Lars Nord

Mid Sweden University · Department of Media and Communication DEMICOM

Very surprisingly, crisis communication patterns in Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic initially developed differently from most other countries in the Western world, specifically in comparison to the otherwise very similar neighboring Nordic countries. Even if some international observations of relaxation and normality have been exaggerated, it i...

«The Challenges of the Digital Society in the Nordic Countries and in Spain: Democracy, Society and Culture» is a book from the research group "The Nordic Model and Culture in the Information Society" of Complutense University in Madrid. It has chapters from Nordic and Spanish academics as detailed in the index, and is a useful portrait of today's...

The aim of this chapter is to examine and compare visual political communications of the populist parties 'Podemos / Unidas Podemos', 'Ciudadanos', and VOX (in Spain) and Sweden Democrats (in Sweden) in recent national elections -- 28 April and 10 November 2019 in Spain, and 14 September 2014 and 9 September 2018 in Sweden. The rise of populist pol...

Valrörelser är demokratins högtidsstund. Då mobiliserar de politiska partierna allt de har för att nå så många väljare som möjligt. Men hur går det egentligen till? Hur väljer partierna sina budskap och hur resonerar de när de lägger upp sina kampanjer? I Politik är att vinna presenterar tre forskare en ny analys av hur valkampanjer bedrivs i Sv...

This paper looks into how in most European countries, legacy media have been traditionally perceived as reliable providers of accurate information, not at least during crises and stressful situations. During the outbreak of the coronavirus sars-cov-2 which exploded in Europe in Spring 2020, social media were socially accepted as sources of trustf...

This study tests the explanatory strength of the party-centered theory of electoral campaign professionalism. The theory was previously subject to testing in various types of elections during the first decade of the new millennium, covering Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Finland. Nevertheless, empirical research in this field has been on hold for al...

The visual components of political communication are closely related to the ongoing personalization of politics. Not only do the media focus their stories on candidates and leaders, but also the parties’ own work with the electoral campaigns and political propaganda have an increasing focus on the individual candidates and leaders. This study focus...

Televised political advertising appears in very different national political communication contexts. Sweden is an interesting case study. For many years, political ads on TV were not allowed at all. However, with the transition from analog to digital terrestrial television the public service obligations of the “hybrid” channel TV4 were dismantled....

Euroflections is an academic report on the European elections 2019. With Euroflections we want to provide the public with interesting reflections on the election campaigns and their main actors, namely the voters, the parties and the media. In total, more than 70 experts in political science and political communication representing almost every EU...

Det här kapitlet handlar om svensk mediepolitik, eller med andra ord om statens roll i (förhållande till) medielandskapet. Det finns mycket politik – kulturpolitik, näringslivspolitik, konkurrenslagstiftning, skattelagstiftning – som påverkar medierna. Men i vår definition av mediepolitik syftar vi främst på åtgärder som specifikt riktas mot medies...

The global financial crisis that broke out in 2008 affected a large number of governmental, public, and private organizations. This article explores communication of public authorities in Sweden during the crisis, and highlights their discursive strategies between 2008 and 2010, analyzing press releases. As an analytical point of departure, complex...

One of the main debates within journalism research during the last decade has been the role of citizens as contributors or, conversely, as threats to the practice of journalism. While participation has been explored from many different theoretical, empirical, and methodological perspectives, one perspective remains noticeably underexplored – the pe...

Professionalization and digitalization are two distinctive features of election campaigns in the 21st century. Are existing campaign structures and strategies reinforced by the implementation of new technology, or does this technology radically change campaigning conditions? This article investigates this topic by analysing the two most recent Nati...

The accelerating news cycle means there is a risk that errors become more common, but digital media also allow for correcting errors continuously and being transparent about this. In this study, we investigate Swedish citizens’ attitudes toward errors and corrections. The results demonstrate that citizens have strong expectations that news media pu...

This study uses four waves of panel data to analyze inadvertent learning—that is, learning in the absence of interest or motivation—from watching public service television channels. Previous research suggests that motivation-based gaps in political knowledge are at least partly a function of the political information opportunities provided by the m...

If well managed, crises do not only pose a threat to political actors but also provide opportunities to show action, strengthening credibility and launching new policies. Within the field of crisis communication, research has primarily taken an interest in the rhetorical strategies of actors when explaining successes or failures. In this article, w...

The four British Prime Ministers giving testimony to the Leveson Inquiry choose not to confront the media on issues of large-scale media abuse. "A missed opportunity", John Major said. "I think you certainly do fear the power being directed at you", Tony Blair declared. "We had no mandate", Gordon Brown asserted. The relationship between the media...

In most democracies and for most people, television constitutes the most important source of political and current affairs information. How televi- sion news covers election campaigns may thus have significant influence on how voters perceive and evaluate the candidates, parties, and issues at stake. At the same time, critics claim that media comme...

It has been suggested that transparency will change the way journalism is being produced as well as increase its credibility. However, little research has been conducted to assess the connection between transparency and credibility. This study utilizes an experimental setting with 1320 respondents to measure what impact transparency has on source a...

The current economic crisis is global in scope, thus affecting both countries in the North and in the South. As a consequence, national European governments are modifying their policies in order to cut down on public spending. This article compares how public service media policies are shaped in this new situation in two countries that represent ve...

Crises tend to be crucial political events with the ability to determine the public’s faith in political actors. If well managed, crises provide windows of opportunities for political actors to show action, strengthening credibility and pushing through new policies. This article explores one such instance of successful crisis exploitation: the Swed...

While the majority of previous research suggests there are positive relationships between digital media use and political participation and knowledge, most studies have relied on cross-sectional surveys and have thus not been able to firmly establish the chain of causality. Also, there is little research investigating use of different forms of digi...

This article discusses the relationship between the newspaper market structure in a region and the diversity of local news. It introduces some partial results on studies based on substantial media concentration within two very different regiona newspaper markets in the North and in the South of Sweden. The findings suggest that the relationship bet...

While most studies of public service media changes in European media systems focus on regulatory policies and audience markets, this article investigates the development of professional journalistic values and newsroom practices among public service journalists. Previous studies have indicated that news values among public service journalists to a...

This article explores the mechanisms behind the ability of political leaders to win praise and support in times of crisis by Studying one such case of crisis exploitation: the Swedish government’s communication during the 2008 financial crisis. Looking back at the first term in office for the centre-right Alliance government, the government was ini...

In this article, we analyze political parties' campaign communication during the 2009 European Parliamentary election in 11 countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK). We study which types of issues Euroskeptic fringe and Euroskeptic mainstream parties put on their c...

Government communication is a curiously neglected area of discursive analysis. No considered examination of the subject exists which provides either an account of the contemporary governmental landscape or an explanation of the common and divergent themes on both a domestic and international basis. This volume aims to fill that gap, providing a con...

Digital media in general, and social media in particular, are a distinctive feature of contemporary election campaign strategies. This article adds to the ongoing discussion of the political power of social media by exploring political party strategies behind the usage of social media. In this study we specifically focus on Twitter (a micro blog) d...

How does the public perceive televised political advertising when it is introduced as a completely new element of campaign communications? The European Parliamentary Elections in 2009 may be characterized as the first campaign where such advertising appeared on a larger scale in Sweden, but the National Election Campaign in 2006 was the initial bre...

This article discusses the implementation and effectiveness of media accountability systems. Empirically, the article is based on a national survey of attitudes among editors-in-chief of the 24 largest Swedish newspapers. In this survey, different kinds of media accountability systems are evaluated and ranked by the editors: internal mechanisms, ex...

How does the public perceive televised political advertising when it is introduced as a completely new element of campaign communications? The European Parliamentary Elec-tions in 2009 may be characterized as the first campaign where such advertising appeared on a larger scale in Sweden, but the National Election Campaign in 2006 was the initial br...

Th is article discusses the development of election campaign communications in Sweden. Th e article analyzes whether political campaign communication in Sweden is heavily infl uenced by international trends, and if some distinctive national features still prevail. Th e mixture of liberal and social responsibility media system traditions in the Swed...

The objective of this article is to analyze the brand new political party Junilistan in the Swedish European Parliamentary election in 2004. The article discusses whether Junilistan can be characterized as a market-oriented party, to what extent the party implemented political marketing techniques, and how the electoral success of Junilistan can be...

Th e objective of this article is to further examine Nordic media systems beyond the tenta- tive Democratic Corporativist Model introduced by media scholars Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Man- cini in their important work Comparing Media Systems. Th ree Models of Media and Politics. Further- more, the article discusses distinct features of media and po...

Šio straipsnio tikslas – aptarti svarbiausius Švedijos žiniasklaidos sistemos pokyčius ir jų poveikį žiniasklaidos turiniui ir naujienų žurnalistikai. Švedijos žiniasklaidos raida straipsnyje lyginama su Baltijos ir Šiaurės regionu, aptariamos mažų šalių žiniasklaidos rinkos galimybės plėtoti ir apjungti nacionalinius bruožus kartu su stiprėjančiom...