In this chapter, I propose that the concept of affective dissonance is theoretically helpful to account for young people’s sentiments of digital disconnection. This proposal is empirically substantiated through an analysis of qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 17 Norwegian youths, based on the following question: How do young people react to invasive connected media? The findings illustrate that affective reactions to digital impulses appear to be an integrated part of young people’s daily management of digital connectivity. Although these experiences may lead to negative experiences, they do not necessarily lead to disconnection practices. From young people’s perspectives, digital disconnection not only involves being physically separated from connectivity but also encapsulates attitudinal shifts and mental distancing. Based on these findings, this chapter posits that disconnection is also an affective state that does not necessarily transform into action or practice, but is as much about the potentiality to act. This chapter thus recognises digital disconnection as a process based on youths’ perspectives, acknowledging its affective facet, and contributing to a broader conceptualisation of disconnectivity beyond acts and practices.
Finnish Yleisradio (Yle) has been one of the most innovative public service broadcasters in Europe. The new tax-based funding system and broad remit have allowed the company to shift its focus from broadcast television and radio to online services without jeopardising its relevance or resources. Now Yle has set preconditions for the future availability of its online television in case digital terrestrial television (DTT) would be switched off and all ultra high frequencies reallocated. This is not because Yle would want to focus only on growing video audiences online, but because the Finnish spectrum policy favouring mobile industries could endanger Yle’s capability to fulfil its public service remit. We argue that Yle’s conditions for abandoning television broadcasting on DTT are so tight they might never be met by the Ministry of Transport and Communications. In this chapter, we also examine what consequences public service without broadcasting could have.
What we in this volume call the “the digital backlash” covers a range of social and cultural practices of digital disconnection, as well as critiques of the impact of digital technologies and platforms in the world today. It thus includes a variety of overlapping and multifaceted changes and tendencies across societies, including digital disconnection, digital detox, the right to disconnect, media refusal, and what has been called “the techlash”. Hence, it can best be described as a kind of zeitgeist: a period in history in which the norms about digital behaviour, consumption, and habits are being questioned, and where the hype of the early digital era beginning in the 1990s is being challenged. In this introduction, we set the scene of the book by giving an overview of these tendencies and the history of digital critiques, serving to provide a framing for the chapters in the book.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, public campaigns were an important part of the Scandinavian health authorities’ strategies to combat the spread of the virus. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden had different strategies to manage the crisis: Denmark had the most political crisis management, Sweden the most informational, and Norway was placed somewhere in between. This chapter examines how public risk and crisis communication during a pandemic was handled in these campaigns in the Scandinavian countries, how they function as a governance technology, and how this was carried out rhetorically. We show how indirect, governmental steering dominated the campaign rhetoric in Scandinavia, through a focus on the culturally decided aspects of purity and danger, and through appeal to a sense of personal responsibility and willingness to avoid taking risks among the citizenry. Furthermore, we find that the campaigns are representative for the crisis management strategy in each country.
In this chapter, I examine how digital (dis)connection intertwines with andrelates to care in the practices of parents living in Denmark. I ask the following questions: How do parents strive to care for their children with and without digital technologies? And what can feminist care perspectives do for theories of disconnection? This chapter is based on 20 in-depth interviews with parents of children aged 0–12. Parents’ experiences demonstrate how digital technologies can help create both the preconditions and the context for care. The use of technology does not come without tension, however, as parents perceive that it can also interfere with an active good life and compete for their attention. Taken together, parents’ practices and discourses of (dis)connection offer insight into the moral imperatives surrounding digital media use in the family.
This chapter introduces rurality-TV as a genre, and we discuss how public service media, through this genre, contributes to symbolically resolving tensions between the rural and the urban, and we address processes of mobility and urbanisation in the Nordics. Three popular reality-TV programmes depicting rural life are analysed: Bonderøven [loosely translated as The Hillbilly], later known as Frank & Kastaniegaarden (DR), Hjälp vi har köpt en bondgård! [Help we have bought a farm!] (SVT), and Oppfinneren [The Inventor] (NRK). These are approached through three questions: What constitutes public service rurality-TV as a genre in terms of form and content? What values are negotiated in the programmes? How can we understand rurality-TV in the context of public service broadcasting in the media welfare state?
The focal point of this chapter is surveillance practices in relation to social media influencers and digital marketing. The aim is to examine how the idea of surveillance can be expanded to include both social and technological aspects that work at individual, peer, and top-down levels. Drawing on examples from the Swedish influencer industry, we discuss and problematise how surveillance can be understood in such a context and how different dimensions of surveillance are manifested, exploited, and contested. The chapter concludes that participatory and gendered peer- and self-surveillance are an inherent part of influencer culture, and that the commercial success of influencers depends upon these practices. Similarly, platform surveillance and data mining connected to digital advertising can be understood as part of a contemporary commercialised surveillance culture that is closely related to both digital technology and the political economy of the influencer industry.
This chapter investigates how vulnerable language minorities in Finland, Norway, and Sweden experienced communication from authorities during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Disadvantaged language minorities have been shown to have a higher risk of pandemic-related health issues, and information from authorities about the crisis is typically mainly focused on the majority of the population. This chapter builds on secondary analysis of existing research and uses the communication ecology framework to study how language minorities experienced information about the Covid-19 pandemic, and which information strategies they experienced as in need of improvement. Furthermore, expert suggestions of best practices for reaching vulnerable language minorities with communication about the pandemic are investigated. The results show that while mediated information channels are important, for vulnerable language minorities, interpersonal discussions and local, context-bound activities become central for efficient communication from authorities in times of complex societal crisis.
The backlash against digital media usage has manifested in everyday practices of digital disconnection, or deliberate non-use of media. This chapter provides an overview of the last decade of empirical disconnection research, tracing both its overarching tendencies and its boundaries. This is done through an analysis of 346 empirical studies on digital disconnection. For the purposes of this chapter, digital disconnection research is defined by a research ethos which does not consider the act of media non-use or restricted media use as something to be remedied. In review, the typical interest of the research has been in studying the disconnection of relatively young and individualised agents from social media, a disconnection which is often temporary or partial. Therefore, in the discussion portion of the chapter, I consider the opportunity for the openness of digital disconnection studies to extend even further, with particular emphasis on structures and contexts where disconnection may not only be problematised by the imperatives of “always on” communication, specifically in working life and other organised contexts.
There is a quickly increasing body of studies and reports on harassment and intimidation of journalists around the world. These series of acts have a chilling effect on media freedom and journalists’ freedom of expression. The research literature on the topic has mostly focused on intimidation and harassment of journalists – particularly sexual harassment of women journalists – or journalists’ experiences of online harassment, and the impact on press censorship. In this chapter, we contribute to the debate by exploring the nexus between the harassment of journalists and the protection mechanisms adopted by leading news media organisations, professional journalism associations and other institutions, and national governments. We then discuss the effects on democracy in the 18 countries participating in the 2021 Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM). Our findings indicate how legal support and protection mechanisms might enhance journalists’ capacity to realise the news media’s democratic role in practice.
Radio och TV i allmänhetens tjänst. Givet de förpliktigande orden är det inte konstigt att public service debatteras. I grund och botten är detta bra: Public service är en institution med makt och ska därför vara föremål för diskussion och debatt.
Men samtidigt som det är positivt att public service debatteras är det olyckligt om diskussionen fastnar i ”tyckande”. När det gäller public service finns det ju hyllmeter av akademisk forskning! Att tycka är inte fel – men att argumentera utifrån fakta väger onekligen tyngre.
Syftet med Public service: En svensk kunskapsöversikt är att på ett lättillgängligt sätt presentera vad empirisk forskning har kommit fram till i centrala frågor gällande public service. Kapitelförfattarna är verksamma vid svenska universitet och högskolor, och merparten av de resultat och slutsatser som presenteras bygger på genomgångar av tidigare publicerad forskning. I samtliga kapitel är det public services nyhetsjournalistik som fokuseras.
Public service: En svensk kunskapsöversikt vänder sig till alla med ett intresse för public service – inte minst politiker, journalister och samhällsdebattörer.
Boken har redigerats av Johannes Bjerling, vetenskaplig redaktör vid Nordicom.
The aim of this chapter is to examine the conditions for the practice of critical journalism in Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden, during the Covid-19 pandemic. We focus on two aspects, one practical and one discursive. First, we focus on journalists’ access to relevant information about the pandemic, as access plays a key role in the practice of critical reporting. Second, we focus on metajournalistic discourse, understood as how public debate about journalism shapes the practice of journalism. We found that information access was challenged in all three countries, but in different ways. We also found elements of a metajournalistic discourse. In Denmark, this discourse expressed concern about journalism being too critical, while in Sweden and Iceland, the concern was more a lack of critical reporting. We argue that the differences found can best be explained by the different Covid-19 communication strategies in the three countries.
Surveillance in videogames is a well-known phenomenon. Designated as the fastest-growing sector of the videogame industry, mobile games – particularly free-to-play games – capitalise substantially on the collection of user data. Based on the promise of offering personalised gaming and advertising experiences, a vast quantity of data, including personal identifier and geolocation data, is acquired through players’ mobile devices. While the information obtained may appear fragmented or invisible to players, they are consolidated in the hands of data brokers, resulting in a very lucrative economic sector. From this perspective, the practice of the mobile game, although innocuous at first consideration, raises essential ethical questions regarding the ludocapitalist surveillance dispositif established by this industry. In this chapter, we seek to problematise everyday surveillance in mobile gaming, explain how the videogame and marketing industries operate it, and examine gamers’ (“ordinary” citizens) involvement in the banalisation of this massive data gathering.
This chapter addresses the topic of whether news media in different countries are still able to reach the general public and generate a shared public sphere as a prerequisite of democratic countries. The empirical part of the chapter focuses on the extent to which the different segments of the society use news media like newspapers, radio, television, and social media, comparing the results from 18 countries participating in the 2021 Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM) research project. We conclude that most people in most countries still use the news media regularly, although country-specific gaps exist related to sociodemographic factors like age, gender, and especially education and income. Most conspicuous is an intergenerational gap insofar
Mediebarometern är en årlig undersökning av den svenska befolkningens tillgång till, och användning av, olika typer av medier. Resultaten i 2019 års undersökning bygger på svar från omkring 6 000 slumpmässigt utvalda personer i åldern 9 till 79 år. I Mediebarometern 2019: Tema generationer analyseras medieanvändningen i olika åldersgrupper. Rapporten har skrivits av Catharina Bucht vid Nordicom.
Chapter 5, "Axes of power: Examining women's access to leadership positions in the news media", by Carolyn M. Byerly and Katherine A. McGraw examines how and to what extent women have made their way into the reporting and management levels within the profession of journalism, and whether their presence in the higher ranks of the newsroom hierarchy is associated with a larger amount of women-oriented news content. Although women have made significant strides as reporters and news presenters, the advancement to management and governance roles – the positions of power – has been significantly slower. Looking cross-nationally, the authors test the critical mass theory while also considering the extent to which national development, indicators of women’s status, and the numbers of women practicing journalism might affect women journalists’ place in newsroom hierarchies of the 59 nations they examine. The research is based on the largest global-level study to date on women’s occupational standing within the news industry, the Global Report on the Status of Women in News Media, led by Byerly (2011) for the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF).
An account of the Nordic media welfare state that does not consider the library sector, its historical mandates, and the role it plays in securing universal access to media content while also contributing to sustaining the media industries, is missing a piece. With this chapter, we aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of public libraries in relation to a wider media context. As holders of collections of media – books, but also audio and audiovisual media – as well as important enablers of public discussions and events, libraries co-exist with media industries in multiple ways: They purchase media content, promote various forms of media, and compete with the mass media for the attention of the public as well as the resources of the state. We ask questions about the intersections between libraries and the media industries: What are their mandates, social remits, and forms of regulation? What are the challenges that face them today? What are their roles within an extended media welfare state?
This chapter takes as its starting point an indicator for the diversity of news formats from the 2021 Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM) project as an important feature for plurality of information. A wide range of news formats through different types of newspapers, television, radio, and online media is seen as a positive characteristic of media systems, especially since ownership diversity does not automatically translate into news format diversity. We make a connection between diversity of news formats and innovation in journalism: As news media seek to develop new news formats and solutions, broadcasters and news editors are setting up “news labs” to meet the expectations of their audiences. New storytelling methods and algorithms are being experimented with. This chapter collects examples of good practices of innovation in journalism in the countries participating in the 2021 MDM, but it also offers the opportunity to look elsewhere. It becomes clear that output is changing and diversifying thanks to innovation, and that innovation shapes newsroom culture as well as the journalist profession.
In the chapter "Explaining gender equality in news content: Modernisation and a gendered media field" by Monika Djerf-Pierre, the author examines the possible explanations to the variations in gender equality in news media content across the globe, by drawing from two different approaches: the modernisation approach and the gendered media fields approach. The modernisation approach links the level of gender equality in the media to broader processes of socio-economic development and to the standing of women in society at large. The gendered field approach instead puts focus on how conditions in the media field influence the status of women in the news media in different societies. The results show that the media-world of news is considerably less “gender equal” than the “real-world”, but also that both approaches are important to consider; the extent to which gender inequalities in the news have been alleviated depends on a combination of societal and media field factors. Countries where women have a higher standing in society, more women in the journalism field, and more autonomy for journalists, also have more gender equality in the news.
This introductory chapter by Monika Djerf-Pierre and Maria Edström provides the rationale behind the project Comparing gender and media equality across the globe and clarifies the normative theories supporting the strive for gender equality in and through the news media. The project examines equality in news media content as well as in news media organisations and conducts empirical analyses of both the causes and consequences of media and gender equality in countries across the globe. Furthermore, a unique dataset is developed within the project; The GEM dataset pools together existing comparative data on gender equality in the media, making them available for use by the global research community. The chapter also highlights previous research, discusses the key methodological considerations, explains the value of the various datasets used in the project, and provides an overview on the global commitments to improve gender equality in the media, as a context for this study. Finally, we give an overview of the whole book and a summary of the main insights from the project:
In chapter 2, "The GEM Index: Constructing a unitary measure of gender equality in the news" by Monika Djerf-Pierre and Maria Edström, the authors develop a unitary measure of gender equality in news media content. Although gender and journalism has been a prolific area of research since the 1970s, we still lack a robust and easy-to-use measure to quantify, assess, and track the magnitude and persistence of gender inequalities in the news. By drawing from data collected by the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), the authors devise the Gender Equality in the news Media Index (GEM-I) – a composite index that estimate the gender gap between women and men regarding their status in the news. The GEM-I confirms a male bias in the news. Most countries in the world display news cultures that to various degrees marginalises women. Women get a regular but unequal presence in the news and more seldom appear in roles and topics that are gender-typed as masculine, such as politics and economy.
The lack of women’s voices, status, and recognition in the news media is a challenge to both human rights and a sustainable future. Comparing Gender and Media Equality across the Globe addresses longstanding questions in the study of gender equality in media content and media organisations across countries and over time. Drawing on data from the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), and the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), this book offers new insights into the qualities, causes, and consequences of gender equality in and through the news media. The book contributes to the critical discussion on gender and journalism, showing that the news media do not reflect reality when it comes to the actual progress of gender equality in societies across the globe. The study aims to inspire future research by making existing data on gender and news media equality available to the global research community. The book presents the GEM-dataset, comprising hundreds of indicators on media and gender equality, and the GEM-Index, an easy to use measure to keep track of key aspects of gender equality in television, radio, newspapers, and online.
“A trailblazing collection of high-quality studies from leading researchers all around the world. This splendidly edited book meets the great need for a comparative analysis of gender equality in and through news media in different regions. It is unique, full of useful empirical evidence, new insights, and reflections. This should without a doubt be required reading for anyone dealing with this issue – not least from the perspective of Agenda 2030”.
– Professor Ulla Carlsson, UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Expression, Media Development and Global Policy at the University of Gothenburg
Why did citizens adhere to the strict measures imposed by national authorities during the early phase of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020? One part of the answer is the way the first press conferences constituted the situation as an urgent crisis and the authorities as legitimate leaders in charge. This chapter examines the rhetoric of government press conferences in Scandinavia during the initial outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. I discuss the press conference as a rhetorical genre and establish the studied press conferences as instances of a subgenre of the political press conference: the justifying press conference. Phases, procedures, and aims of this subgenre are defined, and the arrival phase is particularly examined. This chapter demonstrates how the multimodal aspects of the press conferences contributed to constituting the pandemic as an emergency and establishing the ethos of the authorities as active and responsible. This constitution functioned as a multimodal justification of the measures and actions taken and the legitimising of the power of the authorities in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
Det svenska medielandskapet utvecklas i ett nära samspel med det omgivande samhället. De sociala, ekonomiska, politiska och teknologiska landskapen formar – och formas av – medielandskapet i en ständigt pågående process. I MedieSverige 2023 får läsaren en bred och aktuell översikt över det svenska medielandskapet. Genom att först belysa utvecklingen på de medieteknologiska och mediepolitiska områdena i Sverige, går rapporten vidare till att redovisa utvecklingen på publik- och reklammarknaderna, för att avslutningsvis beskriva den svenska mediestrukturen.
MedieSverige 2023 bygger på ett rikt datamaterial från en rad olika källor. Rapporten riktar sig till studenter, lärare, forskare, journalister, beslutsfattare och alla andra som vill lära sig mer om det svenska medielandskapet.
Den första utgåvan av rapportserien MedieSverige utkom för 40 år sedan. MedieSverige 2023 utgör den femtonde volymen i serien. Rapporten är skriven av Ulrika Facht vid Nordicom, Göteborgs universitet.
Strukturen för medierna och marknaden för dem utvecklas i ett nära samspel med det omgivande samhället. De sociala, ekonomiska, politiska och teknologiska landskapen formar – och formas av – medielandskapet i en ständigt pågående process. I MedieSverige 2021 får läsaren en aktuell och bred översikt över dagens svenska medielandskap. Genom att först belysa utvecklingen på de medieteknologiska och mediepolitiska områdena i Sverige, går rapporten vidare till att redovisa utvecklingen på publik- och reklammarknaderna, för att avslutningsvis beskriva den svenska mediestrukturen. MedieSverige 2021 bygger på ett rikt datamaterial från en rad olika källor. Rapporten riktar sig till studenter, lärare, forskare, journalister, beslutsfattare och alla andra som vill lära sig mer om utvecklingen på den svenska mediemarknaden. Den första utgåvan av rapportserien MedieSverige utkom för över 30 år sedan. MedieSverige 2021 utgör den fjortonde volymen i serien. Rapporten är skriven av Ulrika Facht och Jonas Ohlsson vid Nordicom, Göteborgs universitet.
Political workers represent a category of workers whose professional reliance on social media is well-documented. However, while many studies inquire about the role of social media in politics per se, ours is designed to capture political workers’ subjective experiences of what it is like to live and work in the post-digital society. This involves asking to what extent – and at what perceived cost – political workers intentionally seek to self-regulate their media use in the direction of disconnection. Qualitative interviews with 14 Norwegian politicians serve as our window into personal experiences of political work under post-digital conditions and into daily, morally induced dilemmas pertaining to work-related use of digital, connective technology. Our results suggest that today’s political workers are “post-digital experts”, which is required to learn how to endure the entrapping and distracting mechanisms of the post-digital society.
This chapter expands the understanding of contemporary disconnective technologies by providing a case study of a mundane, low-tech artefact that has gained popularity in both private and public spaces: the mobile phone box. A mobile phone box (or a phone basket, as it is often called) is a place to put away smartphones for shorter or longer durations; boxes range from sophisticated products to simple homemade solutions. In this chapter, we identify the mobile phone box as a post-digital consumer object, representing the disenchantment with hyper-connected life that is visible in studies of digital disconnection. To scrutinise the diverse meanings of the artefact – and the broader discussion about the role of connective technologies in our lives – we investigate the debate following a Swedish trade association’s decision to award the mobile phone box the title “Christmas Gift of the Year” in 2019. Our analysis indicates that the box, and the solutions it embodies – putting away one’s phone – is highly contested, yet also an indication that the digital backlash and disconnection sentiments have become part of mainstream culture. The chapter contributes insights into hitherto under-researched guises of the post-digital and the kind of discursive battles that this condition may trigger.
Although the legitimacy of public service media (PSM) is often mentioned in the context of frameworks, such as the European Broadcasting Union’s contribution to society initiative, the emphasis is rarely on the concept of legitimacy and its meanings. This chapter provides different theoretical perspectives on the concept of legitimacy and argues that to conceptualise legitimacy as perception can be particularly helpful in research investigating PSM’s potential contribution to society. To illustrate this argument, past debates in the context of public value are analysed to show how the legitimacy of PSM has been primarily understood as the result of strategic communication processes. In addition, several research questions, methodological approaches, and challenges that can be considered in research on PSM by understanding legitimacy as perception are outlined.
Codes of ethics are one of the most widespread instruments of (self-)regulation for journalistic activity, pointing out the best professional practices and ethical standards to be followed and the need to allow some kind of scrutiny by the public. Such codes have different names, scope, authorship, range of action, and enforcement capacity, as can be seen in the various reports of the 18 countries participating in the 2021 Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM) research project. In this chapter, an historical overview of the evolution of journalistic codes of ethics in different national media contexts is given, as well as an analysis of the cornerstones such codes are built upon in various countries. We discuss the specific virtues and shortcomings of such codes, with a particular emphasis on the new challenges brought by the digital media environment. The role played by codes of ethics, compared with the laws that regulate media, is also addressed.
To shed light on the rhetorical aspects of communication during crisis, we examined the Norwegian discourse on Facebook and Twitter related to the issue of Covid-19 vaccines. Based on our review of recent Nordic studies, we compare our findings with existing studies on social media and Covid-19 in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. We apply the conceptual frame of rhetorical citizenship in our analysis of the rhetorical practices by Norwegian health authorities and how citizens perceived, supported, or contested information about Covid-19 vaccines between July 2020 and March 2021. The analysis shows a change over time and a shift of moods and arguments reflecting the unfolding of the crisis, going from scepticism to optimism, to disappointment and critique of the health authorities. Observing that social media dynamics may further unproductive dissensus, we argue that rhetorical practices are an essential aspect of communication strategies to maintain civic deliberation and trust during crisis management.
In the public debate, problems due to excessive use of digital media are often explained with reference to neurological functions and addressed through calls for self-regulation. This digital backlash and the desire to disconnect from the digital environment can be understood as the latest expression of the perennial concern with adverse media effects. For decades, media and communication research has dealt with the question of what the media do to us, pointing out the complex entanglement of social, psychological, technological, political, cultural, and economic aspects that are part of the question. The difficulties involved in reaching any absolute conclusions have motivated critical media studies to formulate different research problems and thus risking missing the opportunity to make an important contribution in one of the more pressing public debates of our time. Drawing on Latour’s distinctions between “matters of facts” and “matters of concern”, in this chapter, we suggest that critical media and communication scholars ought to treat media effects as a matter of concern to remain a relevant actor in the public debate about problematic media use.
This chapter presents main challenges to the field of corporate crisis management and crisis communication, as well as to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) during the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite variations in state strategies for dealing with Covid-19, conditions and ways of handling the crisis of the SMEs appear to be quite similar in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, lending confirmation to the idea of a specific Nordic model. As SMEs were not prepared for this type of crisis, many of them turned to their trade associations for help in dealing with the problems created by the pandemic (lockdown, no income, lay-offs, etc.). Hence, based on a small explorative study, we also discuss in this chapter the role and communication of the trade associations in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, acting as intermediaries between companies, government, media, and the public in the rhetorical arena of the Covid-19 pandemic. The trade associations succeeded in increasing the media coverage of SMEs, which had an important impact on solutions such as state support packages and the communication with members (extra-communication) and staff despite lockdown and remote work.
The central question in the chapter "Fairer sex or fairer system? Exploring the relationship between gender equality in the media and media corruption", by Mathias Färdigh, is whether results from previous research on the share of women in parliament and lower levels of corruption also pertains to the relationship between the share of women journalists and lower levels of corruption in the media. Previous research points out two plausible assumptions. The first is that women possess certain characteristics and therefore do not descend to corruption to the same extent as men (the fairer sex hypothesis). The second assumption is instead that it is the system in which women live and operate that affects the level of media corruption (the fairer system hypothesis). Based on these two alternative assumptions, the purpose of chapter 7 is to examine which of the two is the most appropriate when it comes to understanding the mechanisms behind media corruption: Is it the share of women journalists in the media or is it the system where women journalists live and operate, that affects the level of media corruption or both? The chapter suggests that the level of gender equality in a society has a bigger impact on reducing media corruption than the share of women journalists.
The Covid-19 pandemic crisis, and the ensuing diffusion of remote work, revived the debate about work meaningfulness, leading many workers to question their hyperconnected worklives. In Italy, this discussion has been animated by the “south working” proposition, which promotes moving towards the south of the country to work remotely and enjoy a slower pace of life and lower costs of living, while contributing to the revitalisation of rural and nonmetropolitan areas. Through digital ethnographic research that employs a variety of data sources, in this chapter I reconstruct the debate around south working across Italian mainstream and social media. I critically discuss the role that hyperconnectivity, disconnection, and digital work lifestyles play in this conversation, reflecting on the significance of the south working proposition in context of new aspirations for a “good life” that are distinctive of the post-pandemic scenario.
The contributions in this book shed light on the complexity of surveillance in a digital age and problematise power relations between the many actors involved in the development and performance of surveillance culture. More and more actors and practices play an increasing role in our contemporary digitalised society, and the chapters show how people negotiate surveillance in their use of digital media, often knowingly leaving digital footprints, and sometimes trying to avoid surveillance. The digital transformation will continue in the foreseeable future. The coordination and analysis of data is viewed by many government agencies, corporations, and other actors as important tools for improving public administration, health, and economic growth. For this development to be legitimate, it is important that hard values, such as technical and legal developments, and soft values, such as ethical and cultural values, are taken into consideration.
The possibilities to surveil people have increased and been further refined with the implementation of digital communication over the last couple of decades, and with the ongoing process of digital transformation, surveillance can now go in any direction, leaving a label such as “surveillance state” somewhat outdated. Corporations and governmental organisations may surveil people, people may surveil each other, and surveillance may take place in subtle ways that are difficult for the surveilled to detect. In David Lyon’s terms, we are living in a “culture of surveillance”, a culture that surrounds and affects our everyday life. Today, it is of utmost relevance to study people’s attitudes, motives, and behaviours in relation to the fact that we live in a culture of surveillance. This includes the need for cultural and ethical perspectives to understand and nuanced contemporary discussions on surveillance, not least in the highly digitalised context of the Nordic countries. The chapters in this anthology address these issues from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical frameworks.
The Covid-19 pandemic highlights two democratic roles of the news media during a crisis: to provide important information and to be a critical voice of decisions made by those in power. In this chapter, we examine how the media in Iceland and Sweden conveyed authorities’ messages and to what extent the authorities’ actions were questioned. The study is based on content analysis of news reports collected during the first year of the pandemic (2020). Our findings show that reporting largely followed an informative discourse and that health and economy were the dominant themes. Authorities in both countries relied heavily on experts to convey information, which was reflected in the news coverage. Critical reporting on the implemented strategies and protective measures was limited, more so in Iceland than in Sweden, but the consequences of the pandemic were clearly more dire in the latter context. Discourses in both countries were more national than international, with only few references made to other countries, including Nordic neighbours.
The Icelandic media system shares many characteristics with the media systems of other Nordic countries. In a Nordic comparison, however, the state has until very recently been less active in the media market, and the consensual characteristic of the Nordic media welfare state model has been largely absent. The media market in Iceland has been in turmoil for over a decade, and most news media companies have been run at a loss or with meagre returns for years. This has led to a fundamental but hotly debated shift in media policy, introducing press subsidies for the first time. It has thus been argued that in Iceland, a market libertarian approach to media policy has been challenged by the Nordic media welfare state model. Findings from an analysis of the legislative debate about the media policy change indicate that support for a Nordic media welfare state model is unstable in Icelandic politics, thus its future is uncertain.
An important characteristic of the Nordic media model is consensual relations between state and industry stakeholders. However, recent studies indicate that these relationships have become less consensual in some Nordic countries. In this article, we investigate the developments and current situation in the Norwegian media and literary field through a comparative case study of the print news media and the book market. In both industries, the regulatory schemes were developed, while democratic corporatist solutions were widespread. Despite large political transformations in other societal sectors, we find that the most important parts of the two systems are still intact, while the state remains predominantly supportive. In the field of news media, intra-industry relations are largely intact, enabling the field to protect their privileges from outsiders and unwanted political initiatives. In the more heterogenous and less organised field of literature, tensions between actors are rising, and this poses a threat to the Norwegian literary welfare state.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal shook political establishments and news audiences alike in 2018. The scandal, which figures prominently in accounts of the “techlash”, has been followed by a substantial reorientation in the attitudes held towards the digital sector. The aim of this chapter is to tell the story of the developing history of the digital backlash as seen through an empirical analysis of the Danish media coverage of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. While we find that the public’s view of Zuckerberg, Facebook, and the tech industry did change dramatically, we suggest that this was anticipated by a long-term change in the media representation of them in the years before. This challenges the notion of quick and sudden pushback, as implied by the metaphor of a backlash, instead suggesting that the scandal is part of a gradual process of change in public opinion regarding technology companies, their CEOs, and their operations.
Mediebarometern är en årlig undersökning av den svenska befolkningens tillgång till, och användning av, olika typer av medier. Undersökningen har genomförts sedan 1979 och det gör Mediebarometern till den äldsta studien i sitt slag i världen. Resultaten i 2020 års undersökning bygger på svar från omkring 6 000 slumpmässigt utvalda personer i åldern 9 till 85 år. I Mediebarometern 2021: Tema bokläsning analyseras hur samhällets digitalisering påverkat svenska befolkningens bokvanor.
Rapporten har skrivits av Karin Hellingwerf vid Nordicom.
Mediebarometern är en årlig undersökning av den svenska befolkningens tillgång till, och användning av, olika typer av medier. Undersökningen har genomförts sedan 1979 och det gör Mediebarometern till den äldsta studien i sitt slag i världen. Resultaten i 2023 års undersökning bygger på svar från omkring 6 000 slumpmässigt utvalda personer i åldern 9 till 85 år.
Mediebarometern 2023: Tema digitala morgontidningsprenumeranter undersöker tillgången till prenumerationer på digitala morgontidningar bland olika grupper i den svenska befolkningen. Studien analyserar hur denna tillgång relaterar till faktorer som tillgång till medieteknik, tillgång till olika former av medieabonnemang samt nyhetskonsumtion. Undersökningen bygger på data från Mediebarometern 2023 och fokuserar på personer i åldern 25 till 85 år. Rapporten har skrivits av Karin Hellingwerf vid Nordicom.