Mark Blach-Ørsten

The news media as a political institution : A Scandinavian perspective

On the basis of Scandinavian journalism research this article discusses the changing political roles of news organizations and journalists after the fall of the party press and the dissolution of broadcasting as a state-controlled monopoly. Given these institutional changes, we ask the following: what new roles, if any, are news organizations and journalists playing in the political system? What are the characteristics of these new roles, and how do news organizations use their newfound political power? We address these questions in the context of an institutional approach to the news coupled with Hallin and Mancinis analysis of media systems.

From hybrid media system to hybrid-media politicians: Danish politicians and their cross-media presence in the 2015 national election campaign

ABSTRACT An increasingly complex hybrid system of social and traditional news media surrounds Nordic election campaigns as politically experienced incumbents favor traditional news media and younger, lesser known candidates’ social media. Despite little evidence for hybrid-media politicians, politicians’ media use is changing rapidly; 15%–16% of Danish candidates used Twitter in 2011 but 68% in 2015. In this large-sample content analysis, party leaders have high traditional news media and low Twitter presence, and younger candidates vice versa, but some politicians have high presence in both. Hybrid-media politicians are younger than the average Danish Parliament member, represent various parties, and likely come from the greater Copenhagen area.

News Media and the Öresund Region

Abstract This article presents a first attempt to investigate the news content and news routines of Danish and Swedish news media covering the Öresund region. From a theoretical perspective, the Öresund region can be considered a possible best-case example of what is categorised as horizontal Europeanisation, in other words, of the potential for increased communication linkages in news media content among European Union (EU) member states. We investigate this topic by analysing news content published by selected media outlets from 2002 to 2012 and by interviewing Danish and Swedish journalists who cover the region. We find that most news content does not mention the Öresund region, and that one reason for this lack might be that neither Danish nor Swedish reporters consider the region to be newsworthy.

PR, Lobbyism and Democracy: Mapping the revolving door in Denmark from 1981 to 2015

Abstract The growth of PR in Scandinavia is linked both to the mediatisation of politics and to the decline of corporatism. Studies in Sweden and Norway suggest that one consequence of these changes is the increasing number of politicians who find new careers as lobbyists in the private sector. In this study, we have constructed a data set of all members of the Danish Parliament who have left politics from 1981 to 2015 (n = 613) and identified the number and type of job positions they have taken up subsequently (n = 1,094). We find that, especially from the 1990s, we can register revolving door activity. Still, 89 per cent of all the registered job positions fall outside of lobbyism. 11 per cent of the job positions fall within the wider field associated with the emerging field of policy professionals (including lobbyism), while lobbyism on its own accounts for two per cent of the job positions.