From Wanderers to Strangers. The shifting space of Scandinavian immigration debate 1970–2016

Postponed access: the file will be accessible after 2021-12-18The media coverage of immigration serves as an important test for modern democracies’ ability to handle difficult public issues. Systematic and comparative studies over longer time periods are, however, still rare. This is deeply unfortunate as the nature of both immigration and the press systems vary considerably not only across nations but also over time. This article charts the immigration debate in seven Scandinavian newspapers from the birth of modern immigration in the early seventies to the present-day situation. While supporting claims about a general historical shift towards a more problematizing and cultural discourse in Scandinavia, the analysis also identifies major differences in how countries, publications, and genres have handled this complex issue, which brings out fundamental dilemmas for both modern welfare states and journalists. Using the method of multiple correspondence analysis and subsequent cluster analysis, the article also demonstrates how historical press coverage can be fruitfully studied using Geometric Data Analysis as an alternative to frequentist methods.publishedVersio

Populism in Scandinavian Immigration Discourse 1970–2016

This article measures and discusses populism in Scandinavian immigration debate from 1970 to 2016. Using descriptive statistical analysis and logistical regression analysis, we analyze items related to immigration in six newspapers from the three countries over four constructed weeks for each of the 47 years under study, in total 4,329 coded newspaper articles. We find that populism spikes when immigration spikes due to international developments/crises. References to “the people,” anti-elitism, exclusionist rhetoric, but also alarmist rhetoric about a state of emergency, are the most frequently appearing attributes. Second, country, newspaper genre, and party type of quoted politicians are clearly correlated with populism. Populism is much more likely to be found in Denmark, opinion genres, paticularly letters to the editor, when populist radical-right parties are either speaking or spoken about in the press, and in articles with threat frames.publishedVersio

The Immigration Issue and the vox Populi: Letters to the Editor in six Scandinavian Newspapers 1970–2016

Letters to the editor are argued to be a staple of the public sphere and, by providing regular citizens with a platform to voice their concerns to a large audience, a central democratic function of a liberal press. However, the actual weight given by the press to citizens’ deliberation on issues and the contribution of these letters in terms of content is still little researched, and historical and comparative studies are largely absent. In this article we offer a case study of letters on the immigration issue in six Scandinavian newspapers (N = 1065). Charting their volume and content using content analysis and comparing them to the more elite-dominated columns and regular news items (N = 3264), we identify major historical and national variations in the salience of the issue and the weight given the vox populi in the press. Constructing a discursive space of immigration letters using multiple correspondence analysis and subsequent clustering into seven categories of letters, we identify a historical movement towards more problematizing and cultural discourse, strongest in the Danish newspapers. We also identify Sweden as a particularly interesting case, with fewer letters and less difference between letters and other newspaper content, for which we suggest some hypotheses.publishedVersio

Class and everyday media use: A case study from Norway

In this article, we consider how contemporary media use is structured by social class, following the theoretical and methodical framework derived from Bourdieu's book Distinction, published in 1984, with a detailed study of everyday use of media platforms, brands, and content among Norwegian citizens (N = 2,064). First, we analyse how such media use varies in the overall social space using multiple correspondence analysis. Second, we independently explore the main differences and groupings of media practices, combining multifactor analysis and cluster analysis. While identifying important gender and generational differences, this study clearly shows how media use inside both younger and older generations are marked by class differences, which we argue demonstrates the fundamental and continuing importance of class for understanding mediated lifestyles.publishedVersio

The Norwegian journalism education landscape

Journalism is one of the most popular study programmes in Norway. There are several pathways into the Norwegian news industry for young people seeking a career in journalism, but it is increasingly common for aspiring journalists to start off with a journalism education. In this article the landscapeof Norwegian journalism education is presented, including a closer look at the content of the studies, the connection to the industry and the students of journalism themselves. The description of the students is based on a dataset from a series of questionnaires administered between 2000 and 2004 to three complete cohorts of Norwegian journalism students at Oslo University College and Volda University College, the largest and oldest J-schools in Norway. Norwegian journalism education can be described as working quite well as measured by both the students’ success in the job market and their expressed satisfaction with their studies. The fact that the application rate for several years has been among the very highest compared with other university programmes also validates this point. Keywords: Norway, journalism education, relation between industry and j-schools. p

Operationalizing exposure diversity

The concept of exposure diversity, the diversity of information that people actually access and use, has recently gained prominence in media policy debates. This aspect of media diversity, however, remains difficult to define, measure or implement in actual policy. In this article, we propose an empirical approach that operationalizes exposure diversity in terms of news and current affairs providers in the media repertoire of different social groups. This can be studied through cluster analysis of survey data on respondents? combinations of use of different media providers and outlets. The article first discusses exposure diversity as a media policy aim. We then outline our proposal on how to take the debate a step further through empirical analysis of media repertoires, with an illustration of how such an analysis may be conducted using survey data from Norway.Peer reviewe

Introduction : The Nordic Model of Journalism Education

Introduction to the publication Becoming a journalist.Peer reviewe

Identity, Empathy and Argument: Immigrants in Culture and Entertainment Journalism in the Scandinavian Press

Cultural and entertainment journalism deals with aesthetic experiences, advice on cultural consumption, as well as reflection and debate on ethical and moral humanistic issues. Does this sub-field of journalism systematically represent immigrants and integration differently than the other news and commentary articles? Comparing immigration discourse in a representative sample of six Scandinavian newspapers between 1970 and 2016 using content analysis we find that cultural journalism, while clearly reverbing with the dominant national issues at the time, did provide alternative perspectives. It not only brought up themes like racism, multiculturalism, national identity and religion more often, but was also more positive, more gender-balanced and more often gave a voice to immigrants than other news did. A closer qualitative reading further suggests a typology of ten main story-types, varying relatively little over time and across national borders. Cultural journalism in this case illustrates how the cultural public sphere can positively contribute to the debate of complicated issues in the public sphere by offering resources for identification, empathy and arguments for specific points of view.publishedVersio