Christian Christensen

Stockholm University | SU · Department of Media Studies

While a good deal of research has examined the uses of Twitter in journalism, comparably few research projects employ comparative research designs in order to provide new insights. The present study details Twitter use by public service broadcasters (PSBs) during recent national elections in Norway and Sweden. Utilizing quantitative analysis of soc...

In the decade since the founding of WikiLeaks, no non-leak-related issue has dominated coverage of the organization more than the August 2010 allegations made by two women in Stockholm against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. This case has been addressed on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed on a consistent basis over the past 6 years. The tweets from Wik...

While plenty of work has looked into the uses of Twitter in journalism, comparably few research projects employ comparative research designs in order to provide new insights. The present study, then, details Twitter use by public service broadcasters (PSBs) during recent national elections in Norway and Sweden. Utilizing quantitative analysis of so...

The relatively short history of WikiLeaks (2006–2014) has offered numerous examples of how issues central to media reform (political economy, regulation, ownership, law) emerge from their leaks and activities. As I note, WikiLeaks is not a media reform group nor, for the most part, have WikiLeaks leaks or activities targeted media organizations or...

While social media like Twitter and Facebook carry with them potential for the practice of journalism, novelties like these are also associated with adaptation difficulties – perhaps especially when it comes to the interactive capabilities that services like these afford. This study employs a multi-method approach to study the different uses of Twi...

Whilst social media like Twitter and Facebook carry with them the potential for the practice of journalism, novelties like these are also associated with adaptation difficulties – perhaps especially when it comes to the interactive capabilities that services like these afford. This study employs a multi-method approach to study the different uses o...

There is nothing quite like looking back at something you wrote 6 years ago, particularly when the piece was about “new” technology. Your solid points seem extra solid, and your weak points seem unbearably weak. Most importantly, however, you can see the extent to which your thinking was influenced by dominant understandings and frameworks of the t...

In this article, I consider how WikiLeaks has gone through a series of metamorphoses: from a small, relatively unknown website devoted to giving whistleblowers space to release their material to one of the best-known activist organizations in the world. In addition, it has gone from being an organization that began by operating as an alternative to...

In this essay, the author considers not only what is shown in the WikiLeaks Collateral Murder video but reflects upon what the act of uploading this video symbolized and continues to symbolize and how the multifaceted symbolic value of the video has led to its steady inscription and reinscription into the public consciousness during a wide variety...

Birgitta Jónsdóttir is currently a member of the Icelandic Parliament, where she represents the Pirate Party. Jónsdóttir was an early WikiLeaks volunteer and was one of the key members of the team in Iceland that put together the famous Collateral Murder video. In this wide-ranging discussion with Christian Christensen, Jónsdóttir talks about her w...

With the description of the 2012 election as the ‘most tweeted’ political event in US history in mind, considering the relative media invisibility of the so-called ‘third-party’ presidential candidates in the US election process, and utilizing the understanding of retweeting as conversational practice, the purpose of this paper is to examine the us...

The uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, immediately labeled "the Arab Spring," are best described as processes rather than outcomes. Despite being a common area of media focus due to decades-long geopolitics, the Arab Spring, as a mediatized meta-event, has led to the reemergence of the region as a discursive territory. The communicative...

On December 10, 2011, the first tweet was sent out from the @Sweden Twitter account, a nation-branding project financed by the Swedish government through the Swedish Institute and VisitSweden. Trumpeted by the media both in Sweden and internationally as an exercise in “transparent” and “democratic” nation-branding via the use of Twitter, the @Swede...

As scholars such as Goggin (2009a) have noted, the rapid uptake of ‘smartphones’ has reshaped the ways in which software developers, users, and academics consider the interrelationship between mobility, culture, technology hardware, and the Internet. In addition, this uptake has added a significant new layer of encrustations around what we might de...

The terms 'Twitter Revolution' and 'Facebook Revolution' gained currency during the so-called 'Arab Spring' which began in early 2010. It was then that representatives of the conservative Swedish coalition government began to make increasingly overt statements regarding the role of social media in the uprisings in North Africa, and the desire of th...

Although the use of social media for the purposes of protest organization and dissent in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya was widely reported by bloggers, journalists, and academics, these reports were rarely rooted in detailed research. In fact, the terms “Twitter Revolution” and “Facebook Revolution” have now been called into question as overly te...

In this article, and combining information obtained via interviews and analysis of data from company websites, I will examine the work of documentary film-maker Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films (BNF) within the context of two theoretical frameworks: (1) the coalition model of documentary film/video forwarded by Whiteman (2004); and (2) the horizo...

The purpose of this article is to analyze the use of YouTube by the US military for the spreading of messages and information regarding their presence in Iraq, and, at the same time, to examine the presence on the same YouTube system of a large number of video clips showing members of the US military engaged in violent, anti-social activities. That...

Save for Israel, no other nation participating in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) challenges popular notions of what it means to be “European” (geographically and/or culturally) to the extent than does Turkey. As the nation begins a long process toward membership of the European Union (EU), debates have flared (often in the print and broadcast me...

As a subject of academic research, Turkey has found itself caught in an intellectual and theoretical `no-man's land' located somewhere between south-eastern Europe and the Middle East. This article aims to position the Turkish media experience in relation to those of geographically, politically, economically and historically proximate nations/regio...

Journalism professor Christensen accuses parts of the British media of attitudes and phraseology when reporting on Muslims and Muslim nations, especially Turkey, that they do not employ elsewhere. He writes: "...reports from Muslim nations continue to use religious imagery - the mosque, the praying men, the veiled woman - and unexplained terminolog...

In this article, the author analyzes the texts of newspaper articles from the United States and Britain written in the week following the November 2002 elections in Turkey. The purpose of this research is to examine the degree to which the religious origins of the victorious party, the AKP, were emphasized by newspapers, and the implications of suc...

Since the start of the war in Iraq, much has been made of the fact that a significant number of Americans are turning to British news sources (such as The Guardian and the BBC) for information regarding the conflict, writes Christensen. Figures from The Guardian indicate that approximately 40 per cent of the newspaper's online readers are located i...