Mid Sweden University

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. 

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.