The overall purpose of this essay is to contribute with knowledge about medias portraying. This by examining whether the two terrorists Rakhmat Akilov and Brenton Tarrant is presented differently in the two Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen. These two terrorists were chosen because of their different backgrounds. It also aims to study whether the medias portrayal of the terrorists reproduce mechanisms between ”us and them”. The method that was used in this essay was a content analysis with a qualitative approach as the essay aims to examine the entirety of the articles and to capture the central content that they present.

The theories that has been used to analyze the empirical data is Orientalism by Edward Said and the theory of othering. These have been used as a key to understand the representations.

The result of this essay shows that the representations of the terrorists both have similarities and differences. The portraying of Akilov have focused on what sets him apart from ”us” and he is described as an individual who is a part of something structural. In the case of Brenton Tarrant he is presented from a individualistic perspective, where the attack is explained by the individual and not by the group.