| 1. |
- Camauër, Leonor
(author)
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Feminism, citizenship and the media : an ethnographic study of identity processes within four women's associations
- 2000
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The primary purpose of this doctoral thesis is to investigate the media practices of four Swedish women's associations and some of their individual members in order to gain insight into the role of the media in these women's individual and collective processes of identity formation as feminists and citizens. The studied media practices include first, the individual and collective meaning-making processes in which the women are involved when interpreting the media they use in everyday life, and, secondly, the associations' public-oriented practices, i.e. the production of their own media and their participation in, and interplay with, the mass media in order to diffuse their own meanings. These public-oriented practices have thus far been given scant attention in feminist media research inspired by public sphere theory. This work constitutes an attempt to fill this gap.My theoretical starting points are to be found at the intersections of several research traditions: the framework of the public sphere, the media and democracy; recent feminist theory on the public sphere; citizenship and narrative identity theory; newer perspectives on social movements inspired by the sociology of culture; and Swedish and Scandinavian studies of women's movements. The methods used were ethnography, the narrative study of lives and text analysis, and the empirical work included three main steps: participant observation at the associations' meetings, individual and group interviews with members, and analysis of the media coverage of the associations.Different kinds of feminist identity were developed in the four groups and the role of the mass media in the ongoing reconstruction of this identity was pervaded by a series of tensions: between criticism of media performances and the dependence on the news media which people feel they have for keeping oneself informed, between the symbolic goods expected and those actually delivered by the media, and between the increased self-esteem and pride over the coverage and attention received from the media and frustration over the mechanisms governing the interplay between associations and mass media. In this interplay, a public identity of the associations is constructed, which, regardless of whether it is accepted or rejected by them, is nevertheless incorporated in the groups' ongoing processes of collective identity formation and has consequences for their work.For most of the women included in this study, citizenship was a "silent" narrative identity: it lay deeply embedded in, and underpinned their feminist identities. The taken-for-granted citizen's right to participate in the polity with one's own voice sustained, for instance, the women's identification as producers of political talk, one of the main identifications comprised by their feminist collective identity.
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| 2. |
- Sahlstrand, Anders
(author)
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De synliga : nyhetskällor i svensk storstadsmorgonpress
- 2000
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The objective of this thesis is to analyze the identifiable sources in the major Swedish morning papers, to explain the results from the analysis and compare the results with a set of norms to assess the quality of the news.The thesis uses two theoretical approaches. The first stipulates relevant norms from which an assessment of the news can be made. The norms are deduced from the notion of "public interest" and consist of the criterias independence, accessibility, diversity and informativity. If the news doesn't satisfy these criterias then they are said to be lacking in quality.The second theoretical approach uses an explanatory model to describe and explain background variables, and to explain the level of news quality. The model combines a number of approaches that have previously been used in media research. The most important is the exchange model and the concept of the news net.A sample of 2000 articles from the Swedish newspapers Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Göteborgs Posten and Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten, from 1997 and 1998 is selected. From this larger sample a sub-sample of 409 articles is analyzed in detail. The main method applied is content analysis but both texts and images are also analysed through close readings. The larger sample serves as a context to the main study.The results indicated that large morning papers lack certain qualities:Limited diversity of identifiable sources.Accessibility to the news was unevenly spread, that is, women and non-elite sources were poorly represented. Furthermore, small businesses and government authorities received less favourable publicity than average.The editorial independence was low due to the use of elite sources and the lack of reporters' comments.A number of possible explanations of the results are discussed. The lack of diversity could be explained by the homogeneity of news due to routines. The routine character of news also explains why the accessibility to the news is poorly spread. News are gathered from routine sources where the news usually breaks, namely, the news net. Sources in the news net are predominantly male elite-sources. Economic conditions, especially the tendency to slim down news organizations, and the pressure of deadlines, also explain the lack of quality in general.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Andén-Papadopoulos, Kari, 1963-
(author)
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Kameran i krig : den fotografiska iscensättningen av Vietnamkriget i svensk press
- 2000
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The doctoral thesis deals with the problems of (news) photographic representation in general, and is based on an empirical study ofVietnam War photography in four major Swedish daily newspapers. A more specific aim of the thesis is to investigate and ideologically evaluate the representational strategies of the press photographs. A central argument is that news pictures must be understood in terms of the specific cultural context constituted by the Western pictorial tradition, both classical and popular. The news media operate within the culture and make use of common motifs, symbols and rhetorical devices to convey their messages. Studies have shown that journalistic texts often hark back to literary traditions, oral storytelling, sagas and myths. Likewise, press photography is permeated by iconographie conventions from the Western arthistorical and pictorial tradition. In order to understand how and what the pictures signify, you must read them in light of this tradition.The thesis takes its starting points in various theories of representation; in photo theory, art theory, visual rhetoric and in mass communication theory, particularly the part that deals with news production. Following a poststructuralistic line of argument, 1 take it that photographs convey information not about any objective reality, but about the beliefe and ideas particular to the culture in which they operate. News photographs can be conceptualized as projections, as ”involuntary confessions” of their culture’s deeper preoccupations. This study shows that both the form and content of the news photographs from the Vietnam War reflect historical and contemporary, fictitious and documentary depictions of war. They trigger the same cultural myths found in popular movies, novels and picture genres, including classical Western painting - which confirms the present assumption that news photography must be understood as a cultural product. An ethnocentric as well as patriarchal perspective is prominent in the Swedish new- - spapers’ Vietnam photographs. They position the capitalist West as the masculine, modern and civilized ’ ”Absolute”, against which the Vietnamese are contrasted as a feminized, primitive, communist ”Other”. The press photographs are permeated by a Judeo-Christian iconography. They convey a modern version of the Passion, with the Pietà and the mourning Madonna as recurrent themes. The American soldiers are transformed into Christian martyrs, and the fleeing South Vietnamese population is staged as a timeless vision of the Old Testament Exodus. By referring to the Christian tradition, the photographs give the suffering and killing a higher purpose. Belief in the resurrection - the ultimate triumph owing to the sacrifice — acts as a comforting filter over the scenes of wounded American soldiers and crying South Vietnamese women.My study does not support the popular assumption that the photographic staging of the Vietnam War turned public opinion against the war in any direct way. The negative picture of the war conveyed in press photographs from 1968, which became increasingly negative beginning in 1972, can largely be seen as a result of the mounting Swedish and international resistance to the war. Even though the Swedish press (and other mass media) mirrored changes in the actual course of the war to a certain extent - and through its brutal descriptions of violence certainly contributed to strengthening anti-war opinion — it still appears as if its picture policy responded to, as opposed to preceded, public opinion. Whereas it is difficult to find evidence that news pictures have any direct and decisive effects on the formation of political opinion, it can be argued that they have long-term repercussions for more general cultural conceptions - that they are both symptoms and agents of a process of cultural reproduction. What my study has shown in particular is that even liberal democratic Western media seem to function as propaganda machines of some sort, in the sense that press photographs confirm and reproduce deeply rooted cultural myths and values. It seems appropriate to say that the media — rather than revealing the world — project onto it ideologically colored pictures.
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| 5. |
- Andersson, Yvonne, 1972-
(author)
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Mellan lag och moral : Civil olydnad och militanta veganer i fyra svenska dagstidningar åren omkring millennieskiftet
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The main purpose of the dissertation is to describe how four Swedish newspapers construct ethical standpoints and what norms they prescribe. This is done through a characterization of the civil disobedience discourse, in particular the discourse about animal rights activism and militant vegans, around the turn of the millennium (1990-2004). Questions asked are how Swedish newspapers construct civil disobedience, what disobedience is supported and what is condemned, and if the newspapers recognize the complexity of ethical dilemmas and facilitate well-reasoned ethical standpoints. The material studied is gathered from Stockholm-based newspapers: Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet and Expressen. In total 1115 texts. The methods used are a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, where the qualitative analysis is based on rhetorical analysis and narratology.The results show that there are mainly two overarching discourses. One supporting discourse, which is predominant in the representation of campaigns justified by economical issues, human rights, peace/anti-war movement and individual rights. One criminalising or demonising discourse, which is predominant in the constructions of militant vegans, the environmental movement and a campaign justified by democratic reasons in Sweden.In sum, the constructions are characterized by strong polarization, formalisation, ambivalence and a double standard of morality, which risk to circumscribe the understanding of moral dilemmas. The consequence is journalistic constructions where the ends justify the means when the end is a political correct, not defiant norm, or when the end is non political. The dissertation also argues that the concepts, specific words, journalists apply in their representation of social reality risk to set the limits for media representations, as well as for the public's understanding, of the social reality and moral dilemmas.
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| 6. |
- Bengtsson Lundin, Rebecca, 1984-
(author)
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Appearance and photographs of people in flight : A qualitative study of photojournalistic practices in spaces of (forced) migration
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study explores photojournalistic practices by investigating how spaces of (forced) migration, as well as the people and objects moving in and across them, appeared in Swedish newspapers in 2015.Photographs are unique objects of study, as the presence of people in certain spaces becomes directly observable through them. By considering photographs as agentic entities resulting from the many encounters between people involved in the event of photojournalism, the focus is on the social and political relations that emerge from these encounters, which opens up for an examination of questions of citizenship and visibility in relation to photography.The inquiry scrutinises the traditional ontological framework for discussing photographs and the act of photography related to people in flight, which generally is limited to the content visible within the frame, implying that photographs are the products of one stable point of view – that of the photographer. This thesis offers insights into mediated and mediating ways of seeing and their implications by: (1) examining photojournalism and photographs as a combination of content, practice, and place-making that produces events of photojournalism; (2) linking these to the notion of spaces of appearance and the potential for political action that ensues; (3) providing a specific account of photojournalism as a practice that enables modes of self-presentation; and, (4) reflecting on encounters that unfold in the event of photojournalism due to the fact that photographs, as shareable stories, are reproduced and circulated in time and space.The analysis draws upon a primarily qualitative, multi-method approach, combining an interview study with photojournalists and a visual analysis of photographs published in four Swedish newspapers in 2015. Through an approach of watching photography, the study examines the spatial and temporal dimensions of photographs beyond the stillness imposed by the frame and offers an analysis centred on movement and place. Employing Arendt’s notion of appearance in terms of both photojournalists in spaces of (forced) migration and others who are moving in and across these spaces, the results indicate that photojournalism, as a space of appearance, potentially stretches beyond the moment of photography. The findings further show that photojournalism practices do not only visualise events of (forced) migration, but they facilitate the appearance of, and encounters with, people in flight. The event of photojournalism offers a space which recognises fleeing as an action. By appearing in photographs, people in flight regain part of the spontaneity that they have been deprived of as stateless individuals, giving them an opportunity to reappear before others as subjects of rights. The thesis concludes that photographs should not merely be construed as representations, but rather as presentations anew, with people’s appearance in photographs being testimony to their ability to self-present.
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| 7. |
- Bjurström, Erling, 1949-
(author)
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Högt och lågt : Smak och stil i ungdomskulturen
- 1997
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The thesis contributes to the understanding of modern youth cultures. The study consists of three parts. The first part explores the development of youth culture research. In the second part a theoretical perspective is developed on taste and style that can be applied to contemporary youth cultures. The key concepts used in this elaboration are stylisation and contextualisation, and the distinction between style markers and style elements. Stylisation is regarded as a prerequisite for the production of style, which puts emphasis on the agency involved in the construction of youth styles. Style markers, i.e. single or combined elements which give an immediate comprehension of the distinctive traits of a style, are fundamental to the social classification and decoding of styles. They also play a decisive role in the recontextualisation of styles. Styles are always drawn into processes of distinction and dialogism. The former of these processes has foremost been elaborated in the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and the latter in the work of Paul Ricoeur and Mikhail Bakhtin. In the second part of the thesis these approaches are combined into a dialectic of distinction and dialogism. At the same time Bourdieu's notions of symbolic capital, social fields and habitus are scrutinized. In the third part of the thesis the theoretical perspective is oriented towards empirical findings. The aim of the empirical investigations is to analyse whether and to what extent social dimensions are reflected in young people's taste for culture and aesthetics. The data used in the empirical analysis were collected in three Swedish cities, Gothenburg, Gävle and Stockholm, in 1991/92, 1993 and 1994/95 respectively. The methodology used is a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, that makes it possible to analyse young people's cultural and aesthetic orientations from both the perspective of structure and agency. The analysis of the data from Gothenburg and Gävle confirms Bourdieu's notion of the crucial role played by the educational system in the distribution of symbolic capital, and that there are marked differences between male and female tastes. The analysis of the structural differences in the pupils' taste was complemented by an analysis of the sense for the taste-game of culture based on interviews conducted with young people in Stockholm. In an ideal typical manner the interviewed young perople's orientations towards culture and aesthetics were divided into three categories: one which solely preferred non-consecrated forms of culture, another which mainly preferred popular culture, and yet another, with a relatively strong taste for both consecrated and popular culture. The sense for cultural distinctions in the last group was not merely bound to high culture, but also to popular culture. From this the conclusion is reached that the pure aesthetic gaze is not the only gaze involved in cultural distinction. It is further argued that Bourdieu's theory of symbolic capital, fields and habitus ought to be complemented with an analysis of different kinds of social fields and their power of consecration in the understanding of cultural hierarchies. The sense for the taste-game of culture also played a crucial role in young people's orientations to different styles. The sense for style was in many cases intervened with structural reflexivity and self-reflexivity. Finally, an analysis of the male and female style gaze was extracted from the gender differences found in the empirical material. The male style gaze is mainly turned towards style, whereas the female style gaze is foremost turned towards stylisation. In this way boys are more inclined than girls to position themselves in relation to the symbolic structures of style.
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| 8. |
- Bolin, Göran, 1959-
(author)
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Filmbytare : videovåld, kulturell produktion & unga män
- 1998
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The focus of this thesis is Swedish Film Swappers, i.e. young men who swap video films that include graphically explicit depictions of violence, and their cultural practices. Inspired by action and horror films some Film Swappers have become cultural producers, either of amateur videos, or of fanzines, i.e. amateur writing by fans for other fans.The Film Swappers have been studied through the analytical lens of public spheres, taste and identity, and by the methods of media ethnography (including participant communication, ethnographic interviews and textual analysis of the films they watch and the cultural artifacts they produce). Five groups of fanzine producers and three groups of amateur video producers have been studied from late 1992 to 1996. The material consists of interviews, fanzines, video films (commercial as well as amateur productions), newspaper and magazine articles, radio programmes and field notes.Fanzines have been central to the communicative organisation of the Film Swappers, and have contributed to the development of a public structure for the exchange of films, and of information on where to get hold of them and to read more about them. Through communicative action, an alternative public sphere with its own forms of consumption, distribution and production has been formed. The debate on the value of different films and videos has also been used strategically by the Film Swappers for distinctive taste practices, and alternative film canons have been proposed. This communicative and strategic action has been of great importance in the construction of the young men's identity.
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| 9. |
- Borgen, Turid, 1957-
(author)
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Mellom samfunnsoppdrag og marked : En studie av utviklingen av sjefredaktørrollen i utvalgte norske og svenske mediehus fra 1985 til 2015
- 2017
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The dissertation analyses changes in the role of editors-in-chief in ten leading Norwegian and Swedish media houses – today owned by either Bonnier or Schibsted – in light of the potential tensions between journalistic ideals and market demands. This duality is studied over a period of 30 years, from 1985 to 2015. The most defining changes in the structural framework under which editors-in-chief work are the ongoing technological revolution, the transformation from an analogue into a digital society, and structural, economic changes related to this development. Methodologically, the study builds on data from qualitative in-depth interviews, mainly with 33 past and present editors-in-chief. It also contains a study of how the role of editors-in-chief has been reported and discussed in the magazines of two media branch organisations. The changing role of editors-in-chief is analysed within an institutional perspective. The main empirical results are as follows: (1) Owners and company management have considered the recruitment of editors-in-chief to be highly important throughout the period, and they have used their influence actively. Internal recruitment processes are a standard procedure. Very few of those chosen are women; men recruit other men. The last decade shows a recruitment process becoming more centralized and professionalized. (2) Most editors-in-chief represented in the study have a background in the newsroom. This has traditionally been the main qualification. (3) Regular meetings have structured most of the working hours for editors-in-chief. From an institutional perspective, meetings have played a norm-setting and ritualised role. During the last decade, some of those meetings have included not only journalists but also employees from other departments. (4) Those respondents who were active during the last period investigated perceive the increased speed of work on a daily basis and the more complex editorial role as the main changes and challenges. (5) Many of the respondents are so-called ‘silent’ editors. Due to a lack of time, they do not write much in their own papers. Lately, this has changed to some extent, especially among Swedish editors. This finding is one of the major differences between Norwegian and Swedish editors-in-chief. (6) Editors are still responsible for journalistic content, but demands on the part of commercial management have gradually become more important, and strategic decisions have become more centralized. The metaphor about the need to balance the demands of the ‘Marketplace and Cathedral’ has been replaced by the metaphor ‘We are all in the same boat’. The journalistic institution is under pressure. (7) Despite the immense technological and economic changes in the business and in the structural framework, there is also stability in the role due to the robust nature of journalism as an institution. The role of editor-in-chief is complex, and during the last 30 years, it has become even more so. The structural conditions have affected the role in various ways. While the basic tasks of editors-in-chief remain rooted in editorial work, downsizing and market demands have simultaneously undermined the autonomy and power of editors-in-chief, especially in relation to central media group management.
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| 10. |
- Dahlin, Emma, 1980-
(author)
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Ontological Ordering : Achieving Audience in Internet Practice
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Against the backdrop of changing technological conditions of the contemporary media landscape, new questions arise regarding how audience can be can problematized and theorized. This dissertation seeks to shift the focus from conventional assumptions of what audience is to an empirical exploration of the specificities of the process through which audience is achieved in practice. This involves revisiting and questioning ontological assumptions about the nature of audience. The aim of the study is to develop an alternative approach for theorizing audience. A three year and seven months’ exploration of one example of an audience practice, the empirical focus is on the Gallifrey Base, an internet discussion forum for viewers of the TV series Doctor Who. To explore the specifics of audience as reality-in-practice, a methodological approach is developed that adjusts ethnographic research methods to align with a concern with ontology in audience practice – an audienceography. This dissertation thereby makes questions of ontology an empirical concern, drawing attention to how practices make up realities – that is, to how ontology is achieved. By turning to theoretical and methodological insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), this study sets out to particularize how audience is achieved on the Gallifrey Base. Three chapters detail and analyze how practices on the Gallifrey Base achieve audience. Each build on the findings from the previous chapter, attending to ontological ordering in different ways, delving deeper into the details of the unfolding audience practice. The findings show how multiple ontologies can co-exist. In contrast to classic communication models, it is argued that the significance of communication by other means is about more than sending and receiving messages. An implication for the theorization of audience is that communication can have other purposes, as messages may be sent and received in order to maintain a particular communication practice. In relation to audience studies, the dissertation makes a theoretical contribution by connecting insights from recent debates on ontology and multiplicity in STS to empirical explorations of audience, thus widening the scope of the theoretical explanatory basis. The empirical contribution is to demonstrate that rather than a natural and stable structure, much work is invested in trying to maintain multiplicity even in the single audience practice of the Gallifrey Base forum. This suggests that ontologically fixed and given theoretical notions of audience are not compatible with contemporary audience practice. Audience practice, it is found, may include a range of multiple modes, which calls for attentiveness to the situated work carried out by various actors in the achievement of audience. In light of these findings, it is argued that approaching audience as ontology-in-practice provides a foundation for further theorizations of contemporary audience. Connecting the findings from Ontological Ordering to wider concerns in the humanities and social sciences – a concern with audience becomes a concern with the processes and implications of how we interact with media material and media devices, which in contemporary media environment is intensely technological.
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