1.
Norén, Fredrik, et al.
(author)
Distant reading the history of Swedish film politics in 4500 governmental SOU reports
2017
In: Journal of Scandinavian Cinema. - : Intellect. - 2042-7891 .- 2042-7905. ; 7:2, s. 155-175
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
Using computational methods, digitized collections and archives can today be scrutinized in their entirety. By distant reading and topic modeling one particular collection – 4500 digitized Swedish Governmental Official Reports (SOU) from 1922 to 1991 – this article gives a new archival perspective of the history of Swedish film politics and policy-making. We examine different probabilistic topics related to film (and media) that the algorithm within the topic modeling software Mallet extracted from the immense text corpora of all these Official Reports. Topic modeling is a computational method to study themes in texts by accentuating words that tend to co-occur and together create different topics. Basically, it is a research tool for the discovery of hidden semantic structures, exploring a collection through the underlying topics that run through it. Hence, our article captures a number of film discourses and trends within the SOU material. In conclusion, we argue that topic modeling should be recognized as a method and research aid for gathering an overview of a major material; as a way to pose new and unforeseen research questions; and as a kind of computational support that makes it possible to apprehend major patterns more or less impossible to detect through a traditional archival investigation.
2.
Borg, Alexandra, et al.
(author)
Bokmediets omvandling : en lägesrapport
2016
In: Human IT. - 1402-1501 .- 1402-151X. ; 13:3, s. 1-23
Journal article (other academic/artistic) abstract
Rapport från ett nyligen avslutat forsknings- och samtalsprojekt: "Kod[ex]. Bokmediets omvandling".
3.
Degerstedt, Lars, 1965-, et al.
(author)
More Media, More People—On Social & Multimodal Media Intelligence
2017
In: Human IT. - : Högskolan i Borås. - 1402-1501 .- 1402-151X. ; 13:3, s. 54-84
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
The purpose of this article is to address some challenges facing media intelligence in general, and competitive intelligence in particular within an altered information landscape. To understand this new situation, the notion of social and multimodal media intelligence are introduced. With cases taken primarily from the Swedish media intelligence sector, we argue that data driven media intelligence today needs to pay increasing attention to new forms of (A.) crowd-oriented and (B.) multimedia-saturated information. As a subcategory of media intelligence, competitive intelligence refers to the gathering of publicly available information about an organisation or a company’s competitors—using it to gain business advantages. Traditionally such intelligence has implied a set of techniques and tools that transforms numerical or textual data into useful information for business analysis. Today, however, we argue that such techniques need to consider media alterations in both a social and multimodal direction. Our analysis hence offers a conceptual understanding of a rapidly evolving field, were methods used within media intelligence need to change as well. By presenting some findings from the so called CIBAS-project, we describe how Swedish organisations and companies rely on social networking structures and individual decision making as a means to increase rapid response and agile creativity. If competitive intelligence was traditionally based on insights gleaned from statistical methods, contemporary media analytics are currently faced with audiovisual data streams (sound, video, image)—often with a slant of sociality. Yet, machine learning of other media modalities than text poses a number of technical hurdles. In this article we use fashion analytics as a final case in point, taken from a commercial sector where visual big data is presently in vogue.
4.
Fickers, Andreas, et al.
(author)
Editorial Special Issue Audiovisual Data in Digital Humanities
2018
In: View. - : The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. - 2213-0969. ; 7:14, s. 1-4
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
This issue of VIEW provides a critical survey of new digital humanities (DH) methods and tools directed toward audiovisual (AV) media. DH as a field is still dominated by a focus on textual studies (studies of word culture) that are largely “deaf and blind” in their capacity to search, discover, and study AV materials. The mandate to improve these capacities is clear and unquestioned, though the pathways are fecund and numerous. New and emergent tools related to deep learning algorithms are reasonably expected to change this methodological landscape within the digitally accelerated near-future.
5.
Fleischer, Rasmus, et al.
(author)
Discovering Spotify – A Thematic Introduction
2017
In: Culture Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research. - : Linkoping University Electronic Press. - 2000-1525 .- 2000-1525. ; 9:2, s. 130-145
Journal article (peer-reviewed)
6.
Hyvönen, Mats, 1973-, et al.
(author)
The Formation of Swedish Media Studies, 1960–1980
2018
In: Media History. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 1368-8804 .- 1469-9729. ; 24:1, s. 86-98
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
Around 1960, the politics of the emerging media society in Sweden tended to fixate the formative functions of mass communication. The monopoly of public service broadcast media, press subsidies and new tendencies in film policy were some of the issues around which uncertainty prevailed. New methods to provide reliable data were sought by politicians, since empirical facts were required as arguments for an updated media policy. This article examines the different ways that the field of media studies was introduced in Sweden between 1960 and 1980. We argue that Swedish academic media studies departed from, and emerged within, a rather diffuse borderland between industry, politics and academia. The formation of national media research in Sweden can partly be seen as an effect of politicians and the media industry wanting to be better informed on issues such as media influence, media ownership and the habits and composition of the media audience.
7.
Snickars, Pelle, 1971-
(author)
Debunking public service? : Meta-academic and personal reflections from inside the Swedish Public Service Broadcasting Commission
2016
In: MedieKultur. - : Det Kgl. Bibliotek/Royal Danish Library. - 0900-9671 .- 1901-9726. ; 32:61, s. 162-177
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
During the last half of 2015, a number of Swedish publishing and broadcasting companies—Bonnier, Schibsted Sweden, Mittmedia, Bauer Group—agreed to fund and establish a national Public Service Broadcasting Commission. The purpose was to initiate a public debate about the behaviour and operation of Swedish public service broadcasters—in particular, how they affected the commercial media market, and generally, to discuss the role of national public service broadcasting in a networked media environment. I was a Commission member, and this article describes the background, debates and proposals put forward by the Commission. On one hand, it focuses the work of the Commission with an emphasis on the different public debates the Commission stirred. On the other hand, the article will in a meta-scholarly fashion elaborate on the academic tradition of doing scholarly work focused on public service in Sweden. A recurrent notion in the article is hence meta-academic. Importantly, the article stresses the scholarly bias in favour of public service that is usually present within this tradition (primarily emanating from the field of political communication). Thus, the article is devoted to various debates surrounding the work of the Commission and the role of academics within these discussions (including myself). Finally, the article presents a few thoughts about what it might mean for academics to be (or become) lobbyists.
8.
9.
10.
Snickars, Pelle, 1971-
(author)
Himalaya of Data
2014
In: International Journal of Communication. - 1932-8036. ; :8, s. 2666-2678
Journal article (peer-reviewed) abstract
On January 17, 2007, the Wayback Machine’s software crawler captured wikileaks.org for the first time. The crawler’s act of harvesting and documenting the Web meta-stored a developing site for “untraceable mass document leaking”—all in the form of an “anonymous global avenue for disseminating documents,” to quote the archived representational image of the site (Wayback Machine, 2007, para. 6). The initial WikiLeaks captures, and there were additional sweeps stored during the following months, vividly illustrate how WikiLeaks gradually developed into a site of global attention. The WikiLeaks logo, with its blue-green hourglass, was, for example, graphically present from the start, and later headings at the right were “news,” “FAQ,” “support,” “press,” and “links”—the latter directing users to various network services for anonymous data publication as i2P.net or Tor. Interestingly, links to the initial press coverage on Wikileaks are kept—which is not always the case at Wayback Machine—and can still be accessed. Apparently, one of the first online articles to mention what the site was about stated: “a new internet initiative called WikiLeaks seeks to promote good government and democratization by enabling anonymous disclosure and publication of confidential government records”.
