Mid Sweden University

Visual climate change communication has seen increased scholarly attention in recent years, with a strong focus on science communication. However, less is known about the producers of climate imagery. The current paper presents results from interviews with 20 photographers engaged in climate change on the challenges they see for climate photography today and the key strategies they use to achieve reach and impact in the digital media environment. Results indicate that practitioners gravitate toward variations of a ‘gateway strategy’, where motives and forms of visual presentation are chosen as gateways to bypass the potential resistance or indifference to climate change messages. The paper proposes a typology of such visual gateway strategies.

In the context of an environmental crisis, photography and its related practices can be part of an emancipatory project, challenging techno-utopian solutions and envisioning alternative possibilities for sustaining life on this planet. This anthology critically addresses the geopolitics of environmental devastation from the perspective of photographers, artists, curators and theorists. The contributors engage with recent debates about the Anthropocene and the need to identify the socioeconomic and political causes of climate change. The essays question the validity of images within which ecological crisis is seen as the consequence of undifferentiated human activity.

This chapter presents a brief timeline of the emergence of drones as a journalistic tool, discusses barriers and challenges to their use and explores key aspects of the roles of drones and aerial imagery in the current media landscape. The drones used in journalism and media production are basically mini-helicopters with multiple rotors that are equipped with cameras. A key property is that they are unmanned and can be piloted remotely, which makes it possible to shoot still images and video from a distance. Photojournalists started experimenting with mounting cameras on remotely controlled flying multi-copters at the beginning of the 21st century. The quick development of drone journalism has also led to more skeptical assessments. A critique has been that although drones increase the use of aerial shots significantly, many times the drone aerials are used as non-essential complementary visuals, which provide context but not content to the news story.

In the high-choice media landscape, satire has the potential to help news and politics break through information apathy barriers and reinvigorate democratic debate. While scholarly attention to the genre of satire has increased, interest in satirists themselves has been sparse. Using a theory of non-deliberative forms of public discourse and the idea of role conceptions, this study presents an analysis of interviews with Swedish satirists working in broadcasting media. Results showed that being Eye-openers and Questioners – meaning providing alternative perspectives and problematizing societal norms – were the primary contributions of satire, according to satirists. There were differing roles to take on when it came to social bonding and solidarity: Unifier, where the aim was to be bridge-building in a polarized debate, and Divider, where the main focus was to inspire critical thinking and foster independence from consensus. The role elements Reporter, Explainer and Solver were also introduced and discussed.

In the last decade, the development of small, remotely operated multicopters with cameras, so-called drones, has made aerial photography easily available. Consumers and institutions now use drones in a variety of ways, both for personal entertainment and professionally. The application of drones in media production and journalism is of particular interest, as it provides insight into the complex interplay between technology, the economic and legal constraints of the media market, professional cultures and audience preferences. The thematic issue Journalism from Above: Drones, the Media, and the Transformation of Journalistic Practice presents new research concerning the role of drones in journalism and media production. The issue brings together scholars representing a variety of approaches and perspectives. A broad selection of empirical cases from Finland, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US form the basis of an exploration of the changing relations between the media, technology and society. The articles address topics such as: Adaption of drone technology in the newsrooms; audience preferences and reactions in a changing media landscape; the relation between journalists and public authorities who use drones; and attitudes from journalistic practitioners as well as historical and future perspectives.

Camera-equipped drones have emerged as an increasingly commonplace tool for media to acquire aerial imagery. Previous research has mainly focused on the innovative aspects and creative potential of the technology. This article argues that early optimistic projections reflected a novelty effect, typical of a culturally embedded idea that new and better technologies continuously replace older ones. Using a historical theory which distinguishes techno-optimistic innovation discourse from actual observations of technology in use, photojournalists were interviewed on the role of drones in news reporting. The results show that the practitioners historicise drones, relating them to previous aerial technologies, and they reflect on current and future uses of drones in journalism based on a notion of phases, where early hype gives way to subsequent drone fatigue. Drones are seen by many as a more convenient tool to do things that journalism has done before, but the convenience increases the use of aerial imagery. The results also show that, although photojournalists see a wide range of potential uses, there are also limitations, including the ideals of the invisible observer, safety concerns, and the perils of over-aesthetic imagery. The post-hype uses of drone photography were summarized in two categories: (a) revealing the site, establishing 'this happened here' and (b) presenting scope, or showing how vast or large something is.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 presented Swedish Social Democrats with a dilemma: how could they use the transnational revolutionary momentum to further universal suffrage, without supporting actions possibly leading to violence? In striking this balance, the use of communications was central. This article uses the concept of the media system to analyse the communicative practices and strategies developed by the Party in the early 20th century, and how these were employed between 1915 and 1917, in relation to the hunger marches and revolutionary pressures. The study shows that the Party had established conscious agitation strategies and an elaborate national communication structure, which enabled coordinated opinion activities. As early as 1915, the Party began using these tools to initiate a national opinion movement concerning the food situation. In 1917, faced with the combination of events in Russia and erupting hunger marches, the Party leadership chose to emphasize security and stability, focusing on events the Party could control, such as the 1 May demonstrations. The resulting development of revolutionary opinion in Sweden during the spring of 1917 and the ensuing political changes reflected conscious media management strategies by the Left, who used the media system to navigate and shape a transnational revolutionary moment. 

Applying a revised concept of historical media events: The case of an airship landing 1919.

Historical media events challenge the original conceptualization of ”media event” by Dayan & Katz (1992), which focused on broadcasted synchronized events. This focus limited the application of the concept to the post war era and to particular types of events. In a recent issue of Media, Culture & Society, commemorating the 25 year anniversary of the publication of Dayan & Katz’ original book, Espen Ytreberg (2017) proposes a revised framework for analysing historical media events, in which he combines the English language tradition established by Dayan & Katz with German approaches (Hamm 1996) that propose much broader definitions.

The current paper presents a test of the analytical value of Ytrebergs’ reconceptualization against the case of an airship landing in Stockholm 1919 and discusses the framework in relation to other historical applications of the media event concept (Wilke 2010, Ytreberg 2014, Harvard 2018). The airship landing displays many of the properties specified by Ytreberg as typical for a historical media event: It was pre-planned to insure large crowds at the landing spot and extensive media coverage, it made extensive use of synchronization media technologies such as the telegraph, and it also displayed strong tendencies of mediatisation, almost to the point of constituting a “pseudo-event”.

The analysis reveals that the approach advocated by Ytreberg, despite its broader scope, serves as a useful categorization tool, specifying the properties separating historical “media events” from historical events covered by the media in general. However, the analysis also reveals a weakness in the model. While the categorization of different properties of mediatised historical events helps organize empirical observations, it presents a weaker framework for providing explanations. A case in point is strategic actor intent. Organising large-scale synchronized events with the intent of obtaining real-time media coverage and public participation, has historically often been made with specific strategic communicative intentions.

The planned media coverage of the airship visit was intended to rouse interest in the upcoming establishment of a commercial airship transport route. The paper discusses the dimension of strategic actor intent as an indicator of the limitations in the explanatory value of the model, against the case of the airship landing as well as some other illustrative examples.

Through the application and critical discussion of the revised model of historical media events, the paper contributes to theoretical development and our understanding of how historically developing media formats and structures have changed the preconditions for media involvement in large-scale public events over time.