The functions of buzzwords: A comparison of ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘telematics’

It is a key task for media research to uncover the assumptions underpinning fashion terms like buzzwords, and to show their functions in business, political debate and social life. In this article, we ask which purposes media buzzwords serve, and for whom. We also question the presumed newness of buzzwords. By critically addressing two corresponding terms — ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘telematics’ — we argue that a media buzzword serves three important functions: it simplifies a complex field, promotes a phenomenon as something new, and legitimates strategies and actions. Thus, a media buzzword can be used rhetorically to define a discursive frame for new media developments. Further, we argue, even though media buzzwords bring forward a promise of something new, the use of such buzzwords is not new

The Media Welfare State

The Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Digital Age is the first theoretically-driven book to comprehensively address the central dynamics of the digitalization of the media industry in the Nordic countries – Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland – and the ways media organizations there are transforming to address the new digital environment. The authors address Nordic media-industry structure and content from the standpoint of scholarly perspectives on global, regional and local approaches to media development. Taking a comparative approach, they provide an overview of media institutions and policy throughout the region, focusing on the impact of Information and Communication Technology/Internet and digitalization on the Nordic media sector. As illustrations, the authors draw on a wide range of cases, including developments in media forms such as television, radio, the press and the public service media institution