Mid Sweden University

Media in Europe have undergone profound transformations. These changes involve structural transformation (global trends, the role of politics, EU, etc.); sectoral transformation (e.g., deriving from within the media domain); and the role of particular individuals (such as media moguls). In this respect, there is a lack of comparative studies which systematically explore the relations between these three dimensions in European transformative processes. To add new insights to existing knowledge about media systems across parts of Northern, Eastern and Central Europe, the purpose is to compare understandings of media transformation during the last two decades from a structural, sectoral and individual perspective. Eighty interviews were conducted with media experts from Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Latvia and Sweden. The results demonstrate detailed examples of not only an emerging commonality, with similar changes across Europe, but also consistent differences concerning areas such as the role of history, the pandemic and geopolitical tensions.

The basic idea behind this chapter is to partly bridge the gap in previous deliberation studies by offering a sustainable model for operationalizing deliberation empirically in a comparative context. The chapter introduces the key concept of deliberation and its associated basic ideals in social science studies and overviews empirical applications of news media's deliberative performance in journalism and political communication studies. Basic principles behind the operationalization of the concept as an outcome variable of a fuzzy-set analysis are discussed and motivated. A deliberative communication index is calculated based on macro/meso level and micro-level data. Among the 14 analysed cases in the comparison, Sweden, Estonia, Germany, Austria, and Greece belong to the set of high deliberative communication, while Italy, Latvia, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, and Hungary are out of the set of countries with high deliberative communication.

Lokaltidningskoncernen Mittmedia stod 2018 på ruinens brant. Checkkrediten var utnyttjad, det var tveksamt om löner skulle kunna betalas ut och oron bland personalen var stor. Räddningen för bolaget kom när svenska Bonnier och norska Amedia tillsammans köpte koncernen 2019. Men samtidigt som ekonomin var ansträngd, var den digitala kompetensen inom koncernen i absolut framkant. Under nästan ett decennium hade Mittmedia gjort en uppmärksammad digitaliseringsresa där man genomfört mer genomgripande förändringar än någon annan mediekoncern i Sverige. 

Denna bok är en berättelse om de människor som arbetade inom Mittmediakoncernen under 2010-talet. De digitala spjutspetsar som fick arbeta med utvecklingsfrågor befann sig på en fantastisk arbetsplats, men många medarbetare hade det tufft när sparpaket, uppsägningar och omorganisationer avlöste varandra. 

Boken ger ett forskningsperspektiv på Mittmedias digitala omställning och baseras på retrospektiva intervjuer med personer med redaktionella medarbetare, fackligt förtroendevalda, bolagsstyrelse och ledning, Genom ett unikt samarbetsavtal har forskarna också fått tillgång till en stor mängd interna dokument. 

This article offers a longitudinal perspective on communications during election campaigns from a political-party perspective, where strategic considerations about digital media are compared across time. Our analysis is grounded on the concepts of hybridisation and data-driven campaigning, where digital technology tends to play a central role without replacing all traditional campaign features. Empirically, the study is based on a longitudinal analysis of four election campaigns in Sweden during 2010–2022. The analysis shows that Swedish political parties have gradually integrated digital campaign features in their structure and strategy. The process is not linear, but rather back and forth, as party perceptions of the importance of communication channels vary across time. The results imply a development where all parties, regardless of size and ideology, are increasingly making rational judgments of which combinations of old and new campaign methods and communication channels are most effective.

The study explores the perspectives of political parties regarding news media coverage in election campaigns. By analyzing official post-election analyses produced by Swedish political parties from 2010 to 2022, the study offers a novel approach to the study of political party views of news media. The findings largely support the arguments proposed by mediatization literature, highlighting the significance of media in party communication. Parties display eagerness to attract positive media attention while expressing regret over inadequate or negative publicity. More surprisingly, there is a lack of references to media bias in the reports, suggesting that the hostile media effect is not a major concern among Swedish parties. Despite criticisms related to irrelevant reporting and perceived negative coverage, party perceptions towards the media remains predominantly neutral. The study contributes to the understanding of the complex relationship between political parties and news media in the context of election campaigns.

 This article explores institutions that monitor news media performance. It opens up critical inquiry into how knowledge about media systems is shaped, shared, and bounded in society. Using Sweden as an illustrative and data-rich case, we first map the overall media monitoring structure in Sweden. Second, we examine the kind of knowledge and data about media that monitoring institutions produce, including their motives and the underlying values they support. Third, we extrapolate questions about implicit and explicit motives to participate in an “information regime.” Fourth, by means of media system theory, we discuss the international relevance of the Swedish case to understand media monitoring systems in other parts of the world.

The growth of populist parties in Europe entails new challenges for public service media and hasadded new dimensions to media policy debates in many countries. Traditional left-right wingpolitical conflicts about the mission and role of public service media, in particular in relation tocommercial media competitors in the digital era, have now been supplemented by right wingpopulist attacks questioning public service media as such: their content, impartiality and links tothe established political system and elite groups in society. Public service media has thus becomesomewhat of ‘a special target’ for populist parties in Europe (Holtz-Bacha, 2021).While the more interest-oriented market liberal and private media opposition to public servicemedia have been extensively covered and discussed in media and communication research for longtime, the driving forces behind a more ideologically oriented criticism from the far right has beenless investigated and remains somewhat unclear. On one hand, this criticism matches populismperfectly, as public service media is portrayed as the representatives of a political elite distancedfrom the perspectives of ‘ordinary people’. On the other hand, public service media also brings thenational culture, language, and values that populist parties repeatedly identify themselves with.This paper aims to shed new light on populist party views on public service media by comparingthe standpoints of the populist right wing parties in Northern Europe (Denmark, Norway, andSweden) and Southern Europe (France., Italy, and Spain) during the period 2018-2022. Partycommunication on the topic is analyzed through qualitative text analyses using three basic sourcesin both regions: news media content, parliamentary debates and documents, and party congressmaterial. The comparison between polarized pluralist and democratic corporatist countries alsoallows for the analysis of possible media system importance for understanding populismstandpoints on public service media (Hallin & Mancini, 2004).Theoretically, this paper adheres to previous research traditions to study the role of ideas inexplaining media policy. In contrast to traditional interests and institutional approaches whereregulations are perceived as results of group self-interests, structures and social processes, theforce-of-idea perspective focuses on actors’ normative beliefs and cognitive understandings ofcausal relationships. It has been argued that the roles of ideas should be more emphasized andintegrated in interest and institutional approaches when explaining media policy positions (Künzler,2012). As populist parties have gained political importance and become more influential in manycountries in Europe, policy implementation in distinctive areas is also highly relevant to analyze.Media policy is one such area and this comparative study intends to offer new insights aboutmotives and driving forces behind the formulation of ideological populist right wing parties’positions in relation to public service media.