This study examined how asylum seekers and refugees were represented on Turun Sanomat before and after the terror attack in Turku. The objective of the study was to find out how asylum seekers and refugees were represented on Turun Sanomat before and after the terror attack and how the terror attack affected the representations of asylum seekers and refugees.

The research method in this study was content analysis. The newspaper articles that were examined were gathered from the beginning of February 2017 to the end of January 2018. The material was primarily studied qualitatively, but also quantitative analysis was used. All the newspaper articles on Turun Sanomat that dealt with asylum seekers or refugees were used as a material.

The study shows that asylum seekers and refugees were momentarily on media agenda after the Turku terror attack. During about one and a half months after the terror attack, there were more articles on Turun Sanomat that included expressions about asylum seekers and refugees than before the terror attack. Negative expressions about asylum seekers and refugees increased immediately after the terror attack. However, most of the expressions were positive after a couple of weeks after the terror attack.

The representations of asylum seekers and refugees on Turun Sanomat were diverse. There were many expressions where asylum seekers and refugees were represented stereotypically as problematic and unreliable, but there were also about the same amount of other kinds of representations. For example, there were many expressions that dealt with difficulties that asylum seekers and refugees have, like discrimination, unfair actions against asylum seekers and refugees and the dangers of the asylum journey.