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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.

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]

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]