Trafikverket – en modern samhällsutvecklare eller en talför svensk man?

Myndighetsrepresentanter i media. En komparativ analys av mediebild och självpresentation

Abstract

State authorities are increasingly concerned with brand image construction and organizational identity work. In this paper the media images of the Swedish Transport Administration in four newspapers is compared with the authority’s corporate identity, i.e. the image promoted by the authority in and through its own channels. The results show that the characteristic representative of the Swedish Transport Administration in the press is a male person with a distinctive Swedish name. This is inconsistent with the authority’s self-presentation, where the Transport Administration is constructed as a modern “developer of society” characterized by diversity and equality. This analysis results in two arguments, one suggesting that the discrepancy between the media image and the corporate identity could have a negative impact on the authority’s credibility, and the other one suggesting that state authorities would be expected to actively promote equality and diversity by a conscious selection of spokespersons.