Anker Brink Lund

Cross‐National versus Individual‐Level Differences in Political Information: A Media Systems Perspective

Abstract We propose a context‐dependent approach to the study of political information. Combining a content analysis of broadcast news with a national survey measuring public awareness of various events, issues, and individuals in the news, we show that properties of national media systems influence both the supply of news and citizens’ awareness of events in the news. Public service‐oriented media systems deliver hard news more frequently than market‐based systems. It follows that for citizens living under public service regimes, the opportunity costs of exposure to hard news are significantly lowered. Lowered costs allow less interested citizens to acquire political knowledge. Our analyses demonstrate that the knowledge gap between the more and less interested is widest in the US and smallest in Scandinavia.

Cues to action in the process of changing lifestyle

This research has been carried out in order to evaluate cues to action in health behavior. Which cues produce changes and how does the process of change proceed? In-depth qualitative interviews based on the Grounded Theory Method were made with 21 40-year-old men. Ten men were interviewed three times during a 1-year period to trace the process of change. In total 40 interviews were carried out during 1989-1990. All the interviewees were randomly selected from the population registers in the municipalities of Aarhus and Vejle. The main themes of the interviews are changes in previous health behavior, motivation for intentions to change in health behavior, and the role of health education in the process of change. Health behavior determinants seem to be knowledge, attitude, confidence, social influence, experiences and possibilities for change. Individuals typically exhibit a wide range of these determinants which makes it difficult to affect behavioral change through health education. Cues to action seem to arise from social influence, experiences, or underlying shifts in the possibilities of change. Experiences and social influence due to the health behavior in question seem to initiate changes in confidence, attitude and thereby motivation to change. Cues to action arising from these determinants are categorized as own illness or illness among friends and relatives, changes in self-perception, exceeded limits determined by the behavior in question, and social pressure. Shifts in the possibilities for change, such as change of partner or other life events, produce changes also affecting health behavior. A strategy to initiate changes in health behavior could be to create cues to action through personal experiences in the context of a specific health behavior or to establish contact to people when they are experiencing new life circumstances.

Denmark, Sweden and Norway Television Diversity by Duopolistic Competition and Co-Regulation

The demonopolization of public service radio and television in Europe has brought about tougher competition in market terms. This, in turn, has made the conduct of broadcasters more businesslike. Public regulators, therefore, have attempted to secure programme diversity at a higher level than would be the case under strict commercial conditions. In Scandinavia, one important way of doing this has been to license hybrid channels that, while being financed by advertising, are at the same time acting under public service obligations with nationwide, terrestrial must-carry privileges. The authors evaluate these regulatory measures on data from Norway, Sweden and Denmark in terms of audience share and open and reflexive diversity, and conclude that the Scandinavian way of conducting co-regulation could serve as an inspiration to regulators around the world — especially in EU member states.

The Backpack Function of Health Education Use of Knowledge Types Concerning Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease

How do people make use of health education materials? In this article, the authors distinguish between four different types of knowledge concerning health: theoretical knowledge about causes of illness, applied knowledge about how to lead a healtheir everyday life, experiential knowledge about the consequences of action, and intuitive subconscious knowledge about what one ought to do. The article suggests that knowledge has a backpack function, that is, that health education has an indirect effect on changes in lifestyle through the filling of the knowledge backpack, with which new experiences and information are then compared.

A Stakeholder Approach to Media Governance

Historically, government regulation has significantly impacted the room for manoeuvre enjoyed by media managers, especially in public service media but increasingly also in privately owned firms. Currently stakeholders of many different kinds attempt to influence media industries, using a number of manipulative techniques that include censorship, subsidies and sometimes bribery as well as collective action undertaken by lobbies and nongovernment organisations (e.g. citizen interest groups). This chapter discusses the core aspects of media regulation from a European perspective because this part of the world arguably features the most complex and continuous development in these aspects. Our particular interest investigates media governance, which is not understood as an external given but considered as a premise of strategic management. It is argued that to secure an appropriate remit for an industry or firm to that guarantees a longer-term licence to operate, media managers must engage different audiences and authorities in relation to restrictive as well as prescriptive regulation. Achieving that requires approaching media governance from a stakeholder perspective, which inherently involves a broad variety of actors who can influence, and in turn may be influenced by, media operators and operations—private as well as public service based.

Financing Public Service Broadcasting: A Comparative Perspective

AbstractRecently several European countries have abolished the traditional public service licence fee system, replacing it with direct public funding. But except for Iceland, the Nordic countries have not followed suit. The article discusses this development within a comparative framework of Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) financing regimes in Europe, concluding that Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden may still be considered conventional, licence fee PSB countries, but with some interesting differences in relation to competitive and market oriented alternatives of resource provision.Abstract Recently several European countries have abolished the traditional public service licence fee system, replacing it with direct public funding. But except for Iceland, the Nordic countries have not followed suit. The article discusses this development within a comparative framework of Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) financing regimes in Europe, concluding that Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden may still be considered conventional, licence fee PSB countries, but with some interesting differences in relation to competitive and market oriented alternatives of resource provision.

Ambivalent Views on Political News

Department of Journalism, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, abl@journalism.sdu.dk Political decision making and the production of news are interdependent social processes in representative democracies. Ideally, news media and political institutions are supposed to provide checks and balances placing public opinion at the very core of policymaking (Cook, 1998; Schudson, 1996). For several decades, however, critical media research has warned against news media serving as powerful tools for propaganda (e.g. Lippmann, 1922/1998; Fallows, 1996) and potential threats to communicative constitution of public opinion (e.g. Habermas, 1962/1989; Thompson, 1995). The crucial question behind these warnings has traditionally been to determine who actually set the political agenda (Rogers & Dearing, 1987). In spite of major research efforts in this area, scholars are at odds as to how opinion-formation actually takes place. In a Scandinavian context substantial government grants have recently enabled researchers to take a closer look at the complicated interplay between mass media and representative democracy. Norway was first in this area conduction the so called Maktutredningen (Investigation of Power) by the end of the 1970s (Hoyer et al. 1982). Sweden followed ten years later (Petersson & Carlberg, 1990), and after another decade Denmark is conducting a similar effort. This time not only in order to discus how the press, radio and television exercises power related to the political system, but also what journalist and other political stakeholders should do in this respect (Lund, 2002). In telephone interviews with a representative sample of Danes, 17 years and older, 867 persons were polled as to their views on news media and democracy. In two adjunct studies, carried out in the same period (May 2001), identical questions were put to 811 journalists and 409 policymakers (holders of elected office and top-level officials in administrative institutions and articulate non-governmental organizations). In this article, we shall highlight principal points of agreement and contrast in the three surveys, focusing on views concerning political news and the role of journalism in a representative democracy.

International Language Monism and Homogenisation of Journalism

Abstract Different languages representing diff erent frameworks of thought and perspectives on reality also carry diff erent frameworks of thought on journalism and on how the profession may contribute to democracy. A shortcut to understanding varieties of journalism may be provided by the study of different understandings of journalistic key notions in different languages, by comparing two varieties of journalism – the “reporter” and the “publicist” tradition – in English and German. The current homogenisation of journalism, using the Anglo-American reporter traditions as the model, strengthened by the simultaneous move towards English as the international language, may be seen as a loss of diversity in journalism and even a threat to democratic diversity in Europe. An increased stress on language understanding and conceptual hygiene in the education of journalists is proposed to maintain diversity.

Teknologivurdering gennem katalyse og behov

Forsog med ny informationsteknologi kan have som formal at finde anvendelsesmuligheder for teknologien, eller de kan have som formal at finde informationsteknologiske losninger pa hidtil uopfyldte behov. Det sidste har vaeret formalet med et projekt inden for sundhedssektoren, hjemmeplejen, som Jette Moller Christensen og Anker Brink Lund beskriver i denne artikel. Centralt i projektet star fremtidsvaerkstedet, som et godt bud pa, hvorledes en brugerorienteret teknologivurdering kan gribes an.