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This article opens a new perspective on Finland’s Cold War history by highlighting the role of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) in providing information about the German Democratic Republic as a particular polity, economy, and key player in the European Cold War landscape. The analysis is based on search results from the YLE digital database (Metro) from 1970–1989, and it is supported by documents from the German Broadcasting Archive [Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv] and the YLE company archive. The archive documents and metadata testify about a long-term interest in East Germany in Finnish television, as well as long-term contacts and collaboration between East German and Finnish television companies, in the executive as well as at grass roots levels.

Based on a case study of the import of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) children's programme Unser Sandmännchen to Sweden in the early 1970s, this article explores the cultural recoding at work in the processes of transnational media exchange. Using archival source material from both Germany and Sweden as well as Swedish press debate, the article argues for an entangled media perspective on Cold War East-West cultural exchanges. In the process of transfer, Unser Sandmännchen, called John Blund in Sweden, was transformed from a calm, socialist hero to an outspoken and sometimes rude capitalist. This was the result of the active agency of individual entrepreneurs as well as the turnout of the political ambitions of Swedish and East German state television institutions. In Sweden, although stripped from its possible ideological content, the cultural transfer of Unser Sandmännchen contributed to strengthening the relations between the two countries and to opening up Swedish relations to the GDR in areas well beyond the media sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing the Foucauldian term ‘conduct’, this article explores how social resilience and morale became a target of state intervention in Denmark during the Cold War. ‘Psychological defence’ was a Cold War phenomenon designed to bring an imagined future war into a space of control as well as a tool for the authorities’ exercise of power in case another world war became a reality. Advocating a methodological internationalism, the article analyses how the concept of psychological defence travelled from Sweden to Denmark via Norway and NATO, and in a complex process of translation, mixing and hybridization was adapted and appropriated to Danish security policy conditions, preparedness culture, and historical experiences. Ultimately, psychological defence was replaced with a more practical or even cynical approach to public information and media preparedness, even if the objectives remained the same. The article employs source material from Danish, Swedish, and NATO archives and combines Scandinavian Cold War history with media history and the history of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including aspects of entanglements in media history, travelling media content and research on media and migration.

This article analyses the transnational production processes of foreign correspondence in the Cold War. It examines the double role of foreign correspondents as reporters and Cold War political agents. Recent scholarship has explored the activities of Western correspondents reporting from the Communist world. Little is known, however, about Eastern bloc correspondents in the West. Drawing on the rarely studied files on East German foreign correspondents held by the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, the article problematizes the image of GDR journalists as obedient intelligence officers and highlights the dilemmas of journalists deployed to defend national interests. Focusing on the Nordic countries in the mid1970s, the article provides detailed insights into the politics and practices of East German foreign correspondence before the digital revolution. The article thus shows the benefits of going beyond the traditional focus on media content to analyse the daily practices as well as the political and symbolic significance of journalism. It contributes to the growing historical research on foreign correspondents and the media in East Germany and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transnational and transmedial dimensions of media and communication throughout history have not always been adequately recognised. In this research report we propose the concept ofentanglementas a means of better understanding the dynamic interconnectedness of media across semiotic, technological, institutional and political boundaries in history. Entanglement is a concept that can be employed in order to problematize the presumed points of departure and the linear understandings of development, production and reception that often characterize media-history scholarship. Moreover, an entangled media histories perspective throws light on social and communicative action in general and can thus enrich any historical study. The report outlines, and invites discussion of, the theoretical and methodological framework of the transnational network ‘Entangled Media Histories’, which since 2013 has been a forum for co-operation in research and teaching between media historians in Sweden, Germany and Great Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The rapid technological developments of the new millennium have presented exciting challenges to the well-established field of cultural memory studies. Today, it behoves us analyse the ways in which digital systems make it possible to store, copy, and decentralize memories, making them increasingly accessible on the Internet. The digital media offer gateways to the past that are more comprehensive as well as free and open. The cultural artefacts, pictures, and documents that in previous eras were exclusively a matter for libraries, archives, and museums are now increasingly and at an accelerating rate becoming available online. The aim of this article is twofold. It introduces a new field of cultural research, one that lies on the border between historical memory studies and media and communication research. It then argues for the importance of a media history angle on the subject of media and memory, an angle that recognizes that the media not only mirrors but also shapes our culture. This article raises the question of whether we as historians in fact alter our definitions of 'memory', 'storage', and 'archive' in the context of digital media. And, if so, what the consequences might be for historical memory studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On April 23 1961, a large civil defense exercise took place in the Swedish capital of Stockholm. About 30,000 participating civilians were swiftly evacuated from the city centre to the countryside by cars, buses and trains. The aim of the exercise was very serious: to test the civil defense organization in a time of nuclear threat. The event was ultimately evaluated as successful and educationally constructive; however, contemporary media provided a different interpretation. The article analyzes the media framing of the evacuation from the perspective of Cold War cultural studies and in particular the study of the culture of civil defense. Three key frames are identified in the press coverage: the calm order, the joyful fiesta, and the welfare monarchy. All three could be considered examples of a surprisingly dominant idyllic framing of the event as a cheerful and carefree Sunday picnic. This is discussed by contrasting the dark warfare narrative of the Cold War to the welfare narrative of the folkhem, literally people s home. The question is raised whether the idyllic framing is an answer to an all-encompassing fear of nuclear annihilation or, on the contrary, if the Cold War at this time was in fact too distant to engage the neutral Swedes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]