To Örebro University

This study examines the construction of media literacy in a special issue on source criticism of the Swedish children's comic Bamse - Varldens Starkaste Bjorn [Bamse - The World's Strongest Bear]. This is done with the purpose of understanding what values, perspectives, and practices are promoted when media literacy is communicated via children's edutainment media. Using narrative and discourse analysis, we problematise how notions of truth (such as post-truth) guide much of the discourse on digital media in today's post-political society, and how that and individualisation shape notions of media literacy. This is visible in the analysed case in how source criticism is constructed in relation to notions of truth and falsehood, and as moral lessons aimed at the individual media user. We argue that such an individualised, decontextualised, and depoliticised take on media literacy is problematic and an expression of neoliberalism and a middle-class gaze.

Building on the notion of the Greek crisis as a discursive event and revisiting theories about the sociocultural role of television fiction, this chapter introduces the latter as a framing mechanism through which events of the social world are defined and assessed. By uncovering the dominant interpretative frames underlying the story, setting, characters and plot of the popular Greek television comedy Piso Sto Spiti (MEGA channel, 2011–2013), this analysis illustrates television fiction’s contribution to the construction of the root causes of the crisis as tied to the cultural traits of Greeks, the impossibility of change and the futility of an alternative, left-wing consideration of the crisis, as well as an attempt to morally assess the situation at hand.

This article investigates how the Eurozone crisis is thematically negotiated in a popular Greek television comedy. Inspired by the increasing interest in the ideological role of news media during the Eurozone crisis of the late 2000s, it turns the spotlight on the sphere of entertainment in an attempt to address the importance of fictional mediations and meaning-making processes. To that end, it proposes an understanding of television fiction as an accommodator and shaper of ‘hot moments’, instigating processes of self-assessment and evaluation of change. More specifically, the study examines the ways in which the family comedy Piso sto Spiti (MEGA Channel, 2011–2013) provides culturally based understandings of the Eurozone crisis by depicting it as associated with inherent flaws of the modern Greek and by assessing the possibility of change through a juxtaposition with national ‘others’. At the same time, it identifies ways that ideology leaks from television fiction in its interaction with other media discourses simultaneously circulating within a society.

This study engages with the cultural consequences of the self-disparaging politics of television satire. It focuses on an emblematic program of Greek television fiction, Oi Afthairetoi (MEGA channel, 1989–1991) and the ways it both constructs and ridicules a particular version of the Greek self, the “Neoellinas”. By proposing a wider understanding of the political side-effects of television satire, which have so far been mainly addressed within the study of political satire, it turns the attention toward the role of satirical discourse in a public’s view on its national self in times of change or transition. More specifically, while it recognizes the contradictory impact that satire can have on society, it applies the concept of “satiric misfire” as a means to understand satirical endeavors which reinforce rather than counter the problematics they set out to fight against in the first place.

Popular geopolitics has recognized in popular culture a platform where geopolitical imaginations are created and discursive constructions of ‘self’ and ‘other’ take place. However, limited work has been done on the employment of specific methodological tools of Critical Discourse Analysis on popular culture texts. This article attempts a hands-on analysis on an episode of a popular product of Greek television fiction (Oi Aparadektoi), and constitutes a combination of theoretical discussion, on one hand, and data presentation and analysis, on the other. Building on a growing body of literature arguing in favor of popular culture’s value for study of politics, the main argument is that television fiction can, and should be, included in investigations of the (geo)politics of the contemporary world and the politics of (national) identity, while special focus is placed on how a discourse-oriented approach can be adopted for the study of products of television fiction.

The private life of a nation in crisis offers in-depth studies of the fictional reconstruction and negotiation of moments of heightened societal tension that take place throughout the life of a nation. Its constituent papers focus on the role of television fiction in representing and shaping either critical moments, events, or periods that disrupt the normal pace of life, or unresolved societal tensions that become part of everyday life. What is more, the papers investigate the socio-cultural consequences of representations, in terms of the interpretative lenses television fiction provides for understanding the events as such. The empirical focus is placed on television fiction produced and broadcast in Greece, a country that has recently received a large share of publicity because of its protagonistic role in the late 2000s Eurozone crisis and, at the same time, a media landscape with multiple aspects that still remain uncharted. The thesis contains case studies from different periods of Greek television fiction, from 1989 – the year of the launch of the first private channels in Greece – onwards, in an attempt to connect the overall project to the production context characterizing commercial television, another aspect of European television in the process of continuous exploration. Through a close analysis of specific television programmes, as well as a complementary study of the production culture of private television in Greece, this thesis aspires to contribute to the general question regarding the role of the media in critical, uncertain, or tumultuous times, with an emphasis on television fiction’s potential to recode their meaning and to reflect back on society.

This study examines the boundaries and limitations of the diffusion of "development journalism" among both the editorial body and the journalist body in the Egyptian newsrooms after the 2011 Arab Spring. Newsrooms under study represent different perspectives including state-owned, private-independent, and opposition newspapers. Through in-depth interviews with thirty-seven editors in chief and journalists, the authors studied how the editors and journalists at each newspaper define development journalism, whether the diffusion of development journalism follows a top-down or bottom-up approach, and if development journalism could influence the setting of the news agenda. Results show that the differences are not only apparent in the way development journalism is defined inside the different news organizations, but also between managers and journalists within each. Organizational structures and technological developments are as well factors that affect the way development journalism is diffused inside newsrooms.

This study examines the boundaries and limitations of the diffusion of "development journalism" among both the editorial body and the journalist body in the Egyptian newsrooms after the 2011 Arab Spring. Newsrooms under study represent different perspectives including state-owned, private-independent, and opposition newspapers. Through in-depth interviews with thirty-seven editors in chief and journalists, the authors studied how the editors and journalists at each newspaper define development journalism, whether the diffusion of development journalism follows a top-down or bottom-up approach, and if development journalism could influence the setting of the news agenda. Results show that the differences are not only apparent in the way development journalism is defined inside the different news organizations, but also between managers and journalists within each. Organizational structures and technological developments are as well factors that affect the way development journalism is diffused inside newsrooms.

The media’s portrayal of ice hockey and masculinity has often been viewed as a patriarchal domain reinforcing hyper-masculine traits. However, scholars argue that contemporary sports are becoming more inclusive, less misogynistic, and challenging traditional notions of masculinity. This chapter explores the practices of masculinity amongst ice hockey-playing men in Sweden using Instagram posts. The data includes images and comments, and the methods combine visual and textual content analysis. The study applies the theoretical concepts of hybridity/elasticity and hegemony to analyze the data. While ice hockey has been associated with so-called traditional masculinity, the chapter identifies various traits of masculinity portrayed by ice hockey-playing men. These include the sexualizing of ice hockey men, who are often expected to be sexually driven subjects, and homophobic and misogynistic expressions, which can together take different and sometimes contradictory forms. The discussion highlights Instagram’s potential to portray ice hockey-playing men and masculinities as progressive or ‘new’, but also as conservative and ‘old.’

Based on semi-structured interviews with journalists in six European countries, this article examines the extent to which the findings of recent literature about the representation of migrants in European media content are reflected in the perceptions of journalists themselves about the way in which migrants are represented in the media discourses produced by their outlets. It finds that the four key findings of the literature were by and large confirmed, namely inaccurate group labelling and designation, negative or victimised representation, underrepresentation of migrants in quotations, and the scarce reference to a wider European context. Finally, the article discusses media professionals’ self-reported awareness about general professional ethics versus diversity-specific ethics, and about the way in which their outlets cover news involving ‘‘new’’ immigrants, i.e. nationals of non-European Union countries residing in the European Union, and examines the differences between media practices and perceptions in ‘‘old’’ and ‘‘new’’ immigration countries.

For a full explanation of the methodology of the research project, please see the introduction in this themed section: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2012.740213.

Recent instances of global crisis reporting on climate change and the financial crisis are early embryos of a new form of journalism that is increasingly needed in global times: global journalism. Instead of associating global journalism with national comparisons of media systems or defining it as an ethically «corrective» form of journalism, Peter Berglez sets out to develop the idea of global journalism as an epistemological updating of everyday mainstream news media. He theoretically understands and explains global journalism as a concrete practice, which can be applied in research, training, and reporting. He argues that the future of professional news journalism is about leaving behind the dominant national outlook for the sake of a more integrated(global) outlook on society. Emerging examples of global journalism are analyzed throughout the book alongside the historical background and the challenges it faces.

This article argues that journalism scholars and practitioners worldwide should not view 2030, i.e. the year in which the UN Agenda sustainable development goals are to be fulfilled, as a symbolic date, but instead as a real deadline. Such a posture could spur discussion about what more the media could do in these remaining years to promote sustainable development, as well as concrete action. To normatively support such a process in this context, the purpose of this contribution is to suggest news value criteria tailored to manage the challenges of sustainable development. They presuppose a well-functioning relationship between the media’s business and planetary needs. The former concern how to finance journalism and attract audiences/users, while the latter concern what kind of journalism a sustainable world de facto requires. The proposed news value criteria could serve as a point of departure for the development of sustainability-oriented news, which could be jointly tested and configurated by scholars and practitioners.

In research into interorganizational collaboration (IOC), the number of contributions highlighting the constitutive role of communication constantly seems to increase. However, surprisingly few contributions are devoted to communication studies that concentrate on the use of different media. An advanced “mediatedness” perspective is increasingly required, not least in terms of theory, focusing on how different media, as objects, tools and agents altogether constitute collaboration through complex combinations and asymmetric usage patterns. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing IOCs as media-driven processes and practices, which is highly relational. Of particular importance are the diachronic transformations of meaning-making when discursive content (sketchy notes, brainstorming, digital threads, presentation program slides, etc.) is transferred and materialized into stable ideas, proposals or solutions; moving from one media context to another; and its impact on the collaborations’ outcome.

This paper argues for theoretically conceptualizing geopolitical media spheres to understand contemporary communication and information processes including journalism in the current what some call “multipolar” society and world order. We understand geopolitical media spheres as competitive and conflict-oriented forms of mediated communication, dynamically operating in-between but still in connection with media globalization processes and national media systems. In this way, the concept of geopolitical media spheres provides a necessary to some extent regionalized or decentralized mode of understanding cross-border communication, in line with overall trends of polarizing de-globalization. We propose an extended mode of understanding national media systems’ involvement in cross-border conflicts and competition by focusing on the analytical framework of media geopolitical spheres. Media system literature is at a crossroad, which includes the discussion in media and communication studies and journalism studies that has been centered around media globalization vs. nation-state autonomy. The rise of such phenomena as hybrid warfare, and struggle for natural resources, has paved the way for deeper impact and importance of transnational media spheres in-between the global and national, driven by a geopolitization of information- and communication processes. 

In globalized and digitalized economies, how could we compare the role of media in politics in different countries? The growth of transnational social media platforms; the new borderless patterns of media distribution and consumption, and the consequential need for transnational and harmonized digital media policies have caused challenges for scholars in the field of comparative studies (Siebert & Schram 1956; Hallin & Mancini 2004). A problem is that traditional conceptualizations of media systems still dominate (cf. Humprecht et al. 2022; Marques & Vos 2023). Therefore, the purpose is to theorize emerging media systems constituted by combinations of domestic/cross-border institutionalized/de-institutionalized relations. Through a literature review and results from the EU-funded project Mediadelcom, we argue as follows:

(1) The power of de-institutionalizing digital communication (Mancini 2020), and its challenging of legacy media organizations, requires that the polarized pluralist/corporatist/liberal classifications of Hallin & Mancini (2004) become more changeable and dynamically combined dimensions within and across nation-states, and updated with theory about global politics and communication (Hellmueller & Berglez 2022). For example, this enables understandings of the, often transnationally interconnected, expansion of polarized politics across countries’ digital public spheres.

(2) Nation-states should be grouped along categories of domestic-cross-border conditions and relations (prel. the multipolar media system, global pluralist media system, and de-globalizing media system). Here, different types and levels of institutionalized/de-institutionalized movement across borders thus becomes an important unit of comparison. 

(3) Thereby we propose a framework for comparative studies of cross-border dynamic (CBD) media systems; their role within political systems, and vice versa.

References

Hallin, D., Mancini, P. (2004) Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Hellmueller, L., Berglez, P. (2022) “Future Conceptual Challenges of Cross-Border Journalism”, Journalism, 1-22. 

Humprecht, E. et al. (2022) “Media Systems in the Digital Age: An Empirical Comparison of 30 Countries”, Journal of Communication 72: 145-164. 

Mancini, P. (2020) “Comparing Media Systems and the Digital Age”, International Journal of Communication 14: 5761-5774.

This study examines domestic media’s coverage of foreign wildfires from a climate change perspective. It explores Swedish newspapers’ coverage of wildfires in Australia, the Mediterranean region and the USA during a three-year period (February 2013–March 2016), focusing on how and to what extent climate change is viewed as an underlying cause. A central result is that climate change is mentioned far more often in the case of Australian wildfires than of fires in the other two regions. Another finding is that the climate change issue became more prominent after a severe domestic wildfire in 2014. These observations are also examined qualitatively through a combined frame and discourse study where the importance of foreign news values, the use of foreign sources, cultural proximity/distance, and domestication procedures are analyzed. In conclusion, foreign, domestic, and cultural factors in climate change reporting in relation to extreme events are further discussed.

In this thesis, I addressed the representation of the Roma in Romanian newspapers, television news, and social media. I focused on Romania, a country with the largest Roma population in Europe, and where the Roma have historically experienced centuries of discrimination and social exclusion. I conducted an in-depth Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to reveal what kind of discourses are used to represent this minority group, after Romania joined the European Union. The analysis in this thesis confirms the well-documented discourses in reference to Roma as criminal, uneducated, dirty, immoral, and as resisting assimilation into wider society. In addition, this research shows how these discourses have been incorporated into newer forms specific to the current political climate across Europe, increasingly dominated by right-wing populist politics, where minority groups, such as the Roma have become easy targets for politicians to justify their political failures and are scapegoated for lack of jobs, declining economic prosperity, instability, fears of immigration and of the loss of national autonomy and traditions. The detailed MCDA analysis allowed me to show how racism can be communicated in a variety of ways, not so much in relation to biological differences but in terms of culture, behaviour, traditions and national values. The multimodal approach was instrumental in showing how different media, with their different affordances have their specific way of avoiding overt racism while nevertheless the ideology remains. We see how the combination of different modes help to communicate the civil nature of violent actions, such as camp evictions, or the representation of poverty as a choice, rather than embedded in the social structures. Moreover we see on social media how ‘simple fun’, in the form of humour and ridicule, is loaded with extreme forms of racism that even call for ethnic cleansing.

The article examines preliminary results of a focus group study where Arabic speakers living in Stockholm discuss matters of citizenship and belonging in relation to their use of Arabic- and Swedish-language television. The study relies on theories on diasporic groups' media use. The paper concludes that belonging to the country of origin appears as more clearly and strongly felt than belonging to the pan-Arabic community, and that participants' sense of belonging does not relate in any direct way to their media choices.

Neoliberal globalisation has expanded transnational corporations’ (TNCs) boundaries of operation and sphere of exploitation, particularly in the Global South where much of the production of traditional TNC manufacturing now occurs. In this article, using a longitudinal approach, I conduct a detailed critical discourse analysis of a large Swedish press corpus reporting on TNC activities in Global South countries. The analysis suggests that the issue of workers’ conditions is made relevant to the Swedish public through a “consumer framework” that not only confers proximity and relevance on the topic, but also effectively recontextualises agency and responsibility towards particular or individual social actors, obscuring the class dimension of labour relations and global production. Moreover, rooted in a highly problematic colonial imagery, exploitation in the Global South is seen as a “cultural problem” of “them” rather than a problem related to the social and spatial relations of global capitalism. 

This thesis examines the mediated representation of workers’ working conditions in the Global South. Using a qualitative approach inspired by Critical Discourse Studies, it focuses on ideological representation in newspapers from Sweden, the USA, Chile and China/Hong Kong. The aims are to understand how working conditions are represented; identify key themes of news reporting; understand how newspapers convey ideological discourses about ‘foreign’ and ‘distant’ working conditions; and provide critical insights into how the topic is represented in newspapers in terms of its relevance (to a national readership) as well as agency and responsibility (i.e. who is responsible for working conditions?) and the possible ideological impact thereof on the reader and their knowledge/interpretation of this issue.

The results suggest that the general structuring of Swedish media discourse on workers’ conditions runs thematically across various parts/sections of the production industry: garments, electronics, food, furniture and toys. In addition, further themes/frames are used in the coverage (working conditions in the workplace, salary, conditions of employment, housing, workforce composition and workers’ organizations), further particularising the explored focus of media representation.

The study also suggests that mainstream news media represent working conditions in ways that exclude a range of key issues, actors and causalities. Constructed at the level of media discourse, such problematic representations largely conceal the structural, institutional and corporatist responsibility behind the global exploitation of workers and their largely unfavourable working conditions. Instead, responsibility for those working conditions is effectively and strategically shifted away from the wider global system of capitalist-driven exploitation into individual social actors, in both the Western world (in the form of particular transnational corporations and in the form of readers/ users as consumers) and the Global South (in the form of local factory owners, governments, officials etc.).

Speaking from a critical perspective and offering a number of empirically-funded insights, the study suggests that newspapers construct the key topic as relevant through a number of thematic and argumentative frames. Of these, the ‘consumer framework’ – which effectively serves to shift responsibility away from wider structural socioeconomic causes to an individual level – remains central. The thesis also shows that the representation of working conditions in the Global South is strongly embedded within a highly problematic colonial (or post-colonial) imagery. Therein, the exploitation in the Global South is seen as a localised ‘cultural problem’ of ‘them’ rather than a systematic problem related to global capitalism and its transnational system of social and economic inequality.

The extreme rights early adaptation of digital communication technology has gained plenty of scholarly attention. However, most of the research have been focused on the political discourses, the specific rhetorics(such as hate-speech), community building, and the networking of extreme right organisations in relation to online communication and new media. In recent years a emerging body of work on the specific communicative forms used in facilitating and enabling both collective and connective action repertoires have contributed to greater understanding of how social media and digital communication relates to social mobilisation in general.

Swedish extreme right-wing groups have a long history of alternative media production and today video making and online distribution and circulation of visual clips have become a key strategy in their political communication. Organisations operating within a well developed online infrastructure (including communities, news media outlets and blogs) are also well established actors on commercial platforms such as YouTube and Twitter. This paper explores the video activism deployed by extreme far-right groups in Sweden. It analyses the ideological and aesthetical aspects of extreme visual politics, and the distribution strategies facilitated by YouTube (the circulation of online clips by embedding, linking, etc) The study is based on an analysis of more than 200 clips produced and disseminated by four different organizations pertaining to the Swedish extreme right-wing milieu. It explores the ideological and aesthetic elements of the clips, focusing on the intersection between political messages and visual propaganda. Furthermore it also examines how the circulation of clips come to fore in online platforms deployed by far right groups. 

The study shows that film clip have, at least, three major functions for the extreme right groups. First, by taking part in a mainstream commercial online platform, they confirm the existence of extreme right-wing groups to a potentially greater audience. Second, the content of the clips contributes to a normalization of the socio-political dimensions of extreme right-wing groups. By focusing on practices, discourses and aesthetics that does not necessarily connects to extreme politics, they contribute to a sanitation of neo-fascist politics and practices. Third, YouTube constitutes a political arena in itself, and video production are adjusted and shaped to the specific media logic and communication structures of YouTube. Therefore video activism on YouTube could also be understood as a political practice in its own.

This study focuses on interpersonal communication in the family and among peers in order to empirically examine the general idea that everyday civic talk might develop young people’s civic orientation. Two questions are addressed: (1) What is the significance of civic talk in relation to key dimensions of young people’s civic orientation? (2) What does civic talk in peer settings specifically contribute to young people’s civic orientation? The study is based on survey data from high school students and their parents (N = 1148). The findings offer clear support to the idea that civic talk in everyday contexts matters for young people’s development of political knowledge, democratic values and different forms of civic practices. Civic talk in peer settings contributes uniquely to all dimensions of youths’ civic orientation. Implications of the findings for political socialization research and theories of the democratic mechanisms of civic talk are discussed.

This study examines the effects of informational, interactional and creative forms of Internet use on behavioral and cognitive indicators of youth democratic engagement. Data from an extensive two-wave panel survey of Swedish adolescents (N = 1,520) were examined. Results show that the effects of informational and interactional Internet use on political participation are indirect, with online political interactions acting as an intervening variable. In addition, creative production was found to be a direct positive predictor of online and offline political participation, but negatively related to political knowledge. The effects were statistically significant even when accounting for self-selection and previous levels of democratic engagement. Taken together, these findings contribute novel theoretical insights into the mechanisms by which Internet use may encourage or hinder youths’ democratic engagement.

The convergence of information communication technologies (ICTs) in news-making processes has changed the nature of news production in post-Arab Spring Egypt. Several newsrooms have integrated ICTs into their daily routines to develop their content and reconnect with their audiences. Although on the surface this seems a positive development, it appears that today, just a few years after integrating ICTs, Egyptian newsrooms are lagging behind. This study examines the utilization of ICTs - especially social media - in three Egyptian newsrooms. Three waves of questionnaires in 2012, 2014/2015 and 2018 which constitute a longitudinal survey of ICT convergence across the three newsrooms. The questionnaires' repetition of cross-sectional questions allowed the author to measure changes in newsrooms' adoption of ICTs over this seven-year span. In short, this study measures how newsroom culture has changed in relation to ICTs, how newsroom management views ICTs and the growing role of social media in newsroom operations.

Although Internet technology arrived in Egyptian newsrooms in 1993, it was not until 1996 that the first Egyptian newspaper Al Gomhuria hit the Internet. By 2000, all major Egyptian newspapers had electronic versions on the web claiming to integrate ICT resources in the news production process. In spite of the fact that this trend implies development, whether ICTs have been realised and used in Egyptian newsrooms’ daily routines still needs further examination. This study aims to explore the use and implementation of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), especially Internet technologies (netCTs), in Egyptian newsrooms. Furthermore, the study examines whether/to what extent and in what way(s) Egyptian newsrooms incorporate ICTs in their daily routine. This discussion is important to see the role of newsrooms, before January 25 revolution, in facilitating political discussions with their audience.