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The power of political commentators
in the age of social media
Dissertation for the degree of MPhil, Master of Philosophy
Department of Sociology
Tellef S. Raabe, University of Cambridge, 11 June 2018
Some details on digital readership statistics have been omitted from this public version due
to confidentiality issues. Please contact tsr33@cam.ac.uk with any query.
Word count: 19.220
© Tellef Solbakk Raabe 2018
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Acknowledgements
I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone that has contributed to this
research: my supervisor, Dr Ella McPherson, for stimulating discussions; Professor
Jan Fredrik Hovden (University of Bergen) for access to survey data; Dr Knut Olav
Åmås (Fritt Ord) for conversations and support; Professor Hallvard Moe (UiB) and
Associate Professor Jonas Ohlsson (Nordicom) for access to audience data; Eirik
Winsnes (Schibsted) and Karoline Fossland (Schibsted) for access to readership
statistics; Olav Hjertaker (Storyboard) for access to social media statistics; Aisha
Lovise Maud Bornø for proofreading, and for her endless patience with my
sociological ramblings. Thank you as well to the political editors who agreed to be
interviewed for this study: Trine Eilertsen (Aftenposten), Hanne Skartveit (VG), Marie
Simonsen (Dagbladet), Kjetil Alstadheim (Dagens Næringsliv), and Dr Frøy
Gudbrandsen (Bergens Tidende). All the commentators and politicians who
generously granted me both access and time must also be thanked. I am also
grateful for being granted the Aker scholarship, without which I would not have been
able to realise my academic ambitions. The Michael Width Endresens scholarship
must also be thanked properly. Finally, warm thoughts are sent to Wolfson College,
the sociology MPhil cohort, the Aker Scholars, and all the other friends I have made
along the way.
I also wish to thank the phenomenal people that have helped me towards being
granted the opportunity to undertake this MPhil at the University of Cambridge: my
wife, Anna Eitrem, because nothing matters without her; my mentor, Bjørn Blindheim
(Aker scholarship), because he believed in me; my previous supervisor, Professor
Lars Nyre (UiB), for his scholarly critique; Rector Dag Rune Olsen (UiB), for his
encouragement; Professor Jostein Gripsrud (UiB), for his interest; Dr Torgeir
Nærland (UiB), for introducing me to media studies; Professor Atle Møen (UiB), for
the introduction to sociology; Liv Skotheim (Bergens Tidende), for granting me
experience within journalism; my family – you come first. Lastly, thank you for
shaping me into the person I am today: United World College of the Atlantic, Stoff
magasin, and the Bergen Student Society.
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Abstract
This dissertation analyses the power and democratic function of political
commentators writing for legacy newspapers in contemporary Norway. Although
such commentators are highly visible in the public debate, this study finds that their
overall readership has decreased significantly in the last decade. Commentators
increasingly form and inform an elite group of writers and readers. Whilst the limited
scholarly literature is predominantly critical of commentators, this study argues that
the increasing fragmentation of the public sphere calls for reappraisal.
Commentators, benefiting from a privileged access to elite political sources, are in a
position where they may inform the electorate by interpreting, analysing, and
explaining complex political processes. To fulfil this remit and thus live up to their
democratic function, legacy newspapers must strive to meet new demands of
accessibility and representation. By employing a mixed methods research design,
this dissertation analyses Norway’s fraught media landscape through the frameworks
provided by Bourdieu, Habermas, Anderson and Sunstein, with the aim to analyse
commentators in a new context – the age of social media.
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Table of contents
Acknowledgements p. 2
Abstract p. 3
Table of contents p. 4
Introduction p. 5
Normative framework and analytical approach p. 7
Literature review and background p. 7
Theoretical framework p. 17
Analytical approach p. 21
Methodology p. 28
Methodological tools p. 28
Measures of ensuring reliability and validity p. 34
Ethical considerations p. 35
Project limitations p. 35
Analysis p. 37
Statistical findings on readership p. 37
Audience demographic p. 42
Celebrification and hierarchies p. 45
Democratic function p. 49
Power p. 52
Conclusion p. 57
Literature p. 60
Online resources p. 67
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Introduction
Norwegian political commentators constitute a political priesthood, which for decades
have been attributed the power to influence and lead public opinion. This small but
prestigious group, which in this study is understood as the full-time editorial staff of
Norway’s national newspapers, write opinionated op-eds and editorials that analyses
politics, policies, and scandals – distributed digitally or in print. While the journalistic
genre of political commentary has attracted a great deal of attention in the
Scandinavian public debate, Bengtsson (2015) and Rogstad (2015) suggest that the
scholarly literature is still in a nascent phase.
Although political commentators have always enjoyed status, influence, and
fame, there is reason to believe that their democratic function, and power, has
changed in the last decade. The newspapers they write for are increasingly focused
on building the celebrity and profile of their individual commentators, and thus
resolutely promote them in advertisements, the physical front pages, and their digital
counterpart. Commentators have become the flagships of their newspapers. Indeed,
commentators increasingly feature in other media, analysing political events on
television and radio. Most commentators, especially political editors, have also built a
strong following across social media platforms. This is for good reason, as this study
finds that the readership of most mainstream commentary content has decreased
significantly in the last decade due to plummeting print circulation and the
introduction of ‘paywalls’ that exclude non-subscribing audiences. Moreover, the
reading of political commentary is increasingly a class marker – these are written for,
and read by, liberal and liberal-conservative elites. Simultaneously, new alt-right
news outlets that provide free political commentary online are rapidly expanding. The
digitalisation of the media industry and rise of populist movements call for a critical
reassessment of the scholarly literature on the power and democratic function of
political commentators.
My theoretical framework leans heavily on Bourdieusian field theory in order
to analyse how commentators exercise influence and power. Anderson’s notion of
imagined communities (1983), Habermas’ ideals of the public sphere (1963), and
Sunstein’s work on democracy and social media (2017) are critically assessed to
revaluate commentators’ democratic function. Although the empirical case study of
Norway is unlikely to be generalisable to countries outside Scandinavia, in view of
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these countries’ distinctive media culture and political systems, the research
attempts to improve existing theory by examining commentators from a different
perspective than that which is predominant. The limited and existing literature was
advanced without considering online alt-right commentary or new distribution
barriers. This constitutes a new media environment, which Sunstein (2017) terms
‘the age of social media’.
The methodological approach is a tripartite, mixed methods research design.
It comprises a descriptive analysis of detailed readership statistics and audience
surveys, as well as semi-structured in-depth interviews with nine elite politicians, five
political editors, and six renowned commentators. The dissertation aims to answer
the following questions:
RQ1: What is the present democratic function of Norwegian political commentators?
RQ2: How large is the readership of these commentators, and which demographic
characteristics can be attributed to this audience?
RQ3: What is the power of political commentators, and has this power changed in
the last decade?
The newspapers under scrutiny are Norway’s five largest dailies by circulation:
Aftenposten, VG, Dagbladet, Dagens Næringsliv, and Bergens Tidende, arguably
the most important Norwegian ‘legacy’ newspapers. These newspapers can be
broadly defined as liberal-conservative, albeit in the Norwegian political context
(Knapskog 2009). Norway is a small, wealthy, consensus-oriented and homogenous
country in which the Conservative party is significantly more liberal than its British
counterpart (Røe Isaksen and Syse 2011). Although liberal-conservative, the
newspapers in question can be compared to news outlets such as The Guardian or
The Washington Post. They are anti-populist promoters of liberal ideals, and their
democratic journalistic norms, embedded in the Code of Ethics of the Norwegian
Press (2015), are more or less in line with the norms of the literature, as defined by
Thompson (2012).
This dissertation demonstrates that Norwegian national newspaper
commentators may be characterised as an elite group consisting of liberal-
conservative, urban, highly educated, middle-aged, white, and ethnically Norwegian
individuals with high accumulations of cultural and social capital. Although gender
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balance is achieved, the homogenous nature of the group implies that minority views
are excluded. In large, they propagate the perspectives of the liberal elites, who are
also their audience. Still, Norwegian mainstream media commentators have an
important democratic function: they inform the electorate by interpreting, analysing,
and explaining complex political processes. However, they are currently not able to
fulfil this promise due to the altered nature of news distribution. The recent rise of
online alt-right news outlets, the spread of fake news, the fragmentation of the public
sphere, and the intensified information divide increases the importance of high-
quality commentary written by professionals with privileged access to political
sources. Although commentators cannot be acclaimed as ideal proponents of an
informed and inclusive public sphere, they form a corrective to racism,
androcentrism, and right-wing populism in Norway.
Normative framework and analytical approach
Literature review and background
A plethora of institutions and individuals influence public discourse. Political parties,
private corporations, interest groups, think tanks, the academy, journalists, and
lobbyists are only a handful of examples. Yet another faction has come to posit an
increasingly prominent position in public discussions of political affairs – namely the
commentariat – consisting of political experts and news commentators (see e.g.
Nimmo and Newsome 1997; Allern 2010; Bengtsson 2015). This group of individuals
have also been described by names such as “columnists” (Fisher 1944), “moulders
of opinion” (Bulman 1945), “opinion makers” (Rivers 1967), and “pundits” (Nimmo
and Combs 1992), and these various terms are used loosely and interchangeably. I
prefer the nomenclature ‘newspaper political commentators’, or simply
‘commentators’ where the context is given. This exclusive group shall be defined as
the full-time editorial staff that are permanent contributors of opinionated and
analytical political content to their respective newspapers, such as editorials and op-
eds. The definition thus includes political editors, who write commentary in addition
to managing a group of commentators, but exclude journalists that infrequently write
opinionated content, as well as cultural critics, external columnists, independent
bloggers, public intellectuals, social media influencers, and broadcast media
commentators. The analytical scope of this dissertation is Norwegian national
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political commentators of legacy newspapers with a daily print edition, ‘the elite of
the journalistic field’, and not local and regional commentators who are primarily
influential in their confined geographies (Mathisen and Morlandstø 2014). Those
defined as national newspaper commentators constitute a very small group of no
more than fifty individuals. Thirty of these write for the aforementioned five largest
newspapers, eleven of whom have been interviewed for this study.
The literature consistently understands commentators as powerful influencers.
They are considered to have significant agenda-setting power (McCombs and Shaw
1972), as well as framing power (Tewksbury and Scheufele 2009). They are also
said to influence the outcome of political scandals (Thompson 2010). Rogstad (2014;
2015) argues that Norwegian commentators have become “increasingly powerful in
recent years”, and further posits that “there is little to indicate that commentators’
powerful position has weakened – for now” (translation author’s own). This supposed
rise of power has been described as a means to counter the professionalisation of
political communication through opinionated critique (Blumler 1997:399), and as a
result of a more general journalistic turn towards an “interpretive style” (Hopmann
and Strömback 2010). However, there is but one recent empirical study dealing
specifically with the power of national Scandinavian commentators (Nord, Enli and
Stúr 2012). This is a case study of three Scandinavian political scandals where
commentators are assumed to have played a crucial role. Their methodology is
described as “qualitative text analysis”, without elaborating what this entails
(ibid.:88). As a corrective to this lack of specificity, this dissertation will therefore
return to theorise the power of commentators in the theoretical framework-section.
Although the literature argues that commentators are powerful, perceptions of
their democratic function vary. This can be illustrated by Nimmo and Combs’
dichotomy “democracy or punditocracy” (1992:165). This debate of commentators
being either pro-democracy or pro-power is as old as the modern political
commentary genre itself, exemplified by the fierce debate between Walter Lippmann
(1922) and John Dewey (1927) in the 1920s (Bro 2011:443). In a review of the
Scandinavian literature on political commentators, Bengtsson (2015) summaries
these contrasting views. On the one hand, Bengtsson (2015:15) argues, political
commentators can be regarded as an elite class that has taken possession of the
public debate, reducing citizens to spectators. At the other end of the spectrum,
political commentators invite their readers to reflect and be critical (ibid.).
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Commentators can thus be key figures in constituting civic engagement. However,
Bengtsson claims that very few political commentators in the present Scandinavian
political debate embrace this role (ibid.). This critical interpretation of commentators
dominates the literature and is prominent in its Scandinavian subset. Examples
include Alterman (1993), who warned against the ‘punditocracy’. He argued that a
class of journalists have attained a monopoly on political discussions without being
formally responsible to anyone other than themselves, except their editors. Similarly,
McNair (2000:79) argued that commentators have become “too powerful”, and that
they are “usurping the democratically mandated authority” of politicians with their
own self-appointed authority. Also Vatnøy (2010:31) criticised commentators for
being partial under a cover of impartiality, and for overemphasising the ‘political
game’ – politicians’ assumed cynical strategies – while neglecting political issues.
These views are shared by Cappella and Hall Jamieson (1997), Kock (2011),
Bengtsson (2015), and were famously supported by the rather unusual partnership
of Norwegian elite politicians Audun Lysbakken (now leader of the Socialist Left
party) and Torbjørn Røe Isaksen (now minister of trade and industry for the
Conservative party) in their renowned article The dictatorship of the punditocracy
(2008).
More generally, there is much literature in support of the view that the
mainstream media is propagating the beliefs and opinions of the elite, contrary to
journalistic norms. Media organisations are ‘manufacturing consent’ (Herman and
Chomsky 1988), and “perpetuates the status quo” (McChesney 1999:3). These
views have been explored in detail by scholars such as Schlesinger (1978),
Tuchman (1978), and Gans (1979) in their now-classic newsroom ethnographies.
The main conclusion to be drawn from these studies is that although journalists –
and supposedly commentators – aspire to be independent and critical, strict
professional norms nevertheless lead them to reproduce elite perspectives. By
overemphasising the credibility of their sources, minority views are
underrepresented. This phenomenon was conceptualised by Gandy (1982:8) as
“information subsidies” and has been applied to modern journalistic contexts by
scholars such as McPherson (2016). This study confirms that commentators
predominantly use elite politicians and legitimised experts as sources for their
writings. Moreover, Mathisen and Morlandstø (2014:101) argue that national
commentators “represent the views of the capital Oslo and operate as a ‘wolf pack’
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[write about the same topics]” (translation author’s own). Accordingly, there are many
voices – such as those of ethnic and religious minorities, or rural representatives –
that are not heard. Norwegian national commentators largely ignore regional politics
and political undercurrents and might better be described as ‘parliamentary
commentators’ rather than ‘political commentators’.
Another common criticism of the journalistic field is diversity and
representation amongst journalists. This criticism is easily transposed to
commentators, although such arguments have not yet been advanced in the
Scandinavian literature. A study conducted by Thurman (2016) found that the British
journalism industry is eighty-six per cent university-educated, and ninety-four per
cent white. Similarly, Hovden and Esperås (2014) found that eighty-nine per cent of
Norwegian journalists have attained at least a bachelor’s degree. The survey did not
look at ethnicity or other forms of representation, yet the figures are likely to mirror
Thurman’s. Within Norway’s five largest newspapers there are currently thirty full-
time commentators: Seven in Aftenposten, seven in VG, seven in Dagbladet, five in
Dagens Næringsliv, and four in Bergens Tidende. All of these commentators are
white, and of Norwegian ethnicity. Seeing that seventeen per cent of the Norwegian
population are either first- or second-generation immigrants (SSB 2018), the lack of
diverse representation amongst commentators is problematic. That being said,
gender representation amongst Norwegian journalists and commentators in the five
largest newspapers is equal, with fifty-three per cent of both groups being female
(Hovden and Esperås 2014), and three in five of the political editors are women.
However, the average age of the commentators in question is forty-eight, and the
youngest, Mathias Fischer (25), recently announced his resignation. Although some
of the commentators come from rural backgrounds, they all live and work in
Norway’s two largest cities, Oslo (East coast) and Bergen (West coast).
Yet another common criticism of the media industry, especially in Norway, is
that journalists have a liberal (left-leaning) bias (Lichter, Rothman and Lichter 1986;
VG 2018). For example, a recent study found that one in three of all Norwegian
journalists vote for the Socialist Left Party or the Red Party, the two leftmost parties
in Norway (Nordic Media Festival 2018). These parties collectively received only
eight per cent of votes in the 2017 election (NRK 2017), indicating that journalists are
significantly more ‘left-leaning’ than the general population. However, as the news
editor of Klassekampen, Mímir Kristjánsson (2018) argues, this does not indicate
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that journalists are “blood-red class warriors”. Rather, it confirms the existing
assumption that journalists subscribe to liberal values. Also support for Liberal Party
and the Green Party is relatively overrepresented amongst the journalistic class,
while very few journalists vote for the Christian Democratic Party and the agrarian
Centre Party (Nordic Media Festival 2018). Significantly, only three per cent of
journalists vote for the Progress Party (ibid.) – the right-most political party in the
Norwegian parliament – which attained fifteen per cent of votes in the 2017 election
(NRK 2017). However, most political journalists and editors, and supposedly also
commentators, vote for either the Conservative Party or the Liberal Party (Nordic
Media Festival 2018). The conclusion to be drawn from this data is that a liberal
hegemony exists in the Norwegian mainstream press – characterised by secularism,
feminism, environmental concern, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and liberal views on asylum
policies. Most political editors and commentators may be socially liberal but remain
fiscally conservative.
From this, it is tenable to characterise political commentators of national
legacy newspapers as white, of Norwegian ethnicity, urban, highly educated, middle-
aged, anti-populist, and liberal-conservative. Although Norway’s population is small
(5.3 million inhabitants as of 2018), relatively egalitarian, as well as somewhat
ethnically, socio-economically, and demographically homogeneous (SSB 2018), it is
problematic that commentators do not represent minority groups and views.
Following Young (1961) and Eddo-Lodge (2018), I argue that an overly optimistic
belief in the concept of meritocracy is an exercise in wilful ignorance. Although it is
doubtful that the aforementioned news organisations view themselves as anything
but progressive, they would plausibly benefit from focused efforts in promoting
diversity. This would lead to a broader understanding of politics and potentially
attract more readers. However, it is also crucial to note that there are no editors or
commentators of national legacy newspapers that publicly express support for the
right-wing Progress Party, the current third largest party in Norway (NRK 2017). The
greatest divide between the Norwegian mainstream print media and its public is not
its lack of ethnic diversity, but its suppression of right-wing populism. Recent
research on Scandinavian audiences finds that low trust in the mainstream media is
strongly associated with those having a political affiliation to the right, as well as a
critical stand towards immigration (Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoulos, Levy and
Kleis Nielsen 2017:83; Ohlsson 2018). Although the largest and commercially most
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successful newspapers in Norway present as liberal-conservative, they are in fact
representatives of the Norwegian liberal hegemony, contrary to British conservative
newspapers. None of the Norwegian print newspapers are traditional tabloids, and
no print newspaper express support of The Progress Party or other right-wing
political currents. VG and Dagbladet are ‘prestigious tabloids’, in which gossip
columns sit side-by-side with agenda-setting news of high quality (Dahl 2016).
Aftenposten and Bergens Tidende are traditional broadsheets, while Dagens
Næringsliv is a liberal business paper. The newspapers in question are better
understood as similar to news outlets such as The Guardian or The Washington
Post. Audience maps provided by the Newman and colleagues (2017:38) illustrates
that the UK’s online audience is far more polarised than its Norwegian counterpart
(Fig. 1).
Figure 1 Online audience maps, UK and Norway (Newman et al. 2017:38).
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This lack of polarisation amongst the audiences of Norwegian mainstream media
may surprise someone accustomed to United Kingdom tabloids or the North-
American press, but as noted by Hallin and Mancini (2004), the Scandinavian
Democratic Corporatist media model is different from both the Mediterranean
(Polarised Pluralist) model and the North Atlantic (Liberal) model. However, no
Norwegian online alt-right news outlets were included in the recent Reuters study
(Newman et al. 2017:83). It is therefore of crucial importance to assess the outreach
of such new outlets. Data provided by Storyboard, a professional journalistic tool for
tracking social media engagement, shows that four new online news sources that
are strongly associated with The Progress Party and illegitimate right-wing political
undercurrents have attracted tremendous social media engagement, defined as the
sum of likes, shares, and comments across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest
and Google+ (Fig. 2*). Although this data does not equate readership, it provides a
telling illustration of the visibility of alt-right content across social media.
Figure 2 Social media engagement* of selected news outlets (based on Storyboard 2018).
Legend: Green = Broadcast media; Orange = Mainstream print media; Blue = right-wing online
media; Dark blue = Alt-right media.
The public broadcaster NRK and the commercial broadcaster TV2 attract the most
engagement across social media, while the prestigious tabloids VG and Dagbladet
are placed third and fourth, respectively. VG provides free commentary, while
Dagbladet recently implemented a hybrid model where some of their political content
requires a subscription. Aftenposten also boasts a relatively prominent position in
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social media, while Bergens Tidende and Dagens Næringsliv lag behind; placed as
respectively the tenth and twenty-third most popular news sources across social
media. However, Klassekampen, the political Left’s national daily, recedes even
further into the background of the social media landscape (Fig. 2). Nettavisen, on the
other hand, has attained a premier position across social media platforms, in
particular Facebook (Storyboard 2018). As an online-only ad-financed news outlet,
Nettavisen is considered part of the mainstream media landscape – but it is the only
‘legitimate’ news source that explicitly supports The Progress Party. Storyboard
statistics (2018) shows that five in ten of the most popular articles from Nettavisen in
2017 are critical towards immigration, or in favour of The Progress Party. While
Nettavisen’s rising popularity and perceived trustworthiness is worth noting, the
accelerating growth of online alt-right news sources is the premier agent in
promoting right-wing populism in Norway. Resett, Document and Rights (Human
Rights Service) are alt-right online news outlets mainly associated with reproval of
Islam, immigration, socialism, feminism, and multiculturalism. These independent
outlets, combined with Nettavisen, constitute a tremendous opposition to the social
media presence of the five legacy newspapers of this study. Although these online-
only right-wing outlets are dwarfed in terms of revenue and organisational size as
compared to the legacy newspapers, they collectively attract more than a third of all
social media engagement as compared to Norway’s five largest newspapers (Fig. 3).
Figure 3 Distribution of engagement* (based on Storyboard 2018).
The preceding sections have demonstrated that it is of crucial importance to critique
the role of political commentators, also in the Norwegian context. However, the
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critical understanding of commentators in most of the Anglo-American and
Scandinavian literature would benefit from a more nuanced approach. Previous
critique was predominantly advanced within the context of ontological security
(Giddens 1991:35), in which the mainstream media’s authority was questioned on
the basis of reproducing elite perspectives and failing to represent minority groups as
well as left-leaning political movements. In the age of social media, the greatest
underrepresentation of public opinion in the Norwegian mainstream media is right-
wing populism (Nordic Media Festival 2018). It is therefore worth highlighting that the
Norwegian mainstream media is widely recognised as ‘well-functioning’ (Schiffrin
2010; Cagé 2016; Dahl 2016; Newman et al. 2017), in line with Thompson’s (2012)
principle of pluralistic regulation. Fortifying this notion, Norway was rated ‘the best’
democratic country by The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index (2018)
and is also ranked as number one in the World Press Freedom Index (RSF 2018). I
therefore argue that the essential division of the Norwegian media landscape is
presently one between the mainstream media and the online alt-right media. To this
purpose the more positive aspects of commentary journalism should be assessed.
Although Bengtsson (2015:6-7) acknowledges that it is “common” to
understand the political commentator as an “in principle impartial analyst” in
Scandinavia, this is not apparent in her review. This position can, nevertheless, be
identified in the writings of Scandinavian scholars such as Knapskog (2009), Bro
(2011), Nord, Enli and Stúr (2012), and Rogstad (2015), who recognise positive
features of commentary journalism. Allern (2010) argues that the role of political
commentators has changed significantly in the past fifty years. In the 1960s, most
political commentators in national and regional newspapers were leading party
members. During the 1965 election campaign, their role as interpreters and agitators
was on behalf of their party and its ideology (ibid.). Throughout the 1980s the party
press system dissolved, and by the 1989-election most commentators of the press
were formally independent (Dahl 2016). However, many maintained strong political
and ideological ties (Allern 2010). This changed fundamentally throughout the 1990s
and 2000s as no national legacy newspapers, and none of their commentators would
swear allegiance to any one party (Norwegian Press Association 2015). Being
perceived as politically independent was an overarching goal (Dahl 2016). This does
not imply that commentators’ do not have ideological and political convictions.
However, elite commentators, the ones this study is concerned with, were elevated
16
to the role as “chief experts on the political horse race” throughout the 1990s and
2000s (Allern 2010).
Knapskog, Iversen and Larsen (2016) therefore argue that professional
commentary is becoming increasingly important: it is “the main medium for well-
informed opinions on public matters”, and “a medium for self-reflection and self-
critique”, thus living up to “increased demands of accountability and transparency”.
However, in the age of social media, everybody has the ability to be a potential
commentator. While this has a democratic potential, its side effects present
challenges, as described by Sunstein (2017) and Nagle (2017). Like the Anglo-
American media landscape, the current Norwegian public debate is characterised by
increasing fragmentation of information and increased prominence of alt-right
conspiratory content (Fig. 2, p. 13). In an age where facts are seemingly optional,
mainstream commentators strive towards meeting the professional and democratic
journalistic norms. Such norms are embedded in The Code of Ethics of the
Norwegian Press (2015) developed by The Norwegian Press Association, which all
the legacy newspapers – but none of the alt-right publications (as of June 2018) –
are members of. Moreover, The Reporters Sans Frontières index of press freedom
(2018), where Norway ranks first, strongly indicates that Norwegian commentators in
principle are free from political and commercial influence.
From the data collected by Hovden and Esperås (2014) in a large survey
study of Norwegian journalists (N=791), one can isolate eighteen respondents that
identify as ‘national commentators’. This data is in strong support of commentators’
aspiration to the professional and democratic journalistic norms of the literature. A
significant majority – more than three quarters in all instances – report that
journalists should ‘report things as they are’, monitor and scrutinise political leaders
and businesses, be an adversary of the government, educate their audiences, and
‘promote tolerance and cultural diversity’. These sentiments are shared by my own
journalistic interview subjects. Also the elite politicians of this study believe that
professional commentators predominantly live up to these norms. Although most
Norwegian national commentators write for liberal-conservative newspapers, they
critique the present Conservative coalition. For example, all commentators of the five
largest Norwegian newspapers argued that the justice minister Sylvi Listhaug of the
Progress Party had to resign due to a polemic Facebook-post on immigration and
terrorism in March 2018. The commentators’ normative aim was achieved on March
17
20 through a process Listhaug described as “a witch hunt” (Libell and Martyn-
Hemphill 2018).
In the age of social media, most Norwegian mainstream commentators should
be repositioned as critical and un-partisan experts that strive to adhere to strict
journalistic standards. This does in no way imply that commentators are without bias,
that they should be considered objective, or that they represent neither public
consensus nor minority views. As demonstrated, professional norms such as source
credibility and ‘text quality’ may interfere with their journalistic norms – their
democratic function (McPherson 2016). The preceding findings do, however,
illustrate that the commentators’ attempt to live up to the democratic journalistic
norms of the literature – which also structures my normative framework. Following
Nyre (2009:3), I argue that research-driven change in mass media is possible, and
that there should be more of it in the future. A phenomenon such as political
commentary should therefore be approached from both descriptive and evaluative
angles. Through this empirical study, the first of its kind in Scandinavia, I find that
commentators’ readership has decreased – and I will argue that this is problematic.
The analysis chapter examines how this has happened. Why it is problematic can be
understood through Habermas’ ideal of the public sphere (1962), Anderson’s notion
of imagined communities (1982), as well as Sunsten’s work on democracy and social
media (2017).
Theoretical framework
Habermas (1962:22-23) argued that newspapers played a crucial role in shaping
public discourse in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in his influential
book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). The mass media
became an important arena in which the public could discuss and identify societal
problems, and through these discussions influence political action. Habermas argued
that rational-critical debate in which everyone could freely participate, regardless of
status, was a crucial aspect of the public sphere. Although this idealised vision of the
public was “not realised in earnest”, it had, as an idea, “become institutionalized and
thereby stated as an objective claim” (Habermas 1962:36). This naïve conception
has been widely criticised (see e.g. Duelund 2010). Harding (1990) warns that the
concepts of ‘rationality’, ‘scientific method’, and ‘truth’ in fact favour bourgeois and
androcentric Westerners. Berlant (2008) more generally argues that the notion of a
18
‘rational’ public sphere can exclude important emotional aspects of public debate,
and that politics in general may threaten so-called ‘sentimental’ values. Fraser
(1990) refers to other feminist scholars such as Landes and Ryan when she
persuasively argues that the bourgeois public sphere rests on “a number of
significant exclusions”, most notably discrimination against the working class,
women, and other historically marginalised groups, such as people of colour and
homosexuals (ibid.:59ff). This critique is essential and has in relation to
representation amongst commentators been addressed in preceding sections.
Commentators are not able to fully live up to the journalistic norms they value, due to
their professional norms as well as their homogenous and elitist composition.
Following Fraser (1990:61), commentators’ ‘objective’ analyses form a type of
hegemonic domination: the mainstream media are propagating the “majority
ideology” to the public.
This is an uncomfortable proposition, but what if aspects of this hegemony –
most notably multiculturalism, feminism, and tolerance – are positive in a liberal-
democratic perspective? Fraser (1990:67) notes that repressed groups can form
“subaltern counterpublics” to challenge the hegemony of the majority and argues that
“the most striking example is the late-twentieth century U.S. feminist subaltern
counterpublic”. However, in present-day Norway, feminism is part of the hegemony
(Tryggestad 2014), while ‘the most striking example’ of a subaltern counterpublic is
that of the alt-right (Schultheis 2017; Nagle 2017). Broadly speaking, the Norwegian
alt-right movement can be defined as right-wing populism rooted in anti-
establishment ideals, resistance to (non-Western) immigration, criticism of Islam, and
opposition of ‘state-feminism’ and ‘Cultural-Marxism’.
In the age of social media, there is no shortage of so-called subaltern
counterpublics: one might as well refer to these as ‘echo chambers’ (Sunstein 2017),
or in more positive terms, ‘intimate public spheres’ (Berlant 1997). Discussions are
abundant but fragmented and dispersed. Modern information technology makes it
easy to raise one’s voice, but it is still difficult to be heard. Gerhards and Schäfer
(2009:19) found only minimal evidence to support the idea that the internet is a
better communication space as compared to print media because less prominent
voices end up being silenced by search engines' algorithms either way. Also Nyre
(2009:3) warns that although communication has become more efficient, it has not
by implication become more democratic. There is always a risk that innovations,
19
such as social media, may actually stall societal progress (ibid.). There is much
literature to support the following argument: the internet has not offered an ideal
public sphere (e.g. Sparks 2000). This is not to say that physical newspapers
constitute the foundation of the public sphere – that would be a Luddite’s proposition.
Rather, I argue that a crucial premise of an open and inclusive debate is information
– and professional commentators, having the best sources within the political field –
are in a position in which they can analyse and communicate complex political
events to a broader public. When individuals are not in an informed position to
decide and act autonomously, “democracy is not possible” (Meyer 2002:1).
Moreover, I follow Anderson (1983:39) in that legacy newspapers – and accordingly
commentators – are important bearers of our shared frame of reference, which is a
crucial aspect of any democracy. The increased fragmentation of information and the
decreasing prominence of newspaper commentators is a threat to deliberative
democracy and the Norwegian nation state itself.
Anderson (1983:15) defines the nation as “an imagined political community”. He
proposes that nationalism must be understood not by self-consciously held political
ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that preceded it (ibid.:19ff). Anderson
identifies two such relevant cultural systems: the religious community, and the
dynastic realm (ibid.). Much like in many modern European democracies, the belief
in a sovereign ruler which ties together the nation has deteriorated. Although Norway
is formally a monarchy, the King has a sole ceremonial role, and he was recently
stripped of his sacred status due to changes in Norway's Constitution. Moreover,
shared religious convictions have vanished. Remarkably, most of the Norwegian
population are secular. Only thirty-four per cent of the population report to “believe in
God” (NTB 2018). Anderson (1983) persuasively argued that ‘today’, it is shared
media experiences – a shared timeframe – that ties the modern nation state
together. This development first flowered in Europe in the eighteenth century with the
introduction of the novel and the newspaper. Anderson (1983:39) describes the
newspaper as an ‘extreme form’ of the book, “a book sold on a colossal scale”,
which creates an “extraordinary mass ceremony”. Newspaper readership serves as
a substitute for the morning prayer because the reader knows that the same ritual is
“being replicated by thousands (or millions) of others”, and it will be repeated at daily
intervals throughout the year (ibid.:39). “What more vivid figure for the secular,
20
historically-clocked, imagined community can be envisioned?”, Anderson wrote in
1982 (ibid.). Transposing this, I argue that Norwegian mainstream newspapers are
essential to sustain ‘the imagined community’ – and accordingly – deliberative
democracy.
More than thirty years later, it is no longer so that “The newspaper reader
observe exact replicas of his own paper being consumed by his subway [sic],
barbershop, or residential neighbours” (Anderson 1983:39). Today, digital forms of
journalism have grown to prominence, in Norway and elsewhere (Singer 2017:195).
The digital nature of readership is not of essential importance: it is the overall
individualisation of news that is challenging democracy (Sunstein 2017). Diminishing
print circulation, decreasing TV and radio consumption, and new subscription models
are all part of individuating our news consumption habits (Sakariassen, Hovden and
Moe 2017). Åmås and colleagues (2017:9) find that mainstream media diversity – a
plurality of independent newsrooms – is under threat. Although forms of news are
increasingly accessible, Aalborg and colleagues (2013) find that we are moving
towards increased news consumption gaps in Europe. It seems that a growing
number of citizens ignore the information opportunities given to them (ibid.). The
overall shift towards digital news consumption intensifies what Sunstein (2017:59ff)
describes as the age of social media, which entails increasing political polarisation
and fragmentation of information. As demonstrated, one can observe the decreasing
visibility of centre-oriented mainstream news organisations and the growth of online
right-wing outlets across social media in Norway (Fig. 2, p. 13). If anything, the
present media climate demonstrates that there is an even greater need for distance,
analysis, and expert commentary, which have become increasingly unavailable.
Following Knapskog and colleagues (2016:165), “the commentary genre may be one
of the keys to a renewed contract with increasingly demanding and fragmented
audiences for professional journalism”. Although the era of close connections
between Norwegian newspapers and political parties is over (Dahl 2016), this does
not imply that newspapers should not take a stance in political issues. Rather,
commentators should contribute to public debates and the formation of political
ideas, and their aim is exactly to influence their audiences. Although commentators
are not perfect promoters of an inclusive public sphere, they are, as of now, the best
‘shared voice’ that we have. In the Norwegian context, one may juxtapose the
mainstream media with the alt-right media: ‘legacy newspapers’ versus online-
21
exclusive news outlets, facts versus fakery, liberal ideals versus conspiratory
theories. It is a normative ideal that Norwegians’ shared frame of reference is liberal
– and liberal norms are propagated by the Norwegian mainstream press.
Analytical approach
I have thus far accounted for the role of political commentators in the Norwegian
media landscape and argued that they have an important democratic function in
contemporary society. To understand this function, it is appropriate to see
commentators as belonging to a ‘field’. This approach is known as ‘field theory’ and
is strongly associated with the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977; 1984).
Bourdieu’s own writings (1998; 2005) on journalistic production and audience
reception have been widely criticised, for example by Hesmondhalgh (2006). It is
nevertheless reasonable to see ‘Bourdieusian field analysis of journalism’ as
something of a paradigm within journalism research (e.g. Champagne 1999, 2005;
Couldry 2003; Hallin and Mancini 2004; Benson and Neveu 2005; Hovden 2008;
Willig 2012). Bourdieu’s vast body of works constitutes an abstract, normative, and
versatile framework that can be applied to different areas of research, such as the
field of journalism. Following Thompson (2010:3ff), the researcher’s task is to
understand the practice of the field in question, or in more technical terms, to
reconstruct “the logic of the field”. This ‘field-approach’ aims to overcome the
inherent weaknesses of many, if not all, paradigms of the social sciences. Bourdieu
(1984) attempted to reconcile the hitherto binarily-opposed perspectives of macro
and micro: individual agency versus societal structures; constructivism versus
structuralism. Bourdieu’s field theory integrates these perspectives through the
complex interplay of his main concepts, namely habitus, field, and capital (1992), as
well as symbolic power (1991). These concepts must never be considered detached
from one another and will, therefore, be defined in relation to my analysis in the
following sections.
An individual’s habitus is, in essence, a system of dispositions for intuitively
acting, thinking and orienting themselves in the social world (Bourdieu 1984). It is a
collection of mental habits and inclinations that are inscribed in our minds and
bodies, according to the external life conditions of our childhood, which are
subsequently modified by later experiences. This implies that one’s habitus is
“durable, but not eternal” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:133). Bourdieu maintained
22
that a person’s habitus – everything from sociolect, table manners, to the way of
walking – in part determines which social field one can, and perhaps more
importantly wishes, to enter. Habitus is thus an important determinant of which
individuals enter which field, and accordingly who enters professions such as
‘kommentator’ (Norwegian: writer of op-eds and editorials). Following this, habitus in
part constitutes journalistic norms.
The journalistic field is one of numerous areas where actors – individuals,
groups, or institutions – act and behave in a particular context where they share a
set of beliefs. Fields are relatively autonomous from one another, although in
practice most are subordinate to the larger fields of politics and the economy –
collectively: ‘the field of power’ (Bourdieu 1984). Within each field, the position of
each actor is a result of the interaction between (1) the specific rules of the field, (2)
the agent's habitus, and (3) the types and quantities of ‘capital’ that these actors
have at their disposal (Bourdieu 1984). A field is thus a kind of social microcosm with
its own ‘logic’, that is, its own particular rules and structures, both formal and
informal. Bourdieu (ibid.) argued that actors within each field fight an unequal battle
of internal recognition, that is, recognition within the field. The battle is unequal as
the actor’s chance of ‘success’, such as rising in the ranks within a newspaper, is
linked to their relative position and dispositions. These ‘relative positions’ are based
on the accumulation of certain forms of assets – what Bourdieu calls ‘capital’
(Bourdieu 1986).
Bourdieu (ibid.) identified numerous forms of capital, with the most
fundamental forms being economic, cultural, and social capital. Economic capital is
immediately and directly convertible into monetary assets and may be
institutionalised through structures such as property rights. Cultural capital can be
defined as knowledge, skills and other cultural acquisitions, such as academic
qualifications (ibid.). Social capital is made up of one’s network, such as journalistic
sources, and is predominantly used to bolster one’s economic or cultural capital
(ibid.). At this point in the dissertation, symbolic capital can be defined as a
legitimated, recognised, and acknowledged form of capital that arises from the
recognition of the other three types of capital (Bourdieu 1991). All forms of capital
are convertible – and may in many cases be used as a form of currency within a
field. Figure four illustrates the interplay of the various forms of capital, with the
23
caveat that the concepts ‘cultural capital’ and ‘symbolic capital’ are particularly
complex (Bourdieu 1986).
Figure 4 Bourdieu’s forms of capital (based on Bourdieu 1986).
It is clear, then, that a field is a structured space of social positions in which the
positions of any individual or organisation is determined by the different kinds and
quantities of capital it possesses (Thompson 1991:14). Accordingly, any action, or
any form of ‘practice’ (Bourdieu 1977), is not just the product of capital and habitus
alone. Rather, practice is the product of the relation between habitus and capital on
the one hand, and the field – the social context – on the other. Formulated more
elegantly:
(habitus x capital) + field = practice
(based on Bourdieu 1984:101).
Collectively, these concepts, and the framework they form, constitute a powerful
toolkit for analysing a variety of social phenomena, such as why some readers with a
working-class background may feel alienated by the language employed by
commentators with large accumulations of cultural capital, who therefore have a
different habitus – manifested in a different vocabulary. This form of subconscious
alienation is what Bourdieu (1992) terms ‘symbolic violence’. Social classes, and
structures within fields more specifically, are thus not solely tied to economic capital.
24
As noted, every field is a space of power and ‘counterpower’, which can be
both physical and symbolic. The struggle for ‘credibility’ or ‘trustworthiness’ within the
field of journalism implies that actors defend their position whilst suppressing others.
What makes a field so cohesive is that every actor involved shares assumptions
regarding what, for instance, constitutes ‘high-quality journalism’. The existence of a
field thus presupposes a shared ‘belief-system’. This field-specific ‘shared belief’ is
what Bourdieu (2005:32) has named ‘nomos’
1
. Nomos can, for example, determine
what is considered newsworthiness – as this “flexible schemata” is subject to nomos
(Thompson 1990:148). In Norway, nomos is formalised as the journalistic and
professional norms embedded in the Norwegian Press Council’s code of ethics,
which both the alt-right media and the mainstream media report to follow. However,
the alt-right media refuses to be a member of the Norwegian Press Association, and
accordingly the Norwegian Press Complaints Commission rejects to process public
complaints regarding their writings. This entails that the alt-right media is suppressed
by the mainstream media. However, while they are not considered legitimate news
outlets by their field, they are consumed as such by a significant portion of the public.
It is important to note that the ruling nomos of the Norwegian press (the journalistic
and professional norms) are explicitly shared by the politicians of this study.
Being perceived as credible, trustworthy, and prestigious is a form of
‘symbolic capital’, which requires special attention. Because it has been referred to
as “accumulated prestige or honour” (Thompson 1991:14), a common misconception
is that this form of capital is similar to economic, cultural, and social capital. Symbolic
capital should rather be interpreted as a legitimated and acknowledged form of
capital that arises from the recognition of the other three types of capital. Examples
of this would be professional titles such as political editor, or the prestige embodied
in a strong brand name such as Aftenposten. According to Bourdieu (1996),
symbolic capital is more important than economic capital when structuring power
relations in fields of cultural production, such as journalism. When Bourdieu wrote
that the field of cultural production is “the economic world reversed” (1993:45), he
argued that accumulating economic capital is in tension with the accumulation of
symbolic capital. Within the field of journalism, speculative alt-right content that is
1
As opposed to ‘doxa’, which is taken-for-granted knowledge in a broader sense. See
Bourdieu 1977:164.
25
read by thousands of people typically holds lower status than specialist political
analyses read by an elite minority.
That said, a major weakness of Bourdieu’s body of work, which becomes
particularly pronounced in the age of social media, is his lack of understanding of
journalistic production and reception (Hesmondhalgh 2006). For Bourdieu (1993), all
fields of cultural production – including journalism – are situated within the wider
fields of the economy, politics, and class relations. Bourdieu (1998; 2005) therefore
argues that there are two opposing poles within the journalistic field: the
autonomous, and the heteronomous. The heteronomous pole is influenced and
dominated by forces external to the field, such as economic and political forces
(ibid.). The autonomous pole is geared towards the specific symbolic capital unique
to that field, such as ‘journalistic excellence’ (ibid.). Bourdieu (1993) argued that the
more autonomous a field of cultural production becomes, the more it distances itself
from economic principles. However, every news publication is to a certain degree
dependent on its audience and is thus heteronomous by nature. In Bourdieu’s (1993)
line of argument, any large media organisation would be a slave of heteronomy, but
within the context of Norwegian media organisations, the newspapers with the
highest revenue are also considered the most trusted and prestigious publications by
the public (Dahl 2016). This implies that the most heteronomous organisations, to a
large degree, boast high “symbolic profit”, contrary to Bourdieu’s claim (1996:142).
Moreover, Gans (1979) argues that autonomy does exist within news organisations
but is unevenly distributed. Levels of autonomy reflect ranking in the newsroom, as
Soloski’s (1989) occupational ladder demonstrates. Autonomy is the prize that all
journalists seek, and the highest level of autonomy rests with, for example,
commentators and political editors (Schudson 2005). Their content, such as
editorials, are considered crucial aspects of the newspaper’s legacy. Commentators
are ‘allowed’ to remove themselves from the heteronomous principle because they
are considered the flagship of their newspaper.
Furthermore, Norwegian media organisations receive state subsidies, which,
by Bourdieu’s logic, would gear all their recipients towards heteronomy. However,
this does not always come at the cost of autonomy, as Bourdieu suggests (2005:45).
To the contrary, within the Norwegian context, several of the most authoritative
voices in the journalistic field claim that in the present strained economic climate
there is an increased significance of governmental subsidies, which are associated
26
with the promotion of media diversity (Åmås 2017). Although Bourdieu’s concept of
autonomy and heteronomy can explain aspects of journalism, it does not fully apply
to the journalistic field. The so-called prestigious tabloids VG and Dagbladet are both
autonomous and heteronomous.
Regardless of these shortcomings, the journalistic field does – similar to the
political field – have the classic structure of a social field as envisioned by Bourdieu.
The actors within the Norwegian journalistic field are organised according to the
different quantities of capital which are at their disposal, and they adhere to an
internal logic: ‘the logic of the field’ (Hovden 2008; Thompson 2010). Adapting and
altering Thompson’s (2010:5) framework, I argue that there are four key resources –
forms of capital – in the Norwegian field of journalism: economic, human, social, and
symbolic capital (Fig. 5). The specific symbolic capital of this field can be named
journalistic capital. This is the sum of capital that collectively constitutes the prestige
and status associated with newspapers, as well as individual journalists and
commentators, which allows them to exert influence in the public sphere.
Figure 5 Forms of capital in the field of journalism in contemporary Norway
(based on Bourdieu 1986; Thompson 2010).
As explained, the journalistic field is a site of struggle in which the actors fight over
these forms of capital: economic capital (e.g. subscribers), human capital (e.g.
commentators), and social capital (e.g. elite political sources). Collectively, these
three forms of competition can ultimately be understood as a fight over journalistic
27
capital. The most prestigious positions within the journalistic field are occupied by the
commentators and newspapers who have the highest accumulation of journalistic
capital. The interactions between actors from each field must thus be understood in
relation to these actors’ relative positions in their respective field. The preceding
sections present the view that Bourdieu’s field theory holds unique promise for the
subsequent analysis. That said, it must be clarified that the application of field theory
in this context is primarily utilised to analyse the stratification of the field in question,
without attempting to understand the reception of commentators' writings. However,
this chapter has demonstrated that the terminology developed by Bourdieu’s field
theory is useful when describing commentators and their audiences.
When assessing the ‘power’ of Norwegian commentators, a precise
understanding of this term is necessary. Although Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic
power is of primary importance, its applicability would benefit from further elucidation
and support from other theories. I therefore propose that power in this specific
context can be defined as the commentators’ ability to set the agenda (McCombs
and Shaw 1972), frame political issues (Tewksbury and Scheufele 2009), and
accordingly influence their audience. This form of power is difficult to assess, in
particular if one does not interview the audience of political commentary. However,
readership and sharing practices of commentary content gives an indication of
commentators’ ability to influence their readers. Having outlined the theoretical
foundation of this study, we must now turn to an elaboration of the methodology.
28
Methodology
The digital infrastructure of media production, dissemination, and consumption is
becoming increasingly complex, and thus calls for the application of several research
methods (Karlsson and Sjøvaag 2018). The methodological approach of the
dissertation is therefore a tripartite mixed methods research design. First,
quantitative data of print circulation, digital readership, and social media engagement
was collected and analysed. Secondly, survey data on commentators and their
audience as well as politicians’ reported interest in political-analytical content was
interpreted. Finally, twenty semi-structured in-depth interviews with elite politicians
and commentators were conducted, transcribed, coded, and analysed. All these
components – statistics, survey data, and interviews – are part of the study’s
research design (Creswell and Clark 2011). Following the pragmatist paradigm in
that a research question should be of primary importance (Creswell and Clark 2011),
the purpose of this study is to answer these clearly defined questions:
RQ1: What is the present democratic function of Norwegian political commentators?
RQ2: How large is the readership of these commentators, and which demographic
characteristics can be attributed to this audience?
RQ3: What is the power of political commentators, and has this power changed in
the last decade?
To answer these questions, I had to make important decisions with regards to my
selection of newspapers and politicians. In order to critically examine the most
significant agents of the mainstream media, the scope of the study is limited to the
commentators of Norway's five largest daily newspapers, as measured by print
circulation, digital readership, and social media following. These are Aftenposten,
VG, Dagbladet, Dagens Næringsliv, and Bergens Tidende. These five organisations
are arguably the most important Norwegian legacy newspapers and are said to
employ the most influential commentators (Knapskog 2009; see Fig. 6).
29
Figure 6 A representative newsstand at a 7-Eleven in Oslo, March 2018. Dagens Næringsliv
(DN) in the bottom right corner. Bergens Tidende is less widely circulated in Oslo.
With regards to political interview subjects, I decided to interview one elite
representative from each of the nine political parties represented at Stortinget (Fig.
7). This selection does not suggest that the data provided by each individual is
representative for their entire party. It is rather a pragmatic approach to ensure that
perspectives across the political spectrum are considered.
Figure 7 The political parties represented at Stortinget, support as of 2017 (NRK).
Blue = coalition, yellow = support/opposition, red = opposition.
A second component of my research design is the theoretical framework, which has
already been accounted for in the preceding chapter.
30
Methodological tools
Concepts such as democratic function and power are not easily quantifiable, and an
emphasis on qualitative methodology in this sociological enquiry is therefore
unsurprising. However, it is difficult to evaluate commentators’ influence without
assessing their readership. This study aims to further the literature by showing a
quantification of commentary readership in Norway. To my best knowledge, this has
not previously been attempted in the literature of any region. I was also granted
access to unique survey data which enabled me to better analyse commentators’
audiences. I therefore composed a mixed methods design, defined as one that
“includes at least one quantitative method (designed to collect numbers) and one
qualitative method (designed to collect words), where neither type of method is
inherently linked to any particular inquiry paradigm” (Greene et al. 1989, as cited by
Creswell and Clark 2011). This definition differs slightly from Creswell and Clark’s
(2011) own, who maintain that the pragmatist paradigm is superior when conducting
mixed methods research. Tashakkori and Teddlie (2003) linked pragmatism and
mixed methods research by arguing that the research question should be of primary
importance – more important than either the method or the philosophical paradigm
that underlies it. The forced-choice dichotomy of postpositivism and constructivism,
as well as the use of concepts such as ‘truth’ and ‘reality’, are all consequently
abandoned (ibid.). Following Tashakkori and Teddlie (2003), a practical and applied
research philosophy guided my methodology. However, I do acknowledge that an
inquiry such as this study will always be a “moral, political and value-laden
enterprise” (Denzin 2010). Following Nyre’s notion of normative media research
(2009), I recognise that my theoretical lenses are somewhat influenced by critical
realism, as a combination of ontological realism and constructivist epistemology.
As noted by Creswell and Clark (2011), there are three challenges in using
mixed methods. These are the question of time and resources, the question of skill,
and the question of convincing others. The former challenges were overcome by
collecting data at an early stage, and analysing this data using Stata and Excel;
software I have previous experience with. The latter challenge refers to the fact that
mixed methods is a relatively new methodology (ibid.), and some may object to the
joint application of different research paradigms on philosophical grounds. The
preceding sections have dealt with such criticism on the basis that the quantitative
31
data has a clearly defined practical significance: to assess the readership and
audience of political commentary.
The research was constructed around three distinctive phases: First, I
collected various quantifiable data on readership. One aspect was physical print
circulation for all Norwegian newspapers, provided by Høst (2017) and Medienorge
(2018). Another aspect was data on the digital readership of commentary content
(editorials and op-eds) from Aftenposten, Norway’s largest print newspaper. Access
to this exclusive data was granted by Schibsted, the owner of Aftenposten, after
signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Schibsted also granted me access to
Aftenposten’s Facebook page to investigate social media engagement, although it
was not possible to restrict this data to only account for commentary content. I was
unable to attain such precise statistics from other newspapers, although
approximations of digital readership were provided by each of the four remaining
political editors. Hence, I only had access to detailed readership statistics from one
in five of Norway’s largest newspapers, which are not believed to be generalisable.
Nevertheless, this data provided a telling illustration of readership development for
Norway’s leading broadsheet, which boasts the highest brand value amongst
Norwegian newspapers (Newman et al. 2017:82). The results of these data analyses
were used as a crucial artefact in the qualitative interviews but also serves as
important contextual information for my overarching analysis. Unfortunately, the NDA
does not allow the precise readership statistics to be disclosed in this public version
of the dissertation
2
.
The second phase involved interpreting three sets of survey data collected by
Professor Jan Fredrik Hovden (University of Bergen, MeCIn) and colleagues.
Although parts of these sets have been used in peer-reviewed articles and official
reports in the past five years, none of these publications emphasised commentators
or commentary content. Hovden granted me access to the original material in order
to investigate such aspects thoroughly. Detailed methodology for each of the
respective studies is accessible through the original articles (citations follow). The
first set of data was based on a 2010 survey (N=207, response rate 52%) of cultural
orientation amongst the Norwegian political-administrative elite (Hovden and
Knapskog 2013). Here, I was able to extract Norwegian politicians’ reported interest
2
The original dissertation included graphs and figures on digital readership of commentary
content in Aftenposten. This public version includes non-compromising approximations.
32
in commentary content. The second set of data was based on a large survey of
Norwegian journalists’ demography and political orientation conducted in 2013
(Hovden and Esperås 2014). From this sample (N=791, response rate 36%), I was
able to isolate eighteen individuals which identified as national commentators. From
this, I could investigate various political and professional attitudes. Finally, I was
granted access to the original sets of data from the large national media survey
(N=2064, response rate 33%) conducted in November 2017, which explored the
Norwegian public’s usage and interest in the news media (Hovden 2018). These
findings will be presented in the following chapter, but primarily serve as evidence to
substantiate the qualitative findings.
The final and most important phase of the research was the qualitative
investigation. By interviewing my subjects at their places of work, I not only gained
insight into their points of view, but also direct access to the organisations and
institutions under scrutiny. The subjective nature of the interviews is essential,
seeing that the views of individuals constitute ‘the logic of a field’ (Thompson
2010:423). Accordingly, the partiality of the interview subjects can be relativised by
assessing the context of the structure and dynamic of the field (ibid.). They are not
“disembodied voices” that claim authority about their field, but rather voices from
particular positions within it (ibid.). It should be noted that the respondents, most
notably the commentators, frequently used terminology associated with sociology
and media studies throughout the interviews. Concepts such as ‘the public sphere’,
‘cultural capital’, ‘class’, ‘agenda-setting’, ‘field’, and ‘echo chambers’, were often
mentioned.
First, interview subjects from both the political field and the journalistic field
were carefully selected. Seeing that political editors are both commentators and
leaders of a division of commentators, it was sensible to strive towards interviewing
these subjects. In the case of Dagbladet, the former political editor, Marie Simonsen,
was chosen as chief representative. She is the longest-serving political editor in
modern Norwegian press history and is recognised as the most notable
commentator of Dagbladet. Six additional renowned commentators were selected to
broaden the scope of the study. All of these journalistic respondents agreed to
participate in the study. Thereafter, one representative from each of the nine political
parties at Stortinget was interviewed. Interviewing elite politicians across the political
spectrum as a second group of inquiry was crucial seeing that politicians are the
33
subject of the commentators’ writings, and their reflections related to commentators’
power are thus of great importance. It was the ambition of the study to interview the
leader of each political party, but this was not achieved in all instances. Rather, the
respondents fall into two categories: either political leadership (party leader, minister,
parliamentary leader) or elite advisors (personal advisor of leader, state secretary,
head of communication). The distribution between the two groups was more or less
equal.
Secondly, two separate interview guides were developed: one for journalistic
respondents, and one for political respondents. The primary themes – celebrification,
social media, democratic function, interaction, and power – were identical for both
groups, although questions were phrased differently. I also collected data on social
media following for all respondents which were used as interview artefacts. A pilot
interview was then conducted with Knut Olav Åmås, a former political editor of
Aftenposten and former state secretary in the Ministry of Culture – thus having
relevant experience from both the journalistic and the political field. After making
slight alterations to the interview guides, I proceeded to conduct twenty semi-
structured in-depth interviews with the political editors, commentators, and politicians
in question. In this study, the interviews were used to access social knowledge that
the commentators and politicians possessed. After an informal introduction, the
respondents signed a form of consent. The interviews lasted from forty to seventy
minutes and were recorded and transcribed. Through the thematic interview guide, I
sought out memories and experiences that the interview subjects associated with
particular networks and practices. The semi-structured form allowed flexibility in
asking follow-up questions and moving back and forth between sections when it
benefited the interview (Thompson 2010:423). Throughout the time I was conducting
research I kept detailed field notes and frequently listened to the recorded interviews.
This allowed me to notice themes that often emerged, as well as initiating preliminary
analysis. The interviews provided access to the respondents’ experiences and
elucidated various situations related to power. Being personal accounts, the data
produced should not be perceived as secondary or indirect sources of events but
understood as original texts with their own distinct research history. The transcribed
material, totalling more than 150.000 words, was thereafter coded according to
predetermined primary and subordinate themes using the software Dedoose.
34
The preceding section has demonstrated that my role as researcher was to
undertake a sociological exploration of commentators’ power, including the
interaction between the journalistic field and the political field, combining quantitative
and qualitative approaches. The choice of a mixed methods research design was
made to contribute to what Geertz (1973) refers to as ‘thick description’ – describing
both behaviour and context.
Measures of ensuring reliability and validity
Krumsvik (2014) argues that greater reliability can be placed on the data gathered in
an interview over that gathered by a survey, as an experienced interviewer can make
sure questions are comprehensible in direct conversations. Flexibility is both a
strength and a weakness of the semi-structured interview, which implies that
interviews may be conducted in somewhat different ways. Questions can be phrased
differently, and certain topics may be given greater focus. By recording and
transcribing the interviews accurately, such variations can be discovered and
disclosed. The interviews in this study were conducted in Norwegian, and the
transcriptions are thus incomprehensible for most international readers. The
transcribed materials were therefore analysed for information relating to different
themes such as celebrification, power, and democratic function. Selected quotes
were translated by myself for purposes of transparency and accessibility. I have
quoted interview subjects approximately verbatim, but following Thompson
(2010:423), I have in certain instances taken the liberty of removing some of the
idiosyncrasies of the spoken word. This was deemed appropriate given the lack of
ethnolect and generally professionalised vocabulary of the interview subjects.
Quotes and statements that represent the view of several interview subjects are at
times generalised in the analysis (ibid.).
Validity refers to the credibility or believability of the research, and whether the
study’s conclusion is well-founded and corresponds to the real world (Kvale and
Brinkmann 2015). To overcome preconceived ideas about working practices in this
field, the interviews employed open-ended questions. Although only one
representative from each political party was approached, questions were articulated
with the intent to uncover the attitudes of the political leadership within each party,
rather than individual opinions. Following Thompson (2010:423), the validity of my
research does not require that every member of the fields in question accepts my
35
analysis as fair and accurate. However, my precautions and the data basis of
analysis minimises the risk of bias.
A weakness of the research design is that the interviewees may describe
themselves favourably, either the commentators as more ‘powerful’ or the elite
politicians as less ‘influenced’ by commentators (Hackman and Wageman 2007). I
attempted to mitigate this risk by cross-referencing the interviews, which is a form of
data triangulation. It is nevertheless possible that the politicians concealed their true
opinions, or that the journalistic respondents exaggerated their readership.
Ethical considerations
In accordance with the regulations of the University of Cambridge, the Ethical
Approval and Risk Assessment Form for Sociological Research was filled out and
approved. There were no significant hazards, although confidentiality was a concern.
Anonymity was granted to the interview subjects, although it was considered
appropriate to disclose the name of political editors in some instances. In the small
number of cases where this occurs, it is done with their explicit consent. The political
interview subjects are defined broadly as elite politicians, as to connect statements
to each political party rather than the individual’s position within the party (party
leader, parliamentary leader, etc.). The interview subjects received a letter with
information about the study prior to the interview and signed an informed consent
form before the interviews commenced.
Project limitations
There are several conscious limitations introduced in order to achieve analytical
focus. One such limitation is that the study focuses on Norwegian national
newspaper commentators, a small group of approximately fifty individuals. It would
be interesting to include broadcast commentators and external columnists in the
study, but this lies beyond the scope of the research questions. Moreover, it would
be interesting to investigate other metrics of commentator celebrification, such as the
number of TV and radio appearances, as well as social media activity. This was
considered infeasible due to the project’s timescale but should be considered as an
avenue for future research. The generalisability of the project would be greater if
more interviews were executed, especially with a wider range of elite politicians.
However, the selection of interview subjects was attuned to the research questions.
36
A common issue with qualitative research projects is to assume easier access
to a given field than what is realistic. However, my background as a journalist in
Bergens Tidende, as well as previous research experience on leadership in the
Norwegian media industry (Raabe, Gjerding and Kopperstad 2017), granted me
access to both data and interview subjects in the journalistic field. A letter of
recommendation from Knut Olav Åmås, the director of Fritt Ord, helped me gain
access to the political leadership of each of the nine political parties.
37
Analysis
Statistical findings on readership
It is difficult to evaluate the influence and democratic function of Norwegian national
commentators without investigating their readership. However, a review of the
literature shows that this is a surprising oversight. Although I was granted access to
exclusive primary data, calculating overall readership is a complex task. Print
circulation is not an accurate measurement, seeing as some copies may be thrown
away unread, some briefly skimmed, while others may be read by several people in
an office or café. Moreover, digital ‘clicks’ do not equate attentive readership, as
many discontinue reading after the first couple of paragraphs. Surveys are also not
an ideal measurement, as respondents may report being more avid readers of
political-analytical content than what is the case. Social desirability bias, a well-
known psychological concept (Edwards 1953), is also likely to influence experimental
designs in which researchers monitor the readership of their subjects. With these
limitations in mind, the following section will present original and predominantly
unpublished statistics of readership.
Physical readership is dwindling in all Western markets (Newman et al. 2017),
including Norway (Fig. 8). More than half of all physical newspaper editions have
been discontinued since the 1990s. Simultaneously the Norwegian population has
grown by nearly twenty per cent (Thorsnæs 2018).
Figure 8 Based on data provided by Høst (2017) and Medienorge (2018).
38
Seeing that local and regional newspapers to a greater extent have maintained their
print audiences (Wilberg 2018), this decline is even more pronounced for Norway’s
national dailies. The total print circulation of Norway’s five largest legacy newspapers
was well above one million copies in the period 1992 to 2002. Dagens Næringsliv
has in the past two years refrained from reporting their print circulation (Johansen
2017), but if one assumes a modest decrease by for example fifteen per cent in 2016
and five per cent in 2017, lower than any of the four remaining newspapers, the
number of daily editions for Norway’s five largest newspapers have fallen short of
350.000 copies. Moreover, epapers (digital-only subscribers) have been included in
the count of print circulation since 2014 (Medienorge 2018). This implies that the
decrease of physical print circulation is even greater than the two-thirds reduction
illustrated in the graph below.
Figure 9 Based on data provided by Medienorge (2018).
Although print circulation cannot explain the actual readership of commentary
content, it illustrates the exposure of such texts. Moreover, Cagé (2016:64-67) finds
that physical newspapers on average are read by several people: the physical
editions of Le Monde are on average read by six individuals, while the same figure is
6.5 for The New York Times. Furthermore, Cagé (ibid.) finds that readers devote
more time to print copies than their digital counterparts. Digital audiences spend, on
average, fewer than five minutes a day on a given news site, and less than one
minute on each text. In contrast, physical readers spend twenty-five to thirty-five
39
minutes per day on their paper (ibid.). This indicates that physical readers would be
more susceptive to commentary content. Accordingly, it is interesting to note that
only four per cent of the Norwegian population report physical newspapers to be
their most important source of news (Sakariassen et al. 2017:10).
Regardless of decreasing print circulation, one would assume that digital
readership would be of great significance. However, the political commentary of all
national print newspapers, with the important exception of VG, lies fully or partially
beyond the paywall. VG’s political editor explains that there are “no immediate plans
to introduce payment models for commentary content”, but at the same time notes
that “it is something we discuss”. The political editor of Aftenposten, on the other
hand, argues that the trend of having commentary content behind the paywall is
“appearing in full strength” across all Norwegian newsrooms. This prediction is in
keeping with developments in Dagbladet, which in September 2018 introduced a
‘hybrid’ model in which one piece of commentary requires a subscription, while one
to two texts are freely available every day. Simonsen of Dagbladet explains that they
experimented with a ‘full paywall’ (subscribers only) in “a very brief period”, and that
there was “a certain willingness to pay for my op-eds”, although also Simonsen
obtained “far fewer clicks than when it was freely available”. The other commentators
of Dagbladet attracted “very few readers”, and accordingly, this payment model was
abandoned in favour of a free-for-all model – and now – a hybrid one.
It is evident that paywalls have a pronounced effect on the accessibility of
political commentary. While Norwegians have the world’s highest willingness to pay
for digital news, remarkably more so than the British people, only fifteen per cent
have an ongoing online news subscription (Fig. 10, p. 40). Amongst those who do
not pay for online news, fifty-five per cent report that it is “highly unlikely” that they
will do so in the future (Sakariassen et al. 2017). The most common explanation that
these respondents provide is that they already have access to free online news
(ibid.), which can refer to both the credible public broadcaster NRK, or the new alt-
right outlets. The primary reason given by those who choose to subscribe is access
to in-depth analyses and op-eds (ibid.).
40
Figure 10 Willingness to pay for online news (Statista 2018, based on Newman et al. 2017)
Although attracting digital readers is still a priority for all newspapers, clicks are no
longer used as the key performance indicator (KPI). One senior commentator says:
“Previously, the most important factor was whether a text attracted attention, in terms
of readership and clicks and so on, but now I’m much more conscious about whether
the quality [of the text] is good enough”. The strategic goal of Norway’s five largest
newspapers is now to convert readers into subscribers. However, this conversion
very rarely manifests in the case of commentary content, according to the political
editors of this study. Accordingly, commentators are read by few. I attained access to
and analysed detailed digital readership statistics from Aftenposten, which I am not
able to disclose in this version of the dissertation. However, I am able to state that
very few comments attain more than twenty thousand clicks, and very few editorials
get as many as five thousand clicks. The political editors of the remaining four
newspapers report similar figures: Dagbladet claims that the average op-ed is read
online by “ten to twenty thousand people”, Bergens Tidende from “two and a half to
seventeen thousand”, and Dagens Næringsliv from “one to two thousand” times. In
contrast, VG’s political editor claim that the average op-ed is read online from “five to
a hundred thousand times”, and that they “reach a larger audience today than
previously”. Although VG experienced the most dramatic decline of print circulation
41
in all of Norway (Fig. 9, p. 38), their homepage VG.no is the most popular online
news destination in Norway, with 1.3 million unique visitors every day (Torvik 2017).
Although access to detailed statistics has been unattainable, it appears that the case
of VG is atypical (Barland 2015; Kvalheim 2016). Nevertheless, Cagé (2016:64)
warns against “The Illusion of Vast Internet Audiences”: digital readers are not as
attentive as their physical counterparts (Bueno 2016). More so, the four news
organisations that did not provide access to detailed statistics may exaggerate their
readership.
Nevertheless, commentary content is distributed across social media, most
notably Facebook and Twitter, and this is a form of exposure (Chadwick 2013).
Sakariassen and colleagues (2017) find that social media is considered a source of
news by fifty-three per cent of the Norwegian population. However, all mainstream
news organisations experience decreasing Facebook ‘reach’ – the measurement of
how many individuals see posts, and Twitter has never generated significant traffic
for Norwegian news outlets (Madrigal 2017; Newman et al. 2017:43; Sakariassen et
al. 2017). Although the number of followers on Aftenposten’s Facebook page grew
from approximately 250.000 to 400.000 over the course of two years (2016–2018),
their reach dropped by nearly forty per cent. Regardless of a substantial growth in
followers, fewer people see shared articles by news organisations on Facebook
(Madrigal 2017). VG’s political editor reports that now, less than four per cent of their
digital traffic stems from Facebook – which is said to be a “significant decrease”. This
is pertinent, seeing that VG is the most prominent news outlet on social media
amongst the five newspapers in question (Fig. 2, p. 13). The development of
decreasing reach may be explained by the algorithmic changes introduced by
Facebook in the summer of 2016 and in January 2018 (Zuckerberg 2018). Now,
content from “friends and family”, that is, original content from private profiles,
features more heavily on an individual’s Facebook newsfeed (ibid.). While content
such as pictures from family holidays are spread freely, Facebook demands financial
compensation for visibility from ‘pages’, such as the page of a newspaper. The
attention of the general consumer and the news consumers is equally valuable for
Facebook. Due to this increased competition over attention – what is described as
‘The Attention Economy’ (Bueno 2016) – the political editors and commentators
interviewed for this study report that the importance of social media is decreasing.
News organisations are naturally not willing to pay for digital visibility and readership
42
– they demand payment from consumers for the right to view their content – and my
respondents acknowledge that content ‘behind the paywall’ will never go viral. Why
waste valuable time spreading articles across social media if the profit in terms of
readership is modest? More so, audiences across social media may not be the ones
who are most willing to pay for news. Sakariassen and colleagues (2017:14) and
Newman and colleagues (2017:43) find that social media news consumers are
‘disloyal’, meaning they read dispersed and free content from several news outlets. A
fortiori, both available data and the editors themselves report that few readers
access news through search engines, such as Google (Sakariassen et al. 2017:14).
Accordingly, being a ‘primary destination’ and having a good placement on the
‘online front’ – the newspapers’ own webpage – is crucial for attracting digital
readers to commentary content. If the mainstream media no longer emphasise social
media due to its lack of profitability, this bolsters the position of free right-wing
outlets.
From this, I postulate that political commentary from the five legacy
newspapers in question have significantly less exposure today, as compared to one
decade ago. In 2008, print circulation remained relatively high, and digital content
was freely available to all. As the introduction of this chapter explained, it is not
possible to assess readership accurately. However, a reasonable hypothesis is that
also readership of such commentary content has decreased. The development of
decreasing readership is to a certain extent acknowledged by the journalistic
interview subjects of this study. Aftenposten’s political editor report that she is
“conscious that our editorials are read by very few”. Who are these readers?
Audience demographic
From the national media survey (N=2064) conducted in November 2017, one finds
that twenty-nine per cent of the respondents reported an interest in commentary from
national newspapers (Hovden 2018). This entails that they merely ticked a box of
“op-eds and editorials” amongst fourteen journalistic genres. Accordingly, this
reported ‘interest’ in commentary content might not be an accurate representation of
readership (Edwards 1953). ‘Interested’ respondents are unlikely to read
commentary from multiple news outlets several times a week. Nevertheless, one can
discern several differences amongst the ‘disinterested’ and the ‘interested’ groups.
On average, the interested group were significantly older, with forty-eight per cent
43
being aged sixty or more, compared to thirty-six per cent of the disinterested
belonging to the same age group. Moreover, the latter group was slightly less likely
to have a university degree, particularly at a higher level. Fourteen per cent of the
disinterested group had more than four years of higher education, while twenty per
cent of the interested group reported the same. Gender differences among the
disinterested group were small, while amongst the interested group, fifty-six per cent
were men and forty-four per cent were women. The respondents were also asked
which party they voted for in the 2017 election, and the results among the
disinterested group were more or less representative of the election results (Fig. 7, p.
29). However, the group that reported an interest in political commentary were twice
as likely to have voted for the Socialist Left Party or the Red Party, and half as likely
to have voted for the Progress Party, as compared to the election results. The
interested group did also have greater annual incomes, with fifty-seven per cent
earning more than the Norwegian average of 400.000 NOK (≈37.000 GBP) and fifty-
one per cent of the disinterested group earning the same. Thirty per cent of the
interested group lives in greater Oslo, compared to twenty-three per cent of the
disinterested group. The data provided by Hovden (2018) also shows that the
interested group scored approximately three percentage points higher on an index of
‘high’ social, cultural, and economic capital. Broadly speaking, the survey data
reveals that a quarter of the Norwegian population report an interest in political
commentary, and that this group is more likely to be older, urban, educated, male,
wealthy, and adhering to the liberal hegemony (i.e. not right-wing populism).
Unsurprisingly, this latter group were also more eager news consumers overall.
These findings are supported by Jonas Ohlsson, the Director of Nordicom, who
presented unpublished statistics on Swedish news consumption in a seminar at the
University of Bergen on 13 April 2018. Ohlsson argues that newspaper subscriptions
form a new class marker in Scandinavia. Based on logistic regression analysis, he
found that the probability of a Swedish household subscribing to a newspaper in
2015 strongly correlated with social class. Upper white-collar households had a sixty-
six per cent chance of subscribing, and blue-collar households a forty-four per cent
chance. Different age groups are also disparate, with 20-29 year-olds having an
eighteen per cent chance of subscribing to a newspaper in 2015, 30-49 year-olds
having a thirty-two per cent chance, and 65-85 year-olds having an eighty-two per
44
cent chance. Ohlsson argues that this trend is a response to rising subscription
prices: metropolitan newspapers have increased their market price by 250 per cent
since the millennial turn – far higher than the inflation rate. Paying for news is thus
strongly associated with high income or at the very least financial security. These
recent findings are of great importance, seeing that a traditional feature of the
Norwegian newspaper market has been ‘egalitarian readership’ with limited class-
related differences (Dahl 2016).
Ohlsson (2018) further argued that media trust is a new form of divide in
Sweden. Traditionally, left- and right-wing voters scored more or less equal in media
trust. Today, trust in the media increasingly correlates with the party you support.
Voters of the populist right-wing party Sweden Democrats reported the lowest trust in
the media, with ninety per cent distrusting the Swedish mainstream media’s
coverage of immigration. This supports the hypothesis that this audience is likely to
report a disinterest in commentary content from liberal-conservative newspapers.
Although the Sweden Democrats have not attained the same form of political
legitimacy as the Norwegian Progress Party, it is its closest Swedish equivalent.
According to Ohlsson, there are no mainstream media newspapers that support the
policies of the Sweden Democrats, and similarly, there are no legacy newspapers
that support The Progress Party in Norway. Political affiliation is therefore also a
likely causation for the willingness to pay for news. As of now, there is no such data
published in Norway. However, recent data from the United States might provide
some insight: in the US, left-wing voters are almost three times as likely to pay for
online news as are right-wing voters (Newman et al. 2017:35).
If only a quarter of the public report an interest in commentary content, what
then about the political elite? This can be discerned from Hovden and Knapskog’s
(2013) survey study of cultural orientation amongst Norwegian MPs, government,
and governmental administration (N=207). Although the data is from 2010, it is
interesting to note that seventy-three per cent of the respondents reported being
‘highly interested’ in commentary content, and twenty-six per cent being ‘somewhat
interested’. Only one per cent of the political elite reported being ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’
disinterested in commentary content. This is in stark contrast to the seventy-one per
cent of the public that reported their disinterest in such content.
The argument I would like to advance, and which I will further develop in the
following sections, is that commentators form and inform an elite group of writers and
45
readers. They are, in large, writing for the elite – particularly the political elite – and it
is probable that the stratification of interested and disinterested groups in the last
decade has intensified due to declining print circulation, decreasing social media
exposure of mainstream political commentary, and new digital subscription models.
This information divide is reinforcing existing inequalities. However, the preceding
section only took readership statistics into account. There is much evidence to
support the notion that commentators are becoming increasingly visible in media
outside their own organisation. “Their own organisation” includes the newspapers’
print edition, online webpage, email newsletters, and official profiles on social media
platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat (Chadwick 2013).
Celebrification and hierarchies
Commentators have for decades been considered political celebrities in Norway
(Rogstad 2015). However, the nature of their fame has changed significantly in the
past fifty years: they are now described as independent political experts – and have
attained a “far more visible role” (Allern 2010). Although the dissolvement of the
party press system explains part of this development, it is also perceived as a natural
consequence of ‘celebrification’ (Driessens 2012). Celebrification – the
transformation of individuals into celebrities – has intensified in the age of social
media and can be separated into three interconnected processes in the case of
commentators: 1) heightened personal focus within their organisation, 2) escalation
of appearances in other media, and 3) increased personal exposure created by each
individual commentator across social media.
First, all political editors report an increased focus on building the celebrity
and profile of their individual commentators, following the international trend of
newspapers such as The Guardian. Commentators feature on both print and digital
front pages most days, with their full name and byline picture clearly visible.
Occasionally, they also feature in promotions for their newspaper through
advertisements such as full-page spreads and billboards. Such commercials
highlight the ‘exclusivity’ of the commentators’ analyses – these are only available
through subscribing to the particular newspaper. One senior commentator says: “It’s
a fact that commentators have a stronger personal brand value today than twenty
years ago. [...] this focus on building personal brands started carefully around the
millennial turn and has since grown almost exponentially”. Several political editors
46
describe commentators as ‘the flagship of the newspaper’. This process of increased
focus on the individual commentator is part of what Botsman (2016) describes as
‘individualisation of trust’: trust in brands and institutions is decreasing, while
audiences are increasingly prone to trust identifiable individuals. As noted by the
political editor of Aftenposten: “We know that the name of the commentator is
increasingly important. The audience often look at the name of the author first”.
Secondly, commentators often participate in public debates, most notably in
TV and radio programmes by the public broadcaster NRK, and the TV shows of the
commercial broadcaster TV2. “To say yes to as much as possible is seen as being
part of my job”, one commentator explains, while “being introverted is disqualifying”.
All agree that the frequency of such appearances has increased significantly in
recent years. Most commentators report participating in other media one to two times
a week, while some appear as often as five times a week in certain high-activity
periods. Very few of my journalistic respondents feature in other media less than
every fortnight. This is perceived as mutually beneficial for both the newspapers and
the broadcasters. The former attains valuable exposure for both their commentator
(celebrification) and their newspaper (brand value), which bolsters the legitimacy of
both actors (journalistic capital). The latter acquires specialist content without having
to pay for it. Although both of Norway’s televised multi-media broadcasters employ
political analysts, the commentators of this study experience that their contributions
are valued by audiences and the editorial teams they interact with.
Thirdly, commentators have a strong presence on social media (Kalsnes
2016). The political editors Eilertsen (Aftenposten), Alstadheim (Dagens Næringsliv)
and Skartveit (VG) all have more than thirty thousand followers on Twitter, which
position them amongst the elite of the Norwegian ‘tweetocracy’ (Vatnøy 2016; 2017).
Gudbrandsen (Bergens Tidende) has five thousand followers, while Simonsen
(Dagbladet) boasts more than one hundred thousand. However, these senior
commentators report that social media has become decreasingly important: they
spend less time on promoting and discussing their writings, especially on Twitter. A
younger commentator, on the other hand, reported that “being a commentator is
much harder today than previously”. Less seasoned commentators experience that
they have to utilise the opportunities offered by social media in order to reach their
audience, which demands both time and energy outside regular office hours. Overall,
47
there are increased demands for exposure, as compared to two decades ago, in the
‘print age’.
Politicians also experience that commentators have become more prominent
in recent years, both in their own newspaper and in other media. These processes of
celebrification are chiefly perceived as an ‘enrichment of the public debate’. One left-
wing politician explains that “commentators are able to draw longer raisonnements
without being speculative”, and they “don’t have the same agenda as politicians”
when participating in debates. Commentators are primarily perceived as ‘honest’ and
‘knowledgeable’ by the political interview subjects. Even if the readership of
commentary content has decreased, processes of celebrification may strengthen the
commentators’ public position.
Nevertheless, as previously demonstrated, celebrification and status are not
equally distributed within each newsroom. Although all commentators are attributed
more prestige than the average journalist, they are still not perceived as being part of
the upper section of the newsroom hierarchy (Soloski 1989). Each of the five
newspapers employs one or two – and no more – senior commentators that have
attained the same status as that of the political editors. Some of these, such as
Simonsen (Dagbladet) and Stanghelle (Aftenposten) are previous political editors.
These senior commentators, who are all older than forty years old, are significantly
more exposed in other media, and have larger followings on social media. Through
long journalistic careers they have attained a strong ‘personal brand value’, and
accordingly they are not as concerned with promoting themselves. It is easier to turn
down some of the numerous offers from broadcasters every week and expect that
their content is being spread across social media regardless of their own actions.
However, there are small differences between the elites of each organisation. The
political editor of Dagens Næringsliv and Aftenposten are perceived as equally
powerful (Åmås 2016:241ff). This notion may be illustrated through the application of
Bourdieu’s field theory. Inspired by Hovden (2011), I present a map that illustrates
two overarching forms of stratification within the Norwegian journalistic field, similar
to Bourdieu’s famous maps of various fields, their actors, and distribution of cultural
and economic capital therein. Whilst Bourdieu’s work was based predominantly on
correspondence analyses of relatively large sets of data, my map is based on
analyses of qualitative research interviews and my own experience as a journalist –
or to borrow a Bourdieusian term: my ‘feel for the game’.
48
Figure 11 The field of journalism in contemporary Norway (inspired by Hovden 2011)
The first axis (top-bottom on the map) is that of field-specific capital, a sum of
human, social and economic capital. This scale corresponds with both ‘legacy’ and
publishing format: broadly speaking, the established print media versus online-
exclusive publications. The second axis (left-right on the map) is that of journalistic
(symbolic) capital, which corresponds with the division of national versus local
publications. The top-left quadrant encompasses the largest national newspapers,
political commentators, and editors: the elite. This quadrant is opposed to the sphere
of local and regional newspapers (top-right), who have large volumes of human,
social, and economic capital within their regionalised domain, but have smaller
accumulations of journalistic capital, or ‘prestige’ and influence, nationally. By
contrast, the bottom-left quadrant often includes younger journalists writing for
smaller but prestigious newspapers such as Dagens Næringsliv. The bottom-right
quadrant has the lowest levels of journalistic prestige and is where one finds
journalists writing on topics that are farthest from the (Norwegian) professional and
journalistic norms – topics such as celebrity news and alt-right content.
Following Bourdieu (1984), it is the struggles of the fields’ elites that
determine the value of the different forms of capital in the field, and accordingly its
49
structure and dynamic. This implies that political editors and senior commentators
have a privileged capacity to influence the fundamental belief-system of the
journalistic field: its nomos (Bourdieu 2005:32). They are the ones with the agency to
define who is considered a ‘good journalist’ and what is regarded as ‘good
journalism’. Hence these same elites also mark the perimeters of the field by defining
which actors and practices are legitimate, and which are heretical. This implies that
less senior (and younger) commentators must adhere to the norms – the nomos – of
the field to advance. Some young journalists with large followings across social
media, such as Ingeborg Senneset, are occasionally allowed to write opinionated
columns. However, Senneset has not been promoted to the role as commentator,
perhaps due to a perceived lack of legitimacy in her writing about less prestigious
topics such as mental health and vaccination.
Hovden’s (2011) research on the social backgrounds of Norwegian journalists
empirically demonstrates that within this structured field, prestige and internal
recognition are far from equally distributed. They vary with both journalists’
sociodemographic background and their social trajectory, that is, their career in a
broad sense, including their education and non-journalistic jobs. This endows the
actors with markedly unequal chances to accumulate capital in its various forms, and
thereby become, for example, the bearer of a prestigious title such as ‘commentator’.
This fortifies the notion of the journalistic elite being elitist.
Democratic function
The journalistic interview subjects’ view of democracy corresponds with the
theoretical framework of this study. Conforming to the ideals encompassed by the
inclusive public sphere (based on Habermas 1962; Fraser 1990), the political editor
of VG posits that “our job is to maintain and foster the broad space in the ‘centre’ of
the public sphere, where difficult issues can be discussed in an open manner”. Also
following Anderson’s (1983) notion of the imagined community, Skartveit argues that
“to uphold a shared public sphere is an important function” for their commentators:
“we write our editorials for the common citizen”. However, she acknowledges that
VG’s division of commentators “should be better at writing ‘softer’ op-eds". Similarly,
Simonsen of Dagbladet reports to place great value in readership: “we don’t solely
write for the people working within Parliament”. Although these norms are shared by
the remaining three newspapers in principle, important differences can be discerned
50
between the prestigious tabloids VG and Dagbladet, and the broadsheets
Aftenposten, Dagens Næringsliv, and Bergens Tidende. As of August 2018, the
former two newspapers provide free access to all their commentary content.
Surprisingly, it is their ‘clickbait’ content that lies beyond the paywall; articles such as
‘Twenty signs your boss is a psychopath’ (Barland 2015; Kvalheim 2016). The latter
three papers, like the remaining Norwegian national newspapers Morgenbladet
(intellectual weekly), Finansavisen (finance daily), and Klassekampen (left-wing
daily), all have their commentary beyond the paywall.
Applying Bourdieu (1993) and Schudson’s (2005) concept of autonomy and
heteronomy induce an interesting paradox. VG and Dagbladet’s commentators, who
supposedly would be the most autonomous seeing that their editorial strategy is to
provide free commentary, are to the contrary more heteronomous. Because their
content is free, these organisations place more emphasis on attracting readers who
potentially can be converted into paying subscribers in order to read ‘softer’ articles.
The latter three organisations, who place their commentary behind the paywall, are
conversely more autonomous. Because political commentary rarely converts readers
into subscribers – and because such content is seen as an essential part of a
newspapers’ legacy – the political editors of these three newspapers explicitly
acknowledge that they primarily write for their existing audience. This logic implies
that employing a commentator with a different nomos, for example, a lifestyle
blogger with a large following across social media, potentially could turn away
existing subscribers without attracting new ones. As previously demonstrated,
willingness to pay for news correlates strongly with age and income. I therefore
hypothesise that paywalls and the changing nature of social media distribution direct
the latter organisations toward increased elitism: they write commentary for the elites
who have already chosen to pay for their product.
This fortifies Sunstein’s (2017) notion of increased fragmentation of
information, increased polarisation, and accordingly a weakening of both the
inclusive public sphere (Habermas 1962) and a shared frame of reference: the
imagined community (Anderson 1983). Although commentators from the three
broadsheets in question do not wish to be perceived as elitist, they report that
assumptions of potential readership do not make a significant impact on topic
selection. As noted by the political editor of Bergens Tidende: “boring texts are often
the most important”. Moreover, most of my interview subjects, especially the senior
51
commentators, report that the ‘quality’ of the text is of primary importance. Whilst
Bourdieu (1998; 2005) understood autonomy as positive in the journalistic field, my
analysis demonstrates that the contrary is the case in the age of social media.
From this, it is clear that commentators inadvertently fail to live up to the
democratic journalistic norms (‘educating the audience’) due to both the professional
norms (‘trustworthy quality’) and the economic goals (‘attracting subscribers’) of the
broadsheets. As explained by Alstadheim, the political editor of Dagens Næringsliv:
“Our content is exclusive. I believe there is a willingness to pay for our [more
analytical] content". However, this study demonstrates that the willingness to pay for
news is low amongst the general population, and closely tied to socio-economic
factors. The commentators and political editors affirm that this is problematic but
rationalise its implications. Alstadheim argues: “Our commentary has only been
available to paying audiences for 130 years". This explanation is valid but
nevertheless fails to grasp the changing nature of the media industry. In the print
age, the public’s only point of entry to information was buying the newspaper, and
accordingly be exposed to political commentary. In the age of social media, the
barrier of entry to such exposure is much higher, as demonstrated by the statistics
provided in preceding sections. Conversely, alt-right commentary is freely available
online.
The journalistic and political interview subjects worry about the rise of the alt-right, an
opinion in keeping with the writings of Sunstein (2017) and Nagle (2017). One
commentator explains that “Resett, Document, and Rights are amongst the most
shared news outlets every single day”, an assessment confirmed by my statistical
findings (Fig. 2, p. 13). The implications of this development are eloquently
articulated by a young female commentator:
I’m afraid that these news outlets slowly contaminate the public sphere, that
the audience’s practice of reading news is changing; that they accept
outrageous and nasty stuff that is not really journalism but is believe to be so.
[...] A broad and diverse public sphere is of course important, but at the same
time, the increased polarisation push other voices away from the debate.
This interview subject explains that writing about feminism and immigration is
particularly difficult. She, as well as all the other female interview subjects, report that
52
they frequently receive hateful feedback and concrete threats when writing about
such topics.
It has been demonstrated that commentators constitute a homogenous and
elitist group, and most commentators fail to live up to their democratic potential.
Certainly, mainstream newspapers should strive towards meeting increased
demands of diverse representation, especially in terms of ethnicity (Eddo-Lodge
2018). However, it is predominantly the alt-right minority that is excluded from
mainstream journalism, whilst liberal-conservative values are promoted. Espousing
reform rather than renouncement, I argue that it is important that commentators
remain powerful influencers. To bolster their position, they should strive towards
reaching a larger audience. This could for example be achieved by attaining a
broader understanding of politics, thus altering the field’s nomos. Politics encompass
every aspect of society, not only parliamentary processes. However, it is crucial to
acknowledge that high-quality journalism such as political commentary is costly to
produce. Nevertheless, it appears that VG and Dagbladet’s financial strategy is more
attuned with the journalistic norms of the literature (Thompson 2012), in which high-
quality journalism is financed by other and less prestigious forms of content. The
final section of this analysis will account for commentators’ power, and how this
power has changed in the last decade.
Power
It is difficult to accurately assess the commentators’ power. However, in the recent
publication The Power Elite (Åmås 2016:241-243), Omdal argue that the political
editors of Aftenposten and Dagens Næringsliv are amongst the 250 most powerful
individuals in Norway. No other journalists or commentators were included on this
exclusive list. The sociological nomenclature often employed by the interview
subjects of this study enables us to understand the nature of this power. One
commentator said: “If you define the public sphere as a field, it is obvious that one of
the most strategic and powerful positions is that of a newspaper commentator [...],
and Aftenposten is the most important institution within this field”. Commentators
report that their opinions are ‘legitimised’ by the brand of their newspaper. “There are
very few independent commentators [bloggers, influencers, social media-personas]
that have enough followers to actually influence a lot of people”, another
commentator noted. Attaining such a following may nevertheless grant entry to the
53
journalistic field. Two influential Twitter personas, Morten Myksvoll and Magnus
Forsberg, were in 2017 employed as part-time columnists in Bergens Tidende and
Dagsavisen, respectively.
However, a more senior commentator proposed that commentators tend to
exaggerate their own influence. He explained that commentators have “very little
structural power and relatively little political power, but we have fairly strong framing
power and agenda-setting power” (see McCombs and Shaw 1972; Tewksbury and
Scheufele 2009). The interview subjects believe that they influence the topic of
discussion on the public broadcasters’ daily news show, as well as the agenda of
politicians. None of the commentators believed that they could change the opinions
of their general readership, but a few believed that they influenced concrete political
processes or party politics. That being said, commentators argued that they had
significant influence in shaping the outcome of political scandals if ‘operating as a
pack’, confirming findings by Nord and colleagues (2012). The recent resignation of
justice minister Sylvi Listhaug due to a polemic Facebook-post on immigration and
terrorism is such an example (see p. 21).
Preceding sections have demonstrated that the audience of political
commentary could be broadly defined as ‘elite’. This was affirmed by a senior
commentator, who argued that “commentators definitely have power in the sense
that both politicians and the elite read our texts. So we have a considerable agenda-
setting power in terms of the economic, cultural, political, and bureaucratic elite in
Norway”. All political interview subjects reported a keen interest in political
commentary – with one important exception who I will return to. The attentive
readership of the elites is attributed to the perceived quality of the commentators’
analysis by both the journalistic and political interview subjects. One left-wing
politician explained that “[commentators] have insights in a different and more
profound way than journalists”. This ‘profound insight’ can be explained by several
factors. Commentators are professional journalists that are members of large news
organisations with access to all forms of capital – economic, social, cultural, and
journalistic. Being full-time employees, they may dedicate their time and effort to
writing thoughtful analyses, and these analyses are verified by their colleagues
before publishing. Moreover, commentators report that there are increased demands
for background research in the present media landscape. One commentator explains
that “some people believe that within the strained media economy, commentary is a
54
‘cheap’ form of journalism. In fact, the exact opposite is the case”. The political editor
of Aftenposten concurs: “The commentators’ role has changed a lot in the past
fifteen years. Direct contact with sources is much more important now”.
Commentators, in particular the senior commentators and political editors,
enjoy privileged access to elite sources within the political field. No other actor – in
journalism or other professions – have access to the plurality of politicians within
Parliament to the same extent as commentators. One commentator says that the
political editors “have the prime minister on speed-dial”. Eilertsen, the political editor
of Aftenposten, explains that she is “using every form of communication there is with
politicians. I meet them, I call them or they call me, we mingle at their annual party
congresses, or have lunch together in Parliament”. Also less established
commentators of the five newspapers in question enjoys privileged access to elite
sources: they frequently call politicians to do research for their writings, and often
visit the Parliament for both formal and informal meetings. The political interview
subjects of this study also report that they frequently interact with commentators in
order to provide background information, or conversely to present ideas for analyses.
The representative of The Christian Democratic Party felt that “there is a completely
different culture in the United Kingdom – it’s almost as if the media and the
politicians have some sort of enmity there. Our Parliament is very ‘open’ –
commentators are walking around the hallways and knock on doors, they have direct
access”. Commentators all report being autonomous from the influence of politicians.
One commentator explains that “I rarely experience that they try to ‘sell’ me
something, they have a good understanding of the commentator’s role. They rather
try to explain why they argue this and that in a given case, for instance if a party in
the opposition chose to support a legislation presented by the [Conservative]
government". Commentators and politicians alike describe the interaction as a
symbiotic relationship in which the commentators attain information, and the
politicians can present their perspective without being cited. One commentator
explains:
I contact politicians to get the facts straight, but just as often to challenge my
own views. If I for instance wonder if my arguments are reasonable, I can
contact a politician that I know has different views than myself, or whose
stance I am uncertain of on a particular issue. My experience is that they’re
55
really fond of having these background conversations where they can talk
freely, and they’re not supposed to ‘sell’ something’ – not deliver punchlines
or worry if something they say ends up as a tabloid headline. [...] I think they
feel comfortable, and I get closer to the actual decision-making processes.
However, politicians may attempt to influence commentators. The political editor of
Bergens Tidende elaborates: “I usually never have a conversation with a politician
where I think that we’re just ‘two ordinary people that happen to be sitting down and
talking with each other’. [...] I’ll always be a journalist, and the person I’m talking to is
a politician, and we have different interests”. Nevertheless, there is a strong bond of
trust between the two groups, as politicians are granted anonymity by commentators.
A representative of the Conservative coalition explains that this “implies that I can go
further in being open and honest about what’s going on behind the scenes”. Another
politician from the left-wing says that s/he always provides information in some way:
“I’ve helped commentators who were writing op-eds that were awful for [my party]”.
Mutual trust is nevertheless of crucial importance. To avoid breaching this trust,
Gudbrandsen (Bergens Tidende) report that she “articulates sentences in different
ways, and [writes] with several sources to make sure that it is not apparent from
where the information originates”. By fostering these symbiotic relationships,
commentators are equipped to fulfil their democratic function of informing the public.
Through accessibility and transparency, they can potentially provide ‘inside
information’ and ‘accurate analyses’. Norwegian commentary does have a
‘production problem’ in its presentation, but the primary concern is one of reception.
Although commentators presently and predominantly are read by elites, who are
more qualified to explain complex political processes in contemporary Norway?
Supporting this analysis and affirming Hovden and Knapskog’s survey
findings (2013), all the political interview subjects across the political spectrum –
from the Progress Party to the Red Party – reported they are ‘highly interested’ in
political commentary, with one important exception. When politicians were asked if
they had any conception of the readership of political commentary, all but one of the
political interview subjects reported to not have given this question much thought.
The Labour Party, on the other hand, explicitly stated that its political leadership did
not prioritise reading editorials or op-eds. This interview subject, being part of the
national leadership of Norway’s largest party, explained that “generally,
56
[commentators] are ascribed far less importance within the Labour Party. We’ve
finally realised to what little extent commentary is actually read. Very little. Very, very
little.” The Labour Party does not “really care about the editorial, it rarely says
anything interesting”, and it is “only read by a handful”. Commentators are perceived
as “overly focused on Oslo”, and the Labour Party representative believes that if the
party lets commentators “dictate [their] policies, then [they’re] being fooled”.
The implications of this finding are significant. Although the Labour Party does
not have access to the same data material as presented in this dissertation, their
assumption of overall decreasing readership is accurate. A conversation with Olav
Hjertaker, the founder of the social media tracker Storyboard, further reveals that
The Labour Party is the only political organisation that subscribe to his service and
thus gain insight in social media engagement for all news items. They have
discovered what the other parties purportedly have, as of yet, not. All other political
interview subjects, given that their accounts are truthful and honest, reported that
mainstream political commentary would only become ‘increasingly prominent’ over
the course of the next decade. All the journalistic interview subjects were equally
sanguine, with the exception of a single commentator. S/he stated that “the overall
fragmentation of the public sphere makes newspapers in general and commentators
in particular less powerful than they have been”. Whether the remaining eighteen
respondents were overly optimistic, or merely hiding their true opinions of the current
media landscape, remains unanswered. Whilst only the view of a single respondent,
this striking remark summarises the findings of this dissertation.
57
Conclusion
This dissertation set out to investigate the power and democratic function of political
commentators in contemporary Norway. It has been demonstrated that this group
are the flagships of their newspapers and that their legitimacy and visibility benefit
from a public status as media celebrities. Concurrently, both mainstream
newspapers and their commentators have experienced decreased public influence
over the course of the past decade. The digitalisation of the news industry ensures
that commentators increasingly form and inform an elite group of writers and
readers: newspaper subscriptions have become a new class marker. These findings
have been attained through the employment of a tripartite, mixed methods research
design. The analysis of social media engagement demonstrates that online-exclusive
alt-right news outlets that provide free political commentary are rapidly expanding,
which constitutes a tremendous opposition to the market dominance and outreach of
Norway’s five largest dailies. Statistics of print circulation and digital readership
illustrate that the overall visibility of political commentary from legacy newspapers
has decreased in the past decade. Survey data on commentators’ readership
demographic shows that this audience may be understood as older, urban,
educated, wealthy, as well as in support of the liberal hegemony that the Norwegian
mainstream media propagate.
Both survey data on commentators and twenty semi-structured interviews
affirm that commentators constitute and write for an increasingly homogenous and
elitist group. However, it is predominantly the ‘alt-right minority’ that is excluded by
the mainstream media’s liberal hegemony. The application of Bourdieu’s (1984)
concepts of autonomy and heteronomy demonstrates that most commentators place
decreasing importance on readership because their content predominantly lies
behind the paywall. Although politicians respect and value political commentary, my
analysis indicates that they may attribute less significance to the commentators’
ability to influence their audience in the near future. However, contrary to much of
the existing literature, this dissertation argues that commentators have an important
democratic function and that the need for qualified political analyses that are read by
a broad audience is even greater in the age of social media in order to uphold
deliberative democracy. This argument is developed through the joint application of
58
Habermas’ (1962) ideals of the public sphere, Anderson’s (1983) notion of the
imagined community, and Sunstein’s (2017) work on social media and democracy.
Espousing reform rather than renouncement, I argue for the importance of
professional commentators remaining powerful influencers. No other actors are
better equipped to analyse complex political processes, in part due to their privileged
access to elite sources across the political spectrum within Parliament. To enable
commentators to fulfil their democratic function, mainstream newspapers must strive
to meet new demands of accessibility and representation. This could, for example,
be achieved by employing younger commentators with more diverse backgrounds
and thus attaining a broader understanding of politics. Politics encompass every
aspect of society – not only Parliamentary politics. These proposed changes would
alter the journalistic field’s nomos and thus influence the language employed, the
sources interviewed, and the topics selected. It is crucial to acknowledge that high-
quality journalism such as political commentary is costly to produce. Nevertheless, it
appears that VG and Dagbladet’s financial strategies are more attuned to the
journalistic norms of the literature, in which high-quality journalism is financed by
other and less prestigious forms of content. Mainstream newspapers need to create
stronger interconnectedness between their professional and journalistic norms, and
their economic goals, to reach a wider audience.
Although the findings of this dissertation are not generalisable to countries
outside Scandinavia, considering these countries’ distinctive media culture and
political systems, the research has demonstrated that commentators of legacy
newspapers in all territories must be understood in new ways in the age of social
media. This argument is advanced through the joint application of Bourdieu’s,
Habermas’, Anderson’s, and Sunstein’s theories. Moreover, the employment of
Bourdieusian field analysis within a new media environment has contributed to a
modernisation of this framework. However, there are several shortcomings of this
study.
For example, it has not been investigated how commentators’ writings
influence the practices of other journalists. Being the elite of the journalistic field, it is
likely that their analyses affect the political journalism of their colleagues. Moreover,
the role of the public broadcaster NRK and the commercial broadcaster TV2 has not
been considered in this study. These broadcasters employ commentators that
provide state-funded or commercially financed political commentary that is freely
59
accessible. Accordingly, their journalism is likely to influence the public. That being
said, ‘media diversity’ – a plurality of independent newsrooms – is in the public’s
interest (Thompson 2012; Åmås 2017). Finally, it is of crucial importance to
understand subscription models in more meticulous ways. Both their economic
viability and their contribution to democratic processes must be theorised to guide
the strategies of the industry and policies of the government. There are also several
philosophical debates with which one could engage. For example, one may question
whether democracies should be more technocratic, that is, if they should empower
technological experts. Also, deliberative democracy may no longer be a feasible or
relevant model in the age of social media. Whether social media platforms should
regulate themselves, or be regulated in the interest of democracy, is also a crucial
line of inquiry. These shortcomings serve as suggestions for further research.
This dissertation nevertheless provides an original analysis that contributes to
the existing and limited literature, which may also serve as guidance for
policymakers and the media industry alike.
60
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