Reading tip: “Good Sweden, Bad Sweden”

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“Sweden’s reputation has been hijacked by groups that oppose the values the country stands for”, writes Paul Rapacioli in his book Good Sweden, Bad Sweden.

The image of Sweden that is spread internationally has changed a lot in recent years. Previously, it was reported as a well-functioning, clean-cut society, and a world leader in several areas with all sorts of top rankings – Good Sweden. Now it is instead being reported as a lawless country in crisis, with no-go zones and the rape capital of the world (Malmö) – Bad Sweden.

The phenomenon of news of the latter kind is relatively well known in Sweden. But after reading Paul Rapacioli, the extent of the Bad Sweden narrative sinks in more deeply.

The author describes how news sites in the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom regularly and frequently publish news about Bad Sweden. These are websites that account for tens of millions of visitors every month. Paul Rapacioli writes that these sites have several reasons for spreading the image of Bad Sweden. One of them is that stories about Bad Sweden are well suited to their own agenda – to create division and to sow doubt in its inhabitants’ minds about what has traditionally been considered reliable – authorities, people in power, the media. It is hard to argue against there being a political agenda when one of the biggest websites writing about the image of Bad Sweden, Breitbart in the United States, is part-owned by Robert Mercer, who supported Donald Trump to the tune of millions of dollars during the election campaign.

By contrast, the narrative of Good Sweden is not well suited to the aims of these websites at all. The fact that a country can be a world leader in so many areas and be at the top in rankings for equality, happiness, health, welfare, and at the same time be one of the countries that takes in most refugees in proportion to its population, is not a story these websites, or the people behind them, want to tell.

Generates clicks

There is also another factor that makes the Bad Sweden narrative attractive – it generates clicks. And clicks mean money. Paul Rapacioli uses accepted psychological principles to describe how we as humans have a tendency to focus on negative news more than positive news. “When we read something negative, our brains immediately start to analyse and evaluate the causes of the adverse event and worry about the consequences.” Research also shows how we become especially interested in stories when someone good does something bad. There is something titillating about the transposition, something we want to learn more about. Accordingly, these mechanisms spur the wide distribution on social media of news that turns the traditional image of Sweden upside down – emotions govern when we press the share button. Possible replies and challenges to these articles do not reach anything like as many people–- they appeal to our common sense – and are somewhat ineffective.

The narrative of Bad Sweden is almost exclusively about refugees and Muslims, although articles on topics such as sex changes and same-sex marriages also seem to attract the audience in question.

Extremely vulnerable to negative news

Paul Rapacioli also believes that another factor contributing to the scale of the international impact of the dualist story of Bad Sweden is that the story of Good Sweden was – and is – just as dualist. “Good Sweden’s well-polished, single-minded, perfect surface makes the country extremely vulnerable to negative news. Larger countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States have a reputation that is more complex with different layers of “good” and “evil”. In which case, individual negative publications are neither here nor there in a shorter perspective”, writes Paul Rapacioli.

The basis for these articles about a Sweden in decline is often taken from Swedish media and starts out from a real event. This is then mutated by being distorted, by being stripped of essential facts and circumstances, and by adding something else, and then almost always linked to the migration issue in some way.

Sweden is by no means a country without its own problems, but most of the people who live and work in Sweden will probably be more surprised than the readers in other countries when we consider what these websites publish. And Paul Rapacioli repeatedly points out that this new narrative is having a negative effect on Sweden. By no means everyone has their own image of Sweden, and therefore with it the ability to put Bad Sweden into a more nuanced context. If these people are constantly fed with a Sweden characterised by car fires and rapes, it is evident that they will ultimately “know” this to be the case. The fact that articles about Bad Sweden are often widely shared on social media means that these articles have a high score in search engine rankings. It is more than likely that someone from another country without his or her own references for Sweden will hold back when it comes to making investments in Sweden, and that international collaborations will become more difficult for companies and organisations, for example. And who yearns to take a vacation in the rape capital of the world?

How to repair the damage?

The author frequently corroborates his assertion with sources and references in the well-written and occasionally humorous book, in which it is also suggested how the Bad Sweden narrative should be addressed. He suggests that all of the fact-checking projects that have started to appear are indeed commendable, but to repair the damage caused by the new image of Sweden, more is needed than to point a finger at someone who has made a factual error. And this is something we have to help out with. The best recipe is that the positive narrative is not constant.

Instead, the author suggests that it is the nuanced image of a complex country with many different aspects that needs to be spread, and it is the impassioned stories that have to be found, because they are the ones that are shared. Paul Rapacioli also advises Swedish journalists to try to foresee which of their news stories might get picked out to reinforce the image of Bad Sweden – not to avoid publishing them, but to be prepared with a response, follow-ups, etc. “Bad things will continue to happen in Sweden and traditional media will report them according to the way in which they see them. Other media will continue to use these events as an opportunity to take a swipe at Sweden’s reputation, but if sophisticated debate and discussion are already underway on international news sites and social media, the blow will not be so hard.”

Paul Rapacioli is the founder of the news site The Local, with Swedish and European news in English and a circulation of 5 million readers every month.