The Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Digital Era comprehensively addresses 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. Taking a comparative approach, the authors provide an overview of media institutions, content, use, and policy throughout the region, focusing on the impact of information and communication technology/internet and digitalization on the Nordic media sector. Illustrating the shifting media landscape the authors draw on a wide range of cases, including developments in the press, television, the public service media institutions, and telecommunication.
Digital platforms such as Google, Facebook and Netflix have caused a watershed moment not only for markets and businesses but also for media policy. Concerns about the US-based digital platforms’ ...impact on national media markets have grown among European media businesses as well as policy makers. Media policy research argues that small media markets are particularly vulnerable to global players and foreign influence, but that market size must be understood also in the context of political traditions. This article investigates how digital platforms influence media policy for private media businesses in the small media systems of Norway and Flanders. Drawing on 20 qualitative interviews with CEOs and top-level media managers in these two small media markets, we ask what private media businesses expect from policy makers in light of the intensified competition from digital platforms, what experience they have with cooperating with policy makers and what explains the differences between Norway and Flanders. A key finding is that the managers in both markets want policy makers to regulate digital platforms to secure level playing field, and that the Norwegian respondents had more positive experiences with co-regulation and expressed more trust in policy makers and policy instruments, compared to the Flemish. Despite the global players and the need for transnational solutions, regional variations in policy making still matters, and might inform the discussion about how to regulate the digital platforms.
A fascination for the authentic is pervasive in contemporary culture. This article discusses texts recommending digital detox and how these accentuate dilemmas of what it means to be authentically ...human in the age of constant connectivity. Digital detox can be defined as a periodic disconnection from social or online media, or strategies to reduce digital media involvement. Digital detox stands in a long tradition of media resistance and resistance to new communication technologies, and non-use of media, but advocates balance and awareness more than permanent disconnection. Drawing on the analysis of 20 texts promoting digital detox: self-help literature, memoirs and corporate websites, the article discusses how problems with digital media are defined and recommended strategies to handle them. The analysis is structured around three dominant themes emerging in the material: descriptions of temporal overload and 24/7 connectivity, experiences of spatial intrusion and loss of contact with ‘real life’ and descriptions of damage to body and mind. A second research topic concerns how arguments for digital detox can be understood within a wider cultural and political context. Here, we argue that digital detox texts illuminate the rise of a self-regulation society, where individuals are expected to take personal responsibility for balancing risks and pressures, as well as representing a form of commodification of authenticity and nostalgia.
Most studies approach digital disconnection from an individualistic perspective, while this article explores organised efforts to facilitate digital detox experiences. The aim is to contribute a ...nuanced understanding of how offline initiatives are framed and the complex relationship between individual and collective action. The study is based on qualitative interviews with ten organisers representing different initiatives and supplementary material from mass and digital media. The analysis shows how actions are triggered by personal experiences and respond to specific concerns within domains such as work and education, tourism and leisure, arts, culture and religion. Yet, the initiatives also invoke overlapping moral evaluations. The study reveals a joint scepticism concerning the lack of industry responsibility and little faith in regulatory solutions to the problem of intrusive media. Furthermore, the study discusses digital detox initiatives as an ambiguous form of contemporary activism, spanning from self-help to corporate action. The initiatives are not connected, but participants perceive their actions as part of an emerging trend. Nevertheless, few initiatives contribute to an interpretation of disconnection initiatives as anything more than unique experiences. The article contributes to the extant literature by showing how the meaning of disconnection evolves both in local settings and in dialogue with broader concerns in the public sphere.
There is an emerging range of self-help guides advising users on how to minimise their interaction with media. The aim is to create a lifestyle and identity that is less media-centred and more ...grounded in “real life”. This article discusses media self-help in the light of theories of media domestication, highlighting processes where the aim is to reduce the importance of, rather than to incorporate, media and communication technology into users’ lives. Based on a sample of 30 guides from the self-help site
dealing with how to handle television, games and social media respectively, the article discusses media self-help strategies in relation to key concepts of domestication theory: appropriation, objectification, incorporation and conversion. In conclusion, the article argues that strategies of withdrawal and resistance should receive more attention in media studies, and point to the concept of
as one way of highlighting such strategies.
This article discusses the impact of convergence and digital intermediaries for television as a medium, industry and political and cultural institution. There is currently widespread debate about the ...future of television and the impact of technological and market changes. Our argument is that the answer to what is happening to television cannot be adequately addressed on a general level; local and contextual factors are still important, and so is the position and strategic response of existing television institutions in each national context. Based on analyses of political documents, statistics, audience research and media coverage, as well as secondary literature, the article explores the current situation for Norwegian television and point to four contexts that each plays a part in constraining and enabling existing television operators: the European context, the public service context, the welfare state context and the media ecosystem context.
In 2014, Syvertsen, Enli, Mjøs, and Moe authored
to explore the specificities of Nordic media and the analogy between welfare state and media structures. In this short article, we point to how ...selected works challenge or extend the notions of a media welfare state beyond the original analysis. We begin by placing the work in a tradition of comparative and typology-generating scholarship and point to parallel works emerging at the same time. We then highlight others’ contributions in order to identify tendencies in Nordic media and research. In conclusion, we use examples from current research to argue that changes in the media system may be studied from both the angle of changing media policies and that of changing welfare states.
Digitalisation is a major transformative factor in tourism, yet studies show that holidaymakers are ambivalent about smartphone and Internet use. This study explores screen and digital ambivalence in ...nature-based tourism in and around the huts and routes of the Norwegian Trekking Association. While digital ambivalence describes ambiguous sentiments over being constantly connected, screen ambivalence covers mixed feelings regarding the presence of smartphones and screens. Methodologically, this qualitative study combined observations at 3 offline sites with an analysis of 30 field dialogues. The study found that hikers were highly aware of the positive and negative functions of digital media. Offline tourism may intensify the experience of taking a break, realising what tourists perceive to be the true nature of friluftsliv outdoor life, heighten the sense of adventure and self-reliance. However, tensions concerning safety, missing social communication, and obstacles to posting on social media were also evident. This study contributes to the limited research on digital disconnection and offers new insights into the experiential qualities of offline holidays. Few studies have mapped tourist experiences in specific offline sites, and this study contributes to nature-based tourism research by showing how local norms mitigate tensions and nudge hikers towards positive interpretations of being digital-free.
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