This article examines the role of Swedish mail-order catalogues in the everyday life of the early twentieth century, and in the development of consumer culture. The study deals with the materiality, content and distribution of the mail-order catalogues as well as their use in everyday life. The case of Åhlén & Holm, a major Swedish mail-order company, and its audience is relevant beyond the na

During World War II, middle-distance runner Gunder Hägg set 15 world records and became a media sport star of unprecedented magnitude in Sweden. This article turns attention to the role of radio broadcasts in the formation of Swedish “Hägg mania” 1941–45. When analyzed in terms of blindness, liveness and co-presence, radio broadcasts from this era reveal that radio announcers actively engaged with

This article offers an overview of some main approaches in Swedish Cold War studies with a specific attention to how this field of research has dealt with the media as historical sources. The historiographical development is divided into two major research paradigms, one focusing on politics and Sweden in the postwar global environment, and the other focusing on the cultural aspects of the Cold Wa

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 methEmploying 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 meth

During the interwar period, there was a surge in cultural diplomacy efforts in Europe. This article investigates the role of cultural diplomacy within the Swedish film society movement, focusing particularly on Lund Film Society’s travels abroad during the 1930s: to Nazi-Germany in 1935 and in 1938 respectively, as well as to the Soviet Union in 1936. Through international exchange, Lund Film Soci

In this essay the media depictions of the funeral of the former Swedish prime minister Karl Staaff in 1915 are investigated. It shows that, in a pre-democratic state such as early twentieth-century Sweden, media events did not necessarily voice a hegemonic ideology or harmonious sense of community spirit. Rather, mediated public space, even at the commemoration of a former prime minister, could be

The way a society remembers its past is crucial for how it deals with its present. Migration is one of these historically continuous events that produce memory cultures, which affect how refugees and migrants are perceived today. This thesis presents a case study of mediated memory cultures of migration in Germany. Mediations of migration history from two strikingly similar periods of condensed so