The Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Digital Era
... According to Enli et al. (2018), the role of the media system on the Nordic welfare state has been downplayed in welfare studies despite welfare policy and democratic development having been promoted in tandem with media policy in the Nordic countries. For instance, the media system in the Nordic countries has led to positive social outcomes; the press market has contributed to high public knowledge, the environment for journalists has created a healthy media market and high news circulation, the high quality of public broadcasting services has a high trust rate among citizens, and in turn, citizens are informed, and these media environments have succeeded in gaining high voter turnout (Syvertsen, 2014). Whereas some welfare studies have stated that comprehensive welfare systems, in general, may have great support from citizens (Korpi & Palme, 1998), as Neimanns (2023) showed, the degree of media ownership concentration affects, either positively or negatively, citizens' attitudes towards having redistribution of welfare, which proves that media systems are even involved in citizens' welfare ideas. ...
... Nordic countries have often been considered exceptional, and their media systems also have traits that differ from those of other countries to create favorable social outcomes and political attitudes mentioned above. Thus, the Nordic media system began to be viewed as a part of a broader welfare concept, as in general welfare policy, it has been said that there is a distinct Nordic media system (Brüggemann, et al., 2014;Syvertsen, et al., 2014). Because of the unique qualities of both the Nordic welfare states and their media system, Syvertsen and her colleagues (2014) created the term "Media Welfare State (hereafter, MWS)," which represents the Nordic media systems and their terroir. ...
... Thus, the entry of the private sector and other factors mean that the state is no longer necessarily the sole welfare provider. In this regard, researchers must modify the political and social characteristics of the Nordic countries, and state-centered research should not be the only way to study the welfare state in the future (Syvertsen et al., 2014). ...
This present study aims to carve out the future vision of the Swedish media system by examining the validity of the concept of the Media Welfare State, which describes the Nordic media system, and the relationship between domestic actors partly or mainly involved in the Swedish media system.
For this purpose, this study conducts qualitative semi-structured interviews, following the so-called elite interview method. Twenty people from various organizations, such as policymakers, public broadcasting, commercial media, regulators, and academia, are defined as the critical actors in the Swedish media system, and they are divided into three fields using field theory: the political, media, and academic fields. Throughout the interviews, their current perceptions of changes, their responses to these changes, and the ways of communication and power relations between the fields are analyzed. Moreover, this thesis utilizes the theory of sociotechnical imaginaries to examine their future vision of the media system. Sociotechnical imaginaries enabled this thesis to articulate their respective visions of national security or cultural preservation in the political field, high professionalism and dignified responsibility in the media field, social contribution and maintenance of democracy in the academic field. The three fields are united in maintaining a high degree of autonomy and maintaining the Swedish media system while they acknowledge the MWS exists in the Swedish media system. However, technological development and globalization have also changed the relationships among and inside the fields. Because the political field, which is the most decisive, shared the future vision to maintain quality journalism but had different public broadcasting role they expected, this study highlights that the role of public broadcasting will be vital for the future of the Swedish media system.
... Our purpose is to elaborate on how sports journalism relates to, and narrates, socio-political issues considering the economical, structural, and professional limitations and possibilities that surround the profession. The focal point is the news media in the Nordic countries and the Nordic media system (as defined by Enli et al., 2018;Hornmoen & Steensen, 2021;Skogerbø et al., 2021;Syvertsen et al., 2014), since these have similarities in terms of media history, sports history, and sports policy. Recent heated debates about human rights, corruption, and harassment all illustrate that sports are deeply intertwined with issues of political and social change and development. ...
... Such debates reflect how the authority and legitimacy of sports journalism are inter-relational and negotiated in boundary working processes between journalists and non-journalists (Carlson, 2016;Ferrucci, 2022 ) and not shaped in isolated autonomy, as Hallin and Mancini (2004) In all three Nordic countries, public service broadcasters had the rights to cover the event, and their status as politically regulated "cornerstones" in the Nordic media systems with hegemonic influence on journalistic ideals (Syvertsen et al., 2014) motivates and shapes such extended debates-including the sports journalistic definitions of legitimate and illegitimate practices. Since the Beijing games, it has been common practice by these companies to use ordinary news journalists in the coverage of sporting mega-events. ...
... Or when the public broadcaster TV 2 recurrently reported on controversies regarding journalists' freedom to cover events in the streets in Doha, migrant workers' engagement in the event, or integrated a critical debate in the pregame show before the final match. Only comparative analysis of the actual coverage across media and nations can inform us whether and how the ideological state of mind and role conception with both journalists and media in the Nordic contexts in the case of sports remains as informed by welfare state ideals, as for instance Syvertsen et al. (2014) and Ahva et al. (2017) claim. ...
... The Nordic countries (Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland) have been described as media welfare states (Syvertsen et al., 2014), which are characterised by both a democratic, corporatist media system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004) and social-democratic, welfare-state ideology (Esping-Andersen, 1990). This Nordic 'media welfare model' includes strong state support for universally available and accessible communication systems, along with subsidies for both public service and private media, institutionalised editorial freedom and the self-regulation of media. ...
... This Nordic 'media welfare model' includes strong state support for universally available and accessible communication systems, along with subsidies for both public service and private media, institutionalised editorial freedom and the self-regulation of media. Public service media have been used especially as a policy tool to serve various groups' information and democratic needs (Syvertsen et al., 2014). This approach has aimed to support an inclusive and diverse sphere of public communication (Jakobsson et al., 2021), enabling both freedom of speech and dialogue. ...
... Although we can outline the development of Nordic countries' shared history and how their media systems' roots reflect historical, ideological, and practical similarities, the contradiction between the idealised Nordic model and reality has increased. The idea of a media welfare state should, therefore, be regarded as dynamic and in need of periodic re-examination (Syvertsen et al., 2014). Especially in the era of digital media and global influences, the question of whether the Nordic media model still correlates with Nordic media realities is relevant. ...
The Nordic countries have been observed to have developed similar media and communications policies and communication rights. However, for historical reasons, the practical implementations of media policies and regulations in these countries also differ. The consequences of these varying implementations are especially observable in responses to current digital challenges. This chapter contributes to the study of epistemic rights by presenting three case studies that explore freedom of speech and dialogue, as well as Nordic countries’ responses to these issues through regulation and other media policy measures. While legislation values freedom of expression and dialogue, in practice, these principles can only be applied under favourable conditions. Support for epistemic rights is, therefore, continuously needed.
... This analysis finds distinct differences between the roles that largely align with traditional understandings of the respective role conceptions, suggesting that journalistic roles influence how journalists interact with generative AI. The survey is conducted in Denmark, a small but diverse media market characterised by full digitisation (Sjøvaag et al. 2019) and an institutionalised professionalism rooted in strong public interest traditions (Syvertsen et al. 2014). Danish news organisations are already investing heavily in generative AI tools that are currently being implemented in newsrooms (Newman et al. 2024). ...
... To explore these research questions, this study employs a survey of Danish journalists conducted from March to June 2024. The Danish media system shares characteristics with those of the other Nordic countries, such as inclusive and diverse press markets, strong public service traditions, high journalistic professionalism, and full digitalisation (Brüggemann et al. 2014;Sjøvaag et al. 2019;Syvertsen et al. 2014). Moreover, the news industry in Denmark is under increasing financial pressure, and many news organisations are investing heavily in the implementation of generative AI in journalistic practices (Newman et al. 2024). ...
The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked debate about its implications for journalism and the roles of journalists. Yet, the interplay between journalistic roles and AI adoption remains underexplored. Drawing on a survey of Danish journalists (N = 299), our study addresses this gap by exploring how journalists' professional role conceptions influence their adoption of generative AI. The results reveal role-specific patterns that align with traditional understandings of the respective role conceptions, suggesting that professional identities shape how journalists engage with new technologies. Journalists adhering to mobilisation and entertainment roles express heightened concerns about job security and work meaningfulness, while those adhering to watchdog and detached observer roles rather emphasise ethical and operational implications of generative AI for journalism. Despite these concerns, entertainment journalists actively employ generative AI to enhance content quality and audience engagement, and watchdog journalists recognise its potential to boost efficiency and accuracy. These variations across journalistic roles underscore the need for academia and news organisations to avoid oversimplified one-size-fits-all narratives about the adoption of generative AI in the news industry. Technology is simultaneously shaped by and shapes the journalists who use it, highlighting how professional identities and technological innovation co-evolve in modern journalism. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Specifically, media institutions covering migration topics are often the targets of public criticism by both politicians and activists from opposing political camps, who either accuse the news discourses of aggravating ethnic resentment or inversely of shying away from addressing important societal issues (Hinde, 2017). Responding to such concerns, journalists have in many societies complemented their commitment to accuracy and objectivity with values such as social responsibility and justice and embraced them as important ideals central to their professional identities 3 (Syvertsen et al., 2014;Ahva et al., 2017). However, the simultaneous endorsement of these values gives rise to ideological tensions, especially concerning the coverage of migration and its social and economic consequences. ...
... Journalists' professional identities are constantly evolving in response to political developments (Tumber and Zelizer, 2019). In migrant recipient countries, particularly in Northern Europe, normative values regarding migration advocacy and advancing social justice, for example by facilitating diversity in society (Masini et al., 2017) -have in recent years become a new form of professional ideology amongst journalists (Syvertsen et al., 2014;Ahva et al., 2017). Several studies have shown that mobilizing the public is an important value amongst journalists in Scandinavia (E.g. ...
In media discourse, journalists often need to navigate two professional values when covering migration topics: providing accurate and relevant information to audiences while simultaneously being committed to social justice. To understand how discursive practices have developed in response to this dilemma, I compare migration news discourse from two national environments-Sweden and Denmark-that represent opposite sociopolitical responses to migration. By analyzing the representations of identities of social actors inspired by Van Leeuwen (1996, 2018), the paper shows how migrant's ethnic identities are sometimes omitted and suppressed in news content, and it identifies a range of lexical devices journalists utilize to represent actors in ways that still signify ethnicity while remaining ostensibly neutral. For example, in Denmark, ethnic labels such as "migrant", "migrant gang" and "ghetto" constitute a common pattern, whereas in Sweden, conversely, such terms are substituted by expressions such as "new Swede", "youth gang" and "vulnerable neighborhood". I term this phenomenon semantic ethnification and define it as a process where ethnic identities of social actors are expressed through strategies that rely on implicit and covert connotations that denote ethnicity rather than explicit ethnic cues.
... Furthermore, more generally, the Finnish media system acts in a context strongly rooted in basic democratic principles, promoting the basic rights of both working journalists and citizens interacting with the media. For instance, Finland is part of what researchers have called the Nordic media welfare system (Syvertsen et al., 2014), in which journalists are able to work in relatively stable conditions without external interference (Reporters Without Borders, n.d.). Finnish journalism also applies a national and publicly available self-regulatory system of media ethics: the Journalistic Guidelines (Council for Mass Media in Finland, 2011) based on democratic principles and that allow any citizen to make a complaint about journalistic content. ...
... This is in line with the intended participatory functions of online commenting systems (Schultz, 1999;Wolfgang et al., 2020), which thus still hold, at least in the views of the participants. In addition, the result reflects the strongly rooted democratic principles and citizen rights in Finnish society and in the Nordic media welfare system (Syvertsen et al., 2014). ...
This article focuses on user-generated discussion threads in journalistic online publication platforms. We investigate how journalists can apply deliberative norms to promote a democratically sustainable discussion within the threads. We also examine which opportunities and challenges journalists currently see with such threads in relation to central citizen democracy principles such as user participation and interactivity. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 18 Finnish news journalists and personnel in charge of moderation strategies. The findings show that deliberative norms are used to some degree in discussion-thread moderation, and that such norms are a key factor to promote democratically sustainable discussions in media organisations. The findings also show that threads can be useful tools for promoting citizen democracy due to their participatory features, but that several current challenges affect this, including uncivil user-generated content, limited representativeness among active users, and lacking resources to handle content in smaller media organisations. One main implication is that journalists see a risk of challenges with discussion threads outweighing benefits for democracy.
... Norway represents a digital society, resembled by Internet access being available in 99 percent of households (OECD, 2024), with the average Norwegian spending 4 hours and 9 minutes per day online (Statistics Norway, 2024a). As a welfare state, Norway's media system is designed to ensure equal access to information for all citizens through public broadcasting services and ongoing efforts to expand digital infrastructure (Syvertsen et al., 2014). Correspondingly, news media, public administration, and other civic organizations increasingly adopt digital services (Skogerbø & Karlsen, 2021). ...
This survey-based study examines digital disconnection experiences among 1,142 respondents in Norway, focusing on self-reported behaviors and opinions regarding digital media non-use in everyday life. Specifically, it highlights gender differences, along with other sociodemographic variations, found in the responses of 552 women and 590 men. The results show that both genders reported spending 'too much' time on their smartphones, with women reporting this more frequently. Yet notably, there is no significant difference in self-reported screen time estimates between the two genders. Moreover, women reported imposing more frequent smartphone restrictions in various scenarios, whereas men expressed greater opposition to authorities interfering with Internet and smartphone use. Still, while these differences are significant, the quantitative description reveals them to be rather minor. This study seeks to advance the field of digital disconnection studies by integrating a gender perspective, thereby contributing to its interdisciplinary scope. Furthermore, it aims to establish a foundation for future research, potentially expanding beyond comparative analyses and the gender binary, and fostering more critical perspectives.
... When its "arms-length" autonomy from the state is institutionally supported (Syvertsen et al. 2014), as with many public service broadcasters (BBC, Norway's NRK, etc.), we can speak of "public" rather than "state" ownership, oriented (more or less successfully) toward serving the citizenry at large rather than the government in power. ...
Benson, Rodney. “Media Ownership.” In Nai, A., Grömping, M., & Wirz, D. (Ed.) (forthcoming 2025). Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Communication. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Media ownership refers to the legal and economic control of media organizations. Ownership of news media organizations is particularly important, given its potential effects on journalism and thus the quality of public affairs information provided to citizens. While early research focused on concentration of ownership and the influence of media moguls, there has been a recent rise in scholarship focused on showing how distinct ownership forms – market, private, civil society, and public – are linked to civically consequential outcomes or modes of power: public service orientation, political instrumentalism, and economic instrumentalism. Analyzed in conjunction with funding and audience targeting, as well as national and local contexts, this new approach clarifies how ownership concretely shapes the production of news. Case studies expand the global imaginary of the broad range of possible ownership models.
... Already, on August 14, 2024, Facebook has closed down CrowdTangle, a research tool that has been able to make the workings of the company more transparent (Ortutay 2024). It is likely that governments will have to step in to fund the news media through arm's-length transaction principles, as done in such countries as the Nordic states (Syvertsen et al. 2014). ...
This study investigated the response of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, after Australia’s News Bargaining Code looked like it might be emulated across the globe. The Code was intended to enhance the financial sustainability of news organizations by mandating that platforms pay for news content they use. Analysis using Facebook’s CrowdTangle found that over a one-year period from mid-2022, Facebook reduced by half the visibility of news content of 15 leading publishers on all continents across the globe. This means that the payment envisaged under such codes would be halved. This decline was regardless of their News Bargaining Code implementation status.
Publishers reduced their news on Facebook by about 10 percent over the same period, suggesting a strategic shift by news publishers away from reliance on Facebook.
These findings demonstrate that platforms can manipulate their recommendation algorithms to undermine the objectives of News Bargaining Codes without directly violating the codes, thereby reducing the codes’ effectiveness as a tool for supporting journalism. Importantly, these findings underscore the need for alternative approaches to support journalism that are less susceptible to platform-driven changes in visibility and engagement dynamics.
... Another difference concerns the media system, where Sweden represents the democratic-corporatist model and the United States a prototypical liberal model (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). Sweden's media landscape is also characterized by extensive and overlapping mainstream news use, strong public service broadcasting, and comparatively high media trust (Nord & Grusell, 2021;Syvertsen et al., 2014;Weibull & Jönsson, 2007). In contrast to the U.S. media, which have clear partisan divides in their readership (Jurkowitz et al., 2020), mainstream news outlets in Sweden are politically independent and not systematically ideologically biased in their news coverage (Johansson & Strömbäck, 2019), and they enjoy a broad public readership across ideological divides (Oscarsson et al., 2021, p. 13). ...
Political parties have incentives to appeal to diverse voters to maximize support. This study examines the effect of politicians exploiting dogwhistles—expressions that convey hidden messages to specific audiences while escaping notice by the majority—for this purpose. Findings from a word replacement test and a survey experiment assessing the utility of racial dogwhistles in Sweden suggest that dogwhistling can aid politicians in gaining support from in-groups while retaining backing from out-groups; for example, “suburban gang” (dogwhistle) elicits more support than “immigrant gang.” Results suggest that dogwhistling is effective beyond the U.S. context and for different forms of political support.
... Norwegian newsrooms, despite the current economic challenges facing the news media business, are generally well resourced in terms of labor and assets. Additionally, Scandinavia is highly ranked for press freedom and trust from audiences (Syvertsen et al. 2014). Therefore, this study was conducted in an ideal environment, focusing on leading newspapers in the Scandinavian region. ...
In recent years, there has been a notable increase in the integration of technology and the employment of technological experts within newsrooms. However, there remains a paucity of scholarly research examining the evolution and maturation of these practices. This article addresses this gap by analyzing data from ten semi-structured qualitative interviews with developers embedded in the editorial departments of Norwegian news outlets. The findings reveal that developers have become fully integrated and indispensable actors within newsrooms. They contribute comprehensively to the journalistic news production process, engaging in routine tasks such as news visualization as well as participating in extensive investigative projects. Furthermore, developers navigate their work and practices within the framework of journalistic logic, culture, and the principles of objectivity, thereby reinforcing the democratic function of journalism in society. Interestingly, the integration of developers has also induced spill-over effects among non-technical staff. While developers are the primary bearers of technical expertise, there is an increasing expectation for reporters to acquire technical competencies.
... The Norwegian media landscape is hybrid and diverse due to expansive media policies seeking to stimulate media diversity and digitalization. The Norwegian media welfare state (Syvertsen et al., 2014) seeks to provide media policies to secure diversity and quality, universally available communication systems, and institutionalized editorial freedom through cooperation between the main stakeholders (the state, media industries, and the public). It is a technologically mature media landscape which has managed the digital transformation process comparatively successful, however global platforms has impacted the power dynamics in the industry and has therefore served as a strategic test market for many global platforms and social media providers (Ihlebaek & Sundet, 20212023;Sundet et al. 2020)). ...
... In the field of media studies, some scholars have categorized the five Nordic countries as constituting a media welfare state model (Syvertsen et al., 2014), while others have observed similarities with media systems in other Northern European countries, describing them as democratic corporatist (Hallin & Mancini, 2004 or even likening them to North American media systems (Ohlsson, 2015). When it comes to media, some features can be highlighted, such as the strong public service broadcasting (NRK in Norway, Yle in Finland, and SVT in Sweden) that is independent of commercial interests and political influence, aiming to provide high-quality, diverse, and non-partisan content for all citizens. ...
p>Sports journalists can act as agents of change in society since they have a unique and powerful platform to influence public opinion, raise awareness, advocate for various issues through their reporting and commentary and overall promote positive change in society. This is perhaps more obvious when looking at recent research from the Nordic countries (ref: Special Edition) But are sports journalists able to be, or even desire to be, agents of change in countries like Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, Germany, and Israel? Based on both academic and popular writing, as well as online interviews with media and sports scholars and journalists, this article aims to assess to what extent sports journalism may be professionalized in a select number of countries in the European Union and Middle East. Respondents were asked to speak to how they perceived the extent to which sports journalists in each country have substantial autonomy from the economic and/or political systems, and most importantly to what extent do sports journalists consider themselves agents of change.</p
... International studies clearly depict trends that these countries possess high degrees of interpersonal trust and that the media is widely used and that these countries generally live in a culture of mediated information welfare and prosperity (Forsman, 2020;Wadbring & Pekkala, 2017;Matovic et al., 2017). The notion of a media welfare state is based on high levels of media consumption, pluralistic content, and trust in the media (Syvertsen et al., 2014). Such values are evident in the editorial policy of the media and in public policy, which is based on the principle of dialogue and agreement among stakeholders. ...
The UNESCO UNITWIN Cooperation Programme on Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue (MILID) is based on an initiative from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC). This Network was created in line with UNESCO’s mission and objectives, as well as the mandate of UNAOC, to serve as a catalyst and facilitator helping to give impetus to innovative projects aimed at reducing polarization among nations and cultures through mutual partnerships. This UNITWIN Network is composed of universities from different geographical areas: Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain), University of the West Indies (Jamaica), Cairo University (Egypt), University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), Temple University (USA), Tsinghua University (China), Moulay Ismail University (Morocco), Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University (Morocco), University of Guadalajara (Mexico), Western University (Canada), University of Gothenburg (Sweden), Sorbonne Nouvelle University (France), Punjabi University, Patiala (India), University of the South Pacific (Fiji), University of South Africa (South Africa), Nnamdi Azikiwe University (Nigeria), Ahmadu Bello University (Nigeria), Lagos State University (Nigeria), University of Jors (Nigeria), University of Calabar (Nigeria), Hosei University (Japan), University of Latvia (Latvia), Moscow Pedagogical State University (Russia), Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios UNIMINUTO (Colombia), Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), MICA (India), University of Campinas (Brazil). The main objectives of the Network are to foster collaboration among member universities, to build capacity in each of the countries in order to empower them to advance media and information literacy and intercultural dialogue, and to promote freedom of speech, freedom of information and the free flow of ideas and knowledge. Specific objectives include acting as an observatory for the role of media and information literacy (MIL) in promoting civic participation, democracy and development as well as enhancing.
... The Nordic countries were most like one another in the entire sample. This was later a partial inspiration for the idea of the Nordic "media welfare states," which reflects a certain Nordic exceptionalism (Ala-Fossi, 2020;Kammer, 2016;Syvertsen et al., 2014). However, many of the features of the Nordic media system, such as public subsidies for the media, have also been used elsewhere in Europe and the industrialised Western world. ...
The Nordic countries have been regarded as so-called “media welfare states.” Despite the large amount of public money used on press subsidies over the decades in the Nordic countries, there is not much academic research on the financial performance of the newspaper publishing industry in these countries. This study examines the “media welfare state” approach to public support for newspapers and the financial performance of newspaper companies in three Nordic countries: Finland, Sweden, and Norway. Our data consists of the key financial figures of newspaper publishing companies in the aforementioned countries from 2005 to 2019. Based on our analysis, we argue that direct press subsidies in Sweden and Norway have not been able to prevent a decrease in the number of titles and, importantly, have resulted in a number of subsidy-dependent news outlets unable to survive on their own income. By contrast, the Finnish newspaper publishing industry has been in a better financial situation in terms of almost all indicators and throughout the review period, despite Finland abandoning direct press subsidies in the 1990s.
... As for most other countries around the world, 2020 and 2021 became years dominated by the coronavirus, leaving Swedish citizens uncertain about the scope and consequences of the situation. Sweden is part of the Democratic Corporatist Model of media systems (Humprecht et al., 2022) and often labelled a so-called "media welfare state" (Syvertsen et al., 2014). The Swedish media environment is dominated by strong public service broadcasters and a high newspaper circulation. ...
Can news avoidance be considered a stable personal "trait," adhering to a specific group of consistent news avoiders, or is it rather a volatile "state" reflecting temporal variations in audience practices? Based on a five-wave panel survey collected in Sweden during the coronavirus pandemic, we show that selective avoidance of news about the pandemic varies both between persons, representing consistency, and within persons, representing temporality. Drawing on the information utility model, we additionally show that both dimensions are related to audience preferences, specifically news interest, news media trust, and societal concerns. These results illustrate that the practice of selective news avoidance is not restricted to a specific group of people with limited news use but also represents a more fluid audience behavior of adjusting news consumption patterns in response to individual and contextual changes. However, as the correlates of the two dimensions are similar, the results stress the polarizing potential of news avoidance in democracy.
... Like Austria, Finland belongs to the Democratic Corporatist Model in the typology by Hallin and Mancini (2004). Finland has also been called a "media welfare state" (Syvertsen et al., 2014), characterized by strong, institutionalized editorial freedom as well as the ideal of universal access to content and services, partly ensured by a robust public service media organization, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle). Finland differs notably from the other case countries, Austria included, in that the trust in the government and national news media is remarkably high, which has been accredited to Finland's top ranking in media literacy (Lessenski, 2022) and the country's stellar press freedom records. ...
As social media is a key conduit for the distribution of disinformation, much of the literature on disinformation in elections has been focused on the internet and global social media platforms. Literature on societal and media trust has also grown in recent years. Yet, disinformation is not limited to global platforms or the internet, traditional media outlets in many European countries act as vehicles of disinformation often under the direction of the government. Moreover, the connection between trust and resilience to disinformation has been less discussed. This article is aimed at tackling the question of what makes a country vulnerable to or resilient against online disinformation. It argues that a society’s information resilience can be viewed as a combination of structural characteristics, features of its knowledge-distribution institutions including its media system, and the activities and capabilities of its citizens. The article makes this argument by describing these dimensions in four European case countries, based on comparable statistics and document analyses. The results indicate that European-wide strategies do not uniformly strengthen national resilience against disinformation and that anti-disinformation strategies need to be anchored in targeted assessments of the state of information resilience at the national level to be more effective. Such assessments are central, particularly to understanding citizens’ information needs in key democratic events such as elections.
... The input from viewers was mainly used to produce content on various social media as a build-up to the event itself, but it reflects how the company's double mandate affects production. For branding purposes, the public service ethos is extended across platforms, and these calls communicate values of cultural equality that are essential ideological elements in the Nordic "media welfare state" (Syvertsen et al., 2014). ...
This article analyses sports events as mega-events with global appeal and increasing socio-economic and cultural significance, and as genres which have now become important in the television industry’s transformation from broadcast to online streaming. It presents findings from a qualitative production analysis of how the Tour de France 2022 was shaped in a twofold strategic context. Genre specific aspects of the media event in the ongoing transformation of the television industry and wider strategic interests behind the hosting and organization of the start of the race in Denmark 2022 are discussed and their intertwinements are described. Based on interviews, documents, observations, screenshots and select broadcasts, the article presents a thematic analysis of how the event in Denmark was shaped in a shared concern for television’s ability to provide exposure of the race and the Danish context and public service broadcaster TV 2’s particular strategic branding interests in the event.
Scandinavians are among the most datafied citizens in the world. With its digitalised welfare states, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish e-governance infrastructures collect massive amounts of data about citizens as they search for jobs, apply for building permits, and check school calendars. In this article, we analyse the use of third-party trackers ( n = 2,761) on Scandinavian municipal websites ( n = 745) between 2007–2023. Mobilising the theoretical framework of universalism, our aim is to understand what kind of cost data tracking constitutes for users of digital government services. Results show that Scandinavian municipal websites are dominated by commercial trackers harvesting citizen data for advertising purposes, particularly those provided by Alphabet and Meta. We conclude that commercial user-tracking on Scandinavian municipal websites does not conform to the principle of universality, proposing 1) that governments ensure transparency of the cost incurred by these websites’ data tracking, and 2) that they ban commercial tracking on municipal websites.
Chatbots have become a mundane experience for Internet users. Public sector institutions have recently been introducing more advanced chatbots. In this article, we consider two cases of public sector chatbots, one in Estonia and one in Sweden, seeking to challenge the seemingly coherent understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public sector. The aim is to both question the “thingness” of AI and show AI chatbots can be very different things. The material in this article is based on in-depth interviews and observations at public sector institutions that have relatively recently implemented chatbots. We employ the notion of AI frictions as a sensitizing concept to engage with the material and the diverging character of the public sector chatbots in the two countries. In the analysis, we identify AI frictions related to expectations of AI, organizational logics, as well as values connected with the digitalization of the public sector.
In 2022–2023, the gaming house LL35, live-streamed on Twitch.tv, was the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s (NRK) content strategy to reach one of the most elusive audiences: male gamers between 18–29. This article discusses the case of LL35 in the light of Norwegian media policy, with particular focus on the Norwegian public service mandate. Through an analysis of how the content and scheduling of the live Twitch broadcasts developed over the span of its first year of existence, informed by interviews with the production crew behind LL35, we discuss whether LL35 was able to live up to the public service mandate and how LL35 can be part of preparing NRK for the competition in a world of (inter)networked broadcasting. The article centers on two research questions: How did the content and scheduling of LL35 develop over time, and to what degree could this development enable NRK to fulfill its commitment to offer public service content to its target group? The research shows that despite the will for innovation in NRK, combining the social media logic of Twitch and the media logic of NRK was a challenge. It also underlined the mutual dependency of legacy television and streaming, and how their roles shift. The theoretical foundation for the study is a combination of perspectives from media policy studies with insights from research on esports, game streaming and Twitch, and studies of public service youth content.
This paper asks how people make sense of climate issues in the news. As part of a study in Norway, with repeated interviews and open-ended questionnaires, we invited people to share their thoughts on three real and recent news stories. The examples were related to climate change on local, national and global scales, with varying levels of conflict and different narrative frameworks and visual components. We find that news articles with different characteristics invited three modes of sense-making: inconclusive reasoning, moral stance-taking, and reiterating climate discourse. Our study contributes to untangle central questions about how journalism with various forms of anchoring might mitigate low engagement with climate news. Methodologically, the study provides innovation in the form of a qualitative study with real news examples. In concluding, we discuss why the most important aspects of climate change make the least sense as news.
The way people use media to learn about issues outside their immediate community has long been an important area of media research. It has been argued that social media environments open up spaces for people to practice forms of cosmopolitan communication. This paper considers the cosmopolitan dimension of the 2020 U.S. presidential race on Twitter. It examines engagement by Twitter users in Scandinavian countries along both a local–cosmopolitan axis and a monitorial–networked axis, creating a typology that reflects the geospatial and interactive dimensions of online political communication. Direct interactions between Scandinavian and American users and their ideological makeup are also analyzed. The findings indicate that users are generally monitorial on a global scale and more networked within their national communities. However, both left- and right-wing users engage in cosmopolitan communication. This paper contributes to cosmopolitan theory in the digital age and offers a geospatial perspective on citizen interaction online.
In 2004 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten made a series of long-form investigative reports on environmental changes in places such as Tuvalu, Delhi and Copenhagen. In 2019 the newspaper repeated the reporting by revisiting the same places spanning five different continents. The new series of long-form digital productions named “The Climate Tour 2019” was produced by the same journalists as the 2004 reporting series, but the 2019 series naturally, made further use of new digital storytelling tools. This chapter delivers a comparative analysis of the Jyllands-Posten between the 2004 and 2019 reports focusing on the use of digital elements to create a cohesive and immersive experience.
The aim of the study is to analyse the development of the Baltic film distribution markets and to provide new recommendations for its potential growth based on mission economy approach and bigger role of the states in co-creating and co-shaping the markets especially for the Baltic co-production of films and their distribution. The study used both qualitative and quantitative methods for data extraction and analysis. Firstly, descriptive statistics as a method was used to analyse the market shares of the main film distribution companies in Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian film industries. Furthermore, 5 semi-structured interviews with experts from the Baltic film industries were conducted. As a result of the research, the author concludes that there is a potential in family genre films that are produced in the Baltic States, but in general the Baltic co-production films lack quality, storytelling that would arouse the interest of the audience and potentially new regional film fund “Baltic Film and TV Fund” would have to focus not only on increased financing for co-productions, but also on other measures that would help to produce better quality genre films including co-productions and their distribution.
The last decades have seen a rising interest in questions relating to class and class society within media studies. Empirical and theoretical work mainly stems from the US and the UK. While both capitalism (and hence class society) and the media are global phenomena, they play out differently in different parts of the world. Social systems and media systems have different trajectories and are organized in different ways. There are hence good reasons to empirically study the relation between class and the media in different locations, and not least in the “peripheries” of the global media economy. The present volume does exactly this, as it turns to the relationship between the media and social class in Greece. For anyone concerned with life chances, voice, power, and participation, the notion of social class remains a key concept. And this volume is an important contribution to our understanding of this concept and its relation to media and culture.
This article addresses the question of whether a withdrawal from social media platforms represents a viable strategy in the ongoing relational power negotiations between public service media and platforms, and if so, under what conditions. Recent diverging strategic efforts from public service broadcasters in two European countries – Germany and Norway – serve as illustrations of how existing organizations attempt to manoeuvre the current online realm dominated by platforms. I discuss findings from qualitative studies of news use in Norway and draw on comparative survey data on news use. I propose that high levels of trust in public service media, and widespread use of the public service broadcaster's own sites and offers, are key prerequisites to consider when assessing the viability of a withdrawal from third-party platforms in different countries. By zooming in on one type of media organization (public service broadcasters), and looking at different such organizations’ characteristics and context, and the dynamics of their relations to online platforms, the paper contributes to our understanding of platform power.
So far, studies that investigate the effects of increased media ownership concentration across countries on corporations' management have been limited in size and scope, particularly from a European perspective. To approach this research gap, we conduct and analyze a series of expert interviews with executives and chief personnel of one trans-national European media. The findings allow us to shine light on how cultural and linguistic diversity and proximity play crucial roles in either fostering or limiting opportunities for synergy operations, digital transformation, and an internationally oriented management style of news media firms.
The notion of intervention is gaining traction among Western environmental journalists. While existing research has predominantly focused on countries outside the Nordic region, in our study we investigate the self-perceptions of professional journalists in the Nordic countries of Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Through semi-structured interviews, we examine the roles that Nordic journalists construct when reflecting on covering the environmental beat, paying particular attention to how they make sense of the idea of intervening – that is, their involvement in interpreting, making sense of, and engaging the public in environmental issues. Using thematic qualitative analysis to analyse the interviews, we have identified four journalistic roles: 1) objective news provider, 2) critical watchdog, 3) sense-maker and educator, and 4) environmental advocate. Our findings suggest that Nordic journalists intervene byadhering to professional norms and practices and renegotiating them. While the role of objective news provider remains prominent among Nordic journalists, it is intertwined with various forms of intervention across all identified roles.
Studies on news avoidance rely on a range of theories to explain why news avoidance takes place and its potential consequences, and the debates on different ways of measuring news avoidance have been lively. Despite the numerous approaches and conceptualisations, there is room to theorise what news avoidance entails as a social phenomenon. In this study, we posit that news avoidance can fruitfully be approached as a form of negative social action embedded in a negative social space – a realm of the lifeworld filled with non-doings and non-appearance. We apply this approach, which opens up new questions in the field of news avoidance studies, to a case study of Swedes who opted out of national public service news in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Findings suggest that avoiders of public service news occupy relatively precarious social positions, and that news avoidance is embedded in a broader negative social space.
This article contributes to a social history of Swedish broadcasting through an analysis of a movement for media reform: the Swedish Women’s Associations’ Radio Committee, formed in 1933 and operating until 1940. The committee was a joint effort by many established women’s organisations in Sweden, formed with the goal of strengthening the role of women in the developing public service radio, and especially providing a platform for women to raise demands on influence in the decision-making around the development of this new media form. In this article, I analyse the Swedish Women’s Associations’ Radio Committee and their work in the 1930s and ask what they did, how they did it, and with what effects? In what ways can their work be understood as a movement for media reform? The analysis builds on archival material documenting the Swedish Women’s Associations’ Radio Committee, as well as secondary sources such as memoirs and newspaper materials.
While globally operating SVoDs have discovered identity-based diversity as a branding strategy, diversity has a longer history and broader meaning in public service media (PSM) tied to the foundational ideals of universality and pluralism that oblige PSM to speak to all members of a society and to offer diverse programmes and viewpoints. We investigate: How are these two understandings of ‘diversity’ expressed 1) in legal and policy requirements to the PSM, 2) in strategy papers and audits issued by PSM, 3) in the presentation and exposure of content in VoD interfaces? And 4) How can PSMs' practice around diversity on VoD be tracked methodologically? The article examines these questions by comparing: BBC iPlayer (UK), DRTV (Denmark) and ARD Mediathek (Germany). A document analysis examines how legal remits and strategies governing these institutions talk about diversity. We analyse the presentation and exposure of ‘diversity’ in VoD content via longitudinal datasets that document the three VoD landing pages daily between early 2022 and late 2023, recording the position of every programme title at the VoDs’ front pages, as well as deck titles. We test four approaches to this dataset: Spotting diversity in deck titles, looking for content tagged as diverse on IMDb and by Chat GPT, calculating diversity of exposed content with the Gini-Simpson-Index and assessing diversity through a manual coding of deck titles and sampling content displayed in selected decks. The article shows how differently diversity can be conceptualised and operationalised in VoD practice and concludes that multi-dimensional methodological approaches are needed. This article is a report on different publishing strategies for ‘diversity content’ in PSM VoD interfaces; a discussion of the conflicting relation between public service ideals and the notion of identity-based ‘branded diversity' of globally operating VoDs; and a contribution to developing methods for monitoring diversity on VoD.
Major advances in artificial intelligence have fuelled a rapid increase in the automation and augmentation of journalistic work, challenging the centrality of journalists in the news production process. This article theoretically explores news automation by adopting a system of professions framework from the sociology of professions to provide a holistic perspective on the impact of artificial intelligence on journalistic work. This framework posits that different factors influence professional control over work, and problems caused by these factors have left journalism vulnerable to automation. The routine and mundane nature of a significant portion of journalistic tasks suggests that artificial intelligence may potentially replace many journalists in the future, thereby challenging the profession’s claim to expertise. For journalism to uphold its professional authority in the future, it needs to brace for the impact of artificial intelligence. Building on this analysis, we explore strategies for journalism to do so. This involves reinforcing professional ideals in new algorithmic practices, readjusting knowledge and skill taught in education, and reclaiming specialised work practices in organisations. Rather than a threat, the emergence of artificial intelligence then presents an opportunity for journalism to reintroduce the distinctiveness of the profession and rejuvenate its professional promise.
Í þessari grein er fjallað um rannsókn á viðhorfum íslenskra blaðamanna til hlutverks síns í samfélaginu og upplifun þeirra af utanaðkomandi þrýstingi á störf sín. Fjölmiðlaumhverfið á Íslandi hefur gengið í gegnum miklar breytingar á undanförnum árum sem hafa, eins og í öðrum löndum, breytt því hvernig fréttir eru búnar til, þeim dreift og hvernig lesendur nálgast fréttir og jafnframt vakið spurningar um hlutverk fjölmiðla. Vaxandi samkeppni um athygli fólks, áhrif netsins, samfélagsmiðla og áhrifamikilla tæknifyrirtækja hafa meðal annars leitt til fjárhagserfiðleika á íslenskum fjölmiðlamarkaði, gjaldþrota og uppsagna. Markmið rannsóknarinnar er að kanna hvort og þá hvernig þessar breytingar hafa haft áhrif á viðhorf blaðamanna til þess hvert þeir telja vera hlutverk sitt í samfélaginu og jafnframt hvort þeir telja utanaðkomandi þrýsting á dagleg störf sín hafa aukist. Rannsóknin felst í spurningakönnun sem lögð var fyrir blaðamenn vorið 2021 (n=239) og eigindlegum viðtölum við þrjátíu blaðamenn. Spurningakönnunin er hluti af alþjóðlegri samanburðarrannsókn, Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS), sem miðar að því að kortleggja starfsaðstæður blaðamanna, viðhorf og vinnuaðferðir þeirra. Niðurstöðurnar eru bornar saman við WJS könnunina frá árinu 2012 (n=209). Niðurstöður sýna að íslenskir blaðamenn leggja meiri áherslu á það nú en áratug áður að hlutverk þeirra sé fyrst og fremst að veita hlutlægar upplýsingar um það sem gerist í samfélaginu og að veita valdhöfum aðhald. Um leið er ljóst að þeir telja að utanaðkomandi þrýstingur á dagleg störf sín hafi aukist. Það á einkum við um blaðamenn á einkareknum miðlum, en síður um félaga þeirra á Ríkisútvarpinu.
This article addresses the development of new scheduling practices within public service media (PSM) in the Nordic, focusing on DR and TV 2 in Denmark. These practices relate to in-house broadcaster-video-on-demand-services (BVoDs). Our findings show, first, that television’s time-structured identity and liveness are re-configured for a mainstream audience as opposed to the segmented audiences approach of the earlier multi-channel era. Second, we find that the public service identity and the benefits of being PSM natives are harnessed to help the survivability of PSM companies in the digital era.
Taking the FIFA World Cup in Qatar as a point of departure, this article analyses the changing role of national associations of sports journalists in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Introducing the concept of meta-journalistic discourse and well-established media system theories, it is argued that Nordic sports journalism’s negotiations of professional practices and standards are shaped by a particular media systemic context with distinct Nordic welfare state-oriented features. One such feature is a tradition of using collective, organized social groups, like democratically based voluntary associations, as instruments for social change. The empirical study explores this through a qualitative thematic analysis of the changing structures, identities, and practices of the national associations of sports journalists across the three countries. This illustrates how the organizations in particular during the last two decades have started very similar processes of transformation away from being mainly social clubs. The associations have used their collective frameworks and bargaining power to ensure independent journalists’ access to sports organizations and athletes, and they have engaged in negotiations of what sports journalism is and what constitutes sports journalism in a sports media landscape shaped by strong combined forces of digitization and politicization.
Nordic countries have experienced an upsurge of partisan alternative media positioning themselves as correctives of the mainstream, but only little is known about how many and who uses them. Building on original survey data from a representative sample of the adult Danish population ( n = 2,455), this article presents the first study of the use of left-wing and right-wing alternative media in Denmark. Findings show that users are generally more likely to be older, male, and live in disadvantaged parts of the country, but that alternative media appeal across all levels of education and urban–rural divides. Results also show positive associations with use of national dailies and high political interest. Furthermore, use of alternative media is associated with taking ideological positions further to the left or right. Yet, the findings do not indicate that users generally take extreme positions. This study thus adds considerable nuance to the picture of alternative news users and also finds that alternative media with different degrees of alternativeness attract similar users.
This article addresses the question of whether and how sourcing practices of journalistic news media have been transformed by online-first publishing and the hybridisation of the media system. Focusing on four Finnish news outlets from 1999 to 2018 (a daily newspaper, a news agency, a tabloid, and a public broadcaster), we analyse the essential gatekeeping practice of giving voice to actors by quoting them directly or indirectly. According to our data, the hybrid media context does not lead to an increased diversification of sources. Instead, our analysis indicates a concentration and consolidation of sources across different news outlets: a continued elite source dominance in domestic political news. This development we term institutional alignment, suggesting that, by foregrounding elite sources, the news media seeks to maintain both its gatekeeping function and its key position in networks of power.
This article explores the contextual nature of fragmentation and polarisation – subjects that have attracted significant concern in the age of social media. I investigate the media sharing practices of Scandinavian Twitter users discussing the 2020 American presidential election, an event that attracted international attention. Using links in tweets, I map the media networks of users in Sweden and Norway in their national languages and in English. This intranational approach provides a view into whether fragmentation and polarisation are characteristic of the audience or the media milieu. The findings show Scandinavian users exhibit low audience polarisation within their national languages, but they display polarisation similar to American users when engaging with English-language media. At the same time, media fragmentation is higher in the Norwegian language than in any other sphere. This article sheds light on the relationship between the sometimes-conflated concepts of fragmentation and polarisation and provides a discussion of the implications of political information sharing on transnational digital platforms.
Building on an interview study from Sweden (n = 80), this article develops the concept of media resentment as a tool for understanding contemporary developments such as the diminished trust in news media and journalism. We view media resentment as a complex of feelings and ideas that are both individual and social, embodied, and ideal. Media resentment is defined as the feeling that the media – intentionally or unintentionally – are denying you or endangering what you have rightfully earned, whether by not giving it to you, by directly telling you to abstain from it or by intervening in social processes so that your enjoyment of what you have earned becomes impossible.
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