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In this introductory article, we discuss the rise of the “classical” theories of propaganda, starting with an historical exposé of the concept, which traces its roots and trajectory through the field of academic analysis. Propaganda is then discussed in relation to other adjacent concepts such as soft power, public diplomacy, nation branding, fake news, and so on. In a third section, the concept of propaganda is discussed in relation to the present datafied world, marked by various forms of crises – of democracy and of the environment, for example. In the last section, the articles included in this themed issue are presented and related to the preceding historical and conceptual discussion.

Media events, Dayan and Katz argue, compose a narrative genre that follows specific structural principles and narrative tropes and that works toward societal integration. However, a specific subset of media events is labelled transformative, and these work towards societal change. In this article, we point to an unresolved tension between transformative events and what has subsequently been introduced as disruptive events. Our discussion builds on research on the developments in post-Soviet Ukraine, and we analyse, firstly, the transformative and disruptive relations related to the so-called Euromaidan Revolution, and secondly, how these events can be placed in a wider narrative of three Ukrainian revolutions. Our analysis concludes that narrative analysis can help explain the ways in which these events are understood by broader international audiences.

This article compares surveillance-related experiences and attitudes of two generations of media users in countries with different historical surveillance regimes (Estonia, Portugal, and Sweden) and analyzes the predictors of the attitudes toward contemporary surveillance. A large-scale online survey (N = 3221) reveals that attitudes toward online state and corporate surveillance are interrelated; the two attitudinal components are, however, generation-specific, having different predictors. Tolerance toward state surveillance is more characteristic of the older group, being predicted by trustful and obedient attitudes toward state authorities and institutions. Tolerance toward corporate dataveillance is more characteristic of the younger group, being predicted by active and self-confident media use. While the socio-historical context molds the intergenerational gaps in surveillance-related experiences and attitudes, individual-level experiences of state surveillance do not predict tolerance toward either type of contemporary surveillance, suggesting that global techno-cultural developments are probably more powerful factors than past experiences in forming generation-specific attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ways in which what we call the analogue and the datafied mindsets perceive the functioning of the datafied world. Based on a qualitative interview study of two generations of media users in Estonia, Portugal, and Sweden, we present and analyze underlying patterns in participants' media attitudes and related practices. We show that belonging to a media generation does not always produce a homogeneous mindset or a uniform attitude toward media technologies. These mindsets, being ideal-typical constructs, are not bound to individuals: the same person can display features of the analogue and the datafied mindset in relation to different parts of the datafied world. One mindset does not replace the other but rather adds another layer to the social action of the individuals. The mindsets are multi-dimensional and molded by contrasting understandings, indicating that the tenacious structures of the analogue world linger on in the datafied social space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many research projects were forced to adapt their design and conduct interviews online. This paper discusses the benefits and challenges of using online focus groups with participants representing different generations and cultural and social backgrounds. Based on the researchers' experiences and field notes from a three-country comparative project, aiming at analysing the extent to which previous experience of state surveillance impacted attitudes to commercial monitoring and tracking of online behaviour among two generational cohorts, the paper identifies seven aspects where the move from offline to online interviewing interfered with the original research design. The paper suggests that most of these interferences resulted in a need to adjust the methodology to better fit the online setting. We reflect critically upon the issues of technological preconditions and digital skills, recruitment, group size, degrees of previous acquaintance, the role of the interviewer, participants' household status and media environment, and ethical considerations concerning privacy and data management. Based on these methodological insights, we conclude that future online focus group research would benefit from using smaller groups and adjusted moderation, flexibility in interviewing tools and channels, and new, online-specific ethical considerations when planning, executing, and analysing interviews. The paper advocates the complementarity between in-person and online focus groups as two modalities of data collection and argues for the normalization of hybrid methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the relations between mediatisation and datafication, and how the process of datafication has integrated several diverse value forms in complex interrelations. The first section outlines the rise of datafication in the wake of the technological development of digitisation in combination with new business models of the media and communications industries, leading to a tighter integration between these and other sectors of society. The second accounts for how this development paves way for certain specific value forms that result from this integrative process, and how the interrelation between value forms introduces a shift in the valuation processes of late modern data capitalism, where the social takes a prominent position. The final section discusses the relationship between datafication and mediatisation. The argument is that although datafication introduces a new phase in the mediatisation process, the former also extends beyond the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the production of live television formats, as they have developed in Europe during the past decade. The analytical examples are taken from entertainment as well as factual television, and from public service as well as commercial contexts. In the article, it is argued that there has been an approximation between the textual features and generic and narrative structures of entertainment and factual live television, and a model is presented that is supposed to account for these narrative patterns.

In the formation of the modern nation state and the social imaginary of nationalism in the nineteenth century, the media and representational practices have, among most scholars, been ascribed a prominent position. The question is, however, how have changes in media technologies, from mass media to digital and interactive personal media, impacted on the national imaginaries over the past few decades? This article discusses what happens with the social imaginaries when national(ist) symbols are reproduced through the medium of PowerPoint, as one of the main tools for constructing images of the nation in nation-branding campaigns, i.e. promotional campaigns initiated by governments in conjunction with corporate actors with the aim of producing an attractive image of a country for foreign investors and tourists. It is concluded that the representational technology of PowerPoint produces a nation as an imagined commodity rather than an imagined community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for an expansion of existing studies on the meaning of metrics in digital environments by evaluating a methodology tested in a pilot study to analyse audience responses to metrics of social media profiles. The pilot study used the software tool Facebook Demetricator by artist Ben Grosser in combination with follow-up interviews. In line with Grosser's intentions, the software indeed provoked reflection among the users. In this article, we reflect on three kinds of disorientations that users expressed, linked to temporality, sociality and value. Relating these to the history of audience measurement in mass media, we argue that there is merit in using this methodology for further analysis of continuities in audience responses to metrics, in order to better understand the ways in which metrics work to create the 'audience commodity'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A classic epistemological problem in the social sciences is how to analyse and understand social change. In media and communication studies, for example, the concept of mediatisation has sparked off such a debate, since one of the main criticisms against the approach is that researchers rather take change for granted without being able to empirically establish if and how change has occurred. In this article is suggested a model for analysing social change through an analysis of how generational identity as "we-sense" is produced in narratives about media use. The empirical basis for the discussion is picked from a recently finished project on media generations in Sweden and Estonia, building on foremost qualitative material. The article concludes with accounting for the merits of using a generational perspective for analysing social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1990s, nation branding has attracted a lot of attention from academics, professional consultants and government actors. The ideas and practices of nation branding are frequently presented by branding advocates as necessary and even inevitable in the light of changing dynamics of political power and influence in a globalised and media-saturated world. In this context, some have argued that nation branding is a way to reduce international conflict and supplant ethno-nationalism with a new form of market-based, national image management. However, a growing body of critical studies has documented that branding campaigns tend to produce ahistorical and exclusionary representations of the nation and advance a form of ‘commercial nationalism’ that is problematic. Importantly, the critical scholarship on nation branding has relied primarily on sociological and anthropological theories of nationhood, identities and markets. By contrast, the role of the media – as institutions, systems and societal storytellers – has been undertheorised in relation to nation branding. The majority of the existing literature tends to treat the media as ‘neutral’ vehicles for the delivery of branding messages to various audiences. This is the guest editors’ introduction to the Special Issue ‘Theorizing Media in Nation Branding’, which seeks to problematise this overly simplistic view of ‘the media’ and aims to articulate the various ways in which specific media are an integral part of nation branding. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach and problematises both the enabling and the inhibiting potentialities of different types of media as they perpetuate nation branding ideas, images, ideologies, discourses and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the role of media and communications in contributing to social progress, as elaborated in a landmark international project – the International Panel on Social Progress. First, it analyses how media and digital platforms have contributed to global inequality by examining media access and infrastructure across world regions. Second, it looks at media governance and the different mechanisms of corporatized control over media platforms, algorithms and content. Third, the article examines how the democratization of media is a key element in the struggle for social justice. It argues that effective media access – in terms of distribution of media resources, even relations between spaces of connection and the design and operation of spaces that foster dialogue, free speech and respectful cultural exchange – is a core component of social progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the spread of digital media, the interdisciplinary field of surveillance studies has gained prominence, engaging scholars from the humanities and the social sciences alike. This introductory article aims to map out the main terrain of surveillance through, by and in the media. First, we discuss the phenomenon of, and the scholarly work on, surveillance through and by media, taking into consideration both state and corporate surveillance and how these activities have grown with the new digital and personal media of today. We then discuss surveillance as the phenomenon is represented in the media and how representations relate to surveillance practices. We conclude by presenting the articles of this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One component in the generational experience strongly related to media is the intimate and often passionate relation that is developed towards media technologies and content from one’s formative youth period: musical genres and stars, as well as reproduction technologies such as the vinyl record, music cassette tapes, comics and other now dead media forms. Passion, however, is a dialectic concept that not only refers to the joyful desire and intense emotional engagement of cherished objects but also includes its dialectic opposite in the form of pain and suffering. This passion, it is argued in the article, is activated by the nostalgic relationships to past media experiences, the bittersweet remembrances of media habits connected to earlier life phases of one’s own. Taking its point of departure in generational theory of Mannheim and others, this article analyses a series of focus group interviews with Swedish and Estonian media users tentatively belonging to four different generations. Based on the analysis of these interviews, it is suggested that passion and nostalgia are produced, first, in relation to old technologies, second, in relation to childhood memories and, third, at the limits of shared intergenerational experience, that is, at the moment when one realises that one’s own experiences of past media forms cannot be shared by younger generations, and especially one’s own children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If nation branding is about constructing and promoting national identity, what kind of ‘identity’ could it possibly be? This article analyses how the branded nation qualitatively differs from earlier forms of imagined communities by focusing on the tension between inward- and outward-directed dimensions of nation branding. A particular focus is placed on the concept of ‘identity’, which, it is argued, is insufficiently problematized in previous research. The discussion takes its departure in a case study of Ukraine, where all nation branding attempts came to an abrupt halt when political unrest broke out in late 2013. The political unrest led to a rapid shift in forms of concern over Ukraine, since nation branding can only be conducted in times of relative social harmony. The case further illustrates the argument that collective identity is not a main issue when branding a nation, and it is argued that a perspective of cosmopolitanism can bring new insights to the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A criticism raised about mediatization research is that although the concept of mediatization presupposes a long-term temporal perspective, there are few projects that have studied the process methodologically over time. This article argues that a generational approach can serve as one suggested analytical solution to the problem of studying long-term social, cultural, and societal change. The article describes a recently finished project on media generations in Sweden and Estonia and discusses overcoming the problem of conducting research on mediatization as a long-term process. Through intergenerational and cross-cultural analysis, the article shows how media memories from childhood and the formative years of youth can reveal specific traits in the historical process and how the role of the media has changed over time in the minds of different generations. The article focuses on four generations that had their formative years during significant historical moments in the late 20th century; these formative moments were marked by specificities both in the respective national media landscapes and in the vast historical and geopolitical differences between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nation branding is a rapidly developing practice for promoting images of a nation-state for tourists or investors, sometimes with the secondary goal to foster nation building. It has also attracted a fair amount of scholarly attention. Analyses have focused on various themes, including national identity and neoliberal approaches to nation building. Given that the practice of nation branding presupposes the orchestration of mediated campaigns, surprisingly few studies have specifically focused on the role of the media. This article argues that a focus on the media (as technologies and organizations) can shed light on the dynamics of nation branding. The article reviews previous research, then presents a specific case of nation branding in Ukraine. This case study reveals the different types of media involved and how this involvement may have varied consequences for the analysis of branding campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses two trends in the debates about contemporary television journalism. First, journalism is said to be increasingly subsumed an economic logic, privileging entertainment before serious journalistic practices. Most often, this is framed as if entertainment is eating its way into serious journalism, affecting it negatively and thus being detrimental for the political public sphere and political reasoning. Second, it is often pointed to a changed relation between journalism and politicians, where the latter have lost some of their power, for example, in political debates. This article relates these two trends and argues, against a field model inspired by Bourdieu, that it is not entertainment that is eating its way into journalism, but the other way around: Rather than having been absorbed by entertainment, journalism has differentiated, become more autonomous as a subfield of cultural production, and has gradually come to dominate both factual and entertainment television. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which author discusses various articles within the issue on topics including the concept of age and generations in the context of media.

The ‘active audience’ has theoretically been conceptualized from two perspectives: in political economy, it is suggested that television audiences work for the networks while watching and that they contribute to the valorization process with their labour. Although contested, it has survived among media scholars, also feeding into the discussion on web surveillance techniques. The other conceptualization comes from reception theory, media ethnography and cultural studies, where the interpretive work by audiences is seen as productive and resulting in identities, taste cultures and social difference. This article relates these perspectives by considering audiences as involved in two production–consumptions circuits: (1) the viewer activities produce social difference (identities and cultural meaning) in a social and cultural economy, which is then (2) made the object of productive consumption as part of the activities of the media industries, the end product being economic profit. This article argues for the relevance of analysing these as separate circuits, with different kinds of labour at their centre, and that recent debates on the active audience often misrecognize the difference. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Media production in late capitalism is often measured in terms of economic value. If value is defined as the worth of a thing, a standard or measure, being the result of social praxis and negotiation between producers and consumers in various combinations, it follows that this worth can be of other kinds than the mere economic. This is, for example, the reasoning behind field theory (Bourdieu), where the generation of field-specific capital (value) is deeply dependent on the belief shared by the competing agents within the field. The full extent of the consequences of such a theory of convertibility between fields of cultural production, centred on different forms of value, is, however yet to be explored. This is the task of this article. It especially focuses on how value is constructed differently depending on the relations of the valuing subject to the production process, something that becomes highly relevant in digital media environments, where users are increasingly drawn into the production process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the dissemination and usage of mobile phones in post-Soviet, transitional Estonia with patterns in Sweden (a long-time Western democracy). Using a domestication perspective, the study examines the use of voice calls compared with texting by youths (aged 18-24) to probe the role of Estonia's transition from a statecontrolled to a market economy in shaping mobile usage. Results show that while the dissemination of mobiles among young Swedes and Estonians is similar, the patterns of texting and calling are not. In Sweden (as in Japan and even the USA), young people text more than they call, while the reverse is true in Estonia. These findings reflect the fact that unlike Swedes, many Estonians obtained mobile phones before getting landlines, and again unlike Swedes, Estonians are likely to give up landlines in favour of mobiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the consequences of digitization for multiplatform television/media production, the ways in which it affects textual expressions, and how this might have a bearing on changing audience roles. It takes its departure empirically from two Swedish examples of multiplatform production: The Truth About Marika and Labyrint, produced by SVT and TV4, respectively. It is argued that multiplatform media texts challenge our conceptions of categories such as work, text, program, etc., and, following from that, also challenge our notions of audience activity and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses value creation within the fields of cultural production. It departs from Bourdieu's field model, and seeks to develop it to fit unrestricted cultural production, for example television production. Bourdieu for the most part discussed the production of value (or forms of capital) in relation to fields of restricted cultural production, that is, within the fine arts (e.g. art, literature). Although one of his best known works dealt with television, one cannot say that he used the possibilities inherent in his own theory thoroughly enough to analyse this field of mass production. This article builds on recent discussions on the role of field theory in media studies, and seeks to contribute to the development of a theory of value production in fields of large-scale or unrestricted cultural production. It is argued that the conflation of commercial value with other kinds of value is more intense in the subfield of unrestricted cultural production, as production in this part of the field needs to obey outer demand in a way that production at the pole of restricted production does not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at giving some theoretical reflections and possible clarifications to theories on production and consumption of symbolic goods and commodities. It is argued that the production of sign commodities generate various kinds of values, which also differ from those produced in material commodity production. With the example of the television audience this article puts forth the idea of the audience as a pure sign commodity, a commodity solely made up of sign structures, produced by semiotic labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deregulation of the European public service monopolies for radio and television during the last couple of decades naturally brought with it an entirely new media geography, not least in the Nordic countries, which have been marked by their strong public service institutions, as of March 2004. The Nordic countries were also among the last to abandon the public service model, and did not open their media systems to commercial competitors until the late 1980s. This remodelling of the media system has brought with it an increased interest in the role and function of public service institutions in this new competitive media landscape. In Sweden this debate has been quite intense around the turn of the millennium, following several crises within Sveriges Television and Sveriges Radio, which have seen rapid changes of managing directors. The aim of this article is to present and discuss an explanatory model in which various discourses surrounding issues such as public service, quality and commercialism can be related to one another. The author will conduct a discussion in two steps. First, in a general theoretical argument, a model for the analysis of this situation is presented. Then the author will apply this model to the Swedish situation, and suggest some reasons for the specific changes that have occurred recently within the television system.

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The article presents the authors' insights on film studies in Sweden. The authors say that early research on Swedish film in 1950 lacked connections to the academic system and during 1960s, Swedish Film School and Svenska Filminstitute was founded in which film studies were institutionalized as an academic discipline. They state that in 1990, changes have taken place as Jan Olsson has been appointed and film studies become a separate Department of Cinema Arts.

The article discusses the history and present condition of film studies in Sweden. Film screenings used to have a low status as an art form due to several reasons, including the imposition of taxes on entertainment in 1911. A national system of censorship was created during the year after a public debate over film's allegedly bad influence on its young audience. The published works of film researchers Bengt ldestam-Almquist, Gösta Werner and Rune Waldekranz contributed to the development of film studies in Sweden. Two current projects in the country aim to investigate the methodological possibilities of computer technology in film research.

This paper is an introduction to tripleC's special section "Critical Theory and Political Economy of the Internet" that presents papers from a session at the Nordmedia Conference 2011 (August 11-13, 2011, University of Akureyri, Iceland). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response by Göran Bolin and Michael Forsman to Jan Olsson's comments on their article about the mapping of Swedish film studies is presented. The authors note that Olsson, instead of addressing the questions on knowledge formation and the positioning of film studies in relation to other fields producing knowledge on film, uses authoritative power to counter their statements. They consider Olsson's objections to their description.