Kristoffer Holt

Age and the effects of news media attention and social media use on political interest and participation : Do social media function as leveller?

This article investigates how media use differs across age groups- and whether this matters for people’s inclination to participate politically. More specifically, the study investigates the impact of social media use for political purposes and of attention to political news in traditional media, on political interest and offline political participation. The findings, based on a four-wave panel study conducted during the 2010 Swedish national election campaign, show (1) clear differences in media use between age groups and (2) that both political social media use and attention to political news in traditional media increase political engagement over time. Thus, this study suggests that frequent social media use among young citizens can function as a leveller in terms of motivating political participation.

Is Anyone out There? : Assessing Swedish citizen-generated community journalism

In this study, situated in Sweden, citizen community journalism in 290 municipalities is evaluated. The results reveal that there are very few cases of citizen journalism at a community level, and that the existing citizen journalists focus on business news, entertainment and sports. When sources are used, they are few and originate from social institutions such as business, media, authorities and politics rather than citizens. Furthermore, there are only a few occasions when local authorities are included at all, even less so scrutinised, in the news stories. All in all, the study indicates that Swedish citizen community journalism has trouble either providing information that maintains the community or being the watchdog of that community.

Edited participation comparing editorial influence on traditional and participatory online newspapers in Sweden

Abstract Although participatory journalism involves publishing content created by users, editorial influence is an important aspect of participatory online media. Editors shape the conditions under which user generated content is produced, the context of publication and the perceived prominence of the content. It is still unclear how this influence manifests itself, and how it can be related to the discussion about participatory media’s potential for revitalising democracy. In this paper, three online news media in Sweden are analysed comparatively: Sourze – the first Swedish participatory newspaper; Newsmill – a social media focusing on news and debate; and DN – the online version of the largest Swedish morning paper Dagens Nyheter. The question is how participation is affected by editorial influence. The findings suggest that participatory arenas are constrained by the logic of their context of production. People from different categories in society participate on different terms. Furthermore, editors influence the agenda by suggesting topics, and by rewarding articles that follow their suggestions. These findings do not challenge assumptions about participatory newspapers as more accessible channels for citizens and therefore interesting as possible means of allowing a more democratically involved citizenry, but it challenges assumptions about freedom from constraints related to traditional mass media, such as agenda setting, gate-keeping and media logic.

“Random acts of journalism?”: How citizen journalists tell the news in Sweden

In this study, the results from a content analysis of four Swedish online citizen journalism outlets are presented and discussed. The analysis focuses on new digital venues for news-making in theory and the question of the political relevance of citizen journalism in reality. This broad question is operationalized by asking more specifically how citizen journalists tell the news, according to established distinctions between variations in topic dimensions, focus, and presentational style. Our results show that citizen journalists tend to tell soft news. They rarely report on policy issues, local authorities, or people affected by decisions being made by them. Furthermore, the news focuses on individual relevance and is mostly episodic in nature. The style of writing is predominantly impersonal and unemotional. In sum, our results suggest that citizen journalism in Sweden is not yet at a stage where it can be considered a plausible alternative to traditional journalism.

Authentic Journalism? A Critical Discussion about Existential Authenticity in Journalism Ethics

Authenticity as an ideal is construed in general as an expression of existentialist unhappiness with the perceived dehumanization of man in modern society. Existential journalism can be seen as rejection of the demands of conformism and compromise of personal convictions that many journalists face. Ethically, existential journalism calls on journalists to live authentic lives, as private individuals as well as in their profession. This means to resist external pressures and to choose to follow a path that can be defended by the individual journalists inner conscience. Existential journalism, in general, has been more debated in the field of mass media ethics than authenticity. Authenticity is, however, a contested concept, and this essay applies a critical discussion about authenticity as an ethical guide to the field of journalism. Weaknesses in the idea of existential authenticity problematize the existential construal of authenticity as a route to heightened ethical awareness for contemporary journalists.

Gunn Enli: Mediated Authenticity. How the Media Constructs Reality

In this ambitious study of French crime fiction, spanning 1860’s feuilletons through to twenty-first century cyberpunk, Andrea Goulet groups close readings of an impressive range of novels into “Archaeologies,” emphasising the “vertical” contrast between subterranean crime and surface order, and “Cartographies,” focusing on “horizontal” phenomena such as maps, grids, and locked rooms. These sections are separated by an intervening chapter, appropriately entitled “Intersections,” in which the titular addresses of “street-name mysteries” emerge as sites where the “horizontal” and the “vertical,” along with a number of other apparently antithetical pairings (present/past, real/imaginary and private/public), can be seen to coincide. “Archaeologies” begins with an examination of “catacomb fictions” such as Berthet’s Les catacombes de Paris, which exemplify the influence of Cuvierian catastrophism on Second Empire feuilletons. Cuvier’s influence persists in the scenes of cataclysmic flooding that punctuate later serials. A subsequent chapter looks at cliffside settings as “sites of intersection between national historiography and paleontological discourse.” Goulet compares Leroux’s Le parfum de la dame en noir and Leblanc’s La Comtesse de Cagliostro, before turning to Leroux’s Balaoo, in which spatial logic is overlaid with evolutionary discourse; our ongoing troubled sense of difference from the “other” (criminal? terrorist?) is examined through a lens of paleontological discovery. Analyses of Japrisot’s Un long dimanche de fiançailles and of several Vargas novels follow. Goulet draws fruitfully on Abraham and Torok’s notion of the “transgenerational phantom” to evoke “a gradual internalization or psychologization of subterranean space.” The “Cartographies” section opens with a chapter on the cartographic mystery inaugurated by Gaboriau. The rationalist project of the map, especially in Leroux, struggles to offset “the ragged realities of space, time and crime.” Specific map features are shown to have theoretical implications beyond their sociological accuracy. The terrain vague, for example, evokes the marginalisation of the criminal class under the Second Empire, but also invites a post-structuralist reading (terrain vague as blank page). This nascent self-reflexivity is accentuated via the “playfully subversive spatiality” of Malet’s Nouveaux mystères de Paris and Butor’s L’emploi du temps, experimental crime novels whose maps interact with their textual fabric, thus destabilising anew the order sought by Lecoq and Rouletabille. A final chapter considers Dantec’s La sirène rouge and Radoman’s Ballade d’un Yougo. Here, the Balkans become a “shadow-space” whose violent cartographic fragmentation threatens Western European social space and French identity in particular. Goulet leaves us in no doubt that French crime fiction is complex terrain. The characteristic anfractuosities of the genre could easily have been obscured by an unduly simplistic chronological structure, but Goulet embraces the all-important spatial dimension, as well as demonstrates, with great conviction, the imprint of shifting scientific paradigms. The equation of a final novel, Dantec’s Babylon Babies, to a sort of literary Big Bang, “bursting out of national, individual, and generic boundaries while reflecting on the traces of the policier genre,” serves to crystallise the spatial, temporal, and scientific premises of the volume, confirming both the aptness of the approach adopted here and the scope for further research in this field. AMy WIGELSWoRTH Sheffield Hallam University, UK