with quotes reveals that only one third of the headlines are verbatim in relation to the quote in the corresponding article. However, most changes are small and mainly concern the form of the quoted statement. When the meaning of the quote has been changed, it is often because hedging phrases have been removed, giving the statement a more drastic meaning than in the article. Headlines considered as clickbaits are nevertheless very few in the analysed material. Moreover, there are no major differences between the studied morning and evening papers in how accurately they reproduce quotes in headlines.