Uppfattningen att digital text är immateriell är fortfarande utbredd och kanske är det förklaringen till att det inte skrivs särskilt mycket om betydelsen hos och effekterna av det jag menar utgör det digitala dokumentets materialitet – de digitala mediernas hårdvaror. Utformningen av och funktionen hos dessa har en lång rad implikationer för såväl individ som samhälle, och jag berör några av dem

Historians have long been interested in know­ledge—its nature and origin, and the circum­stances under which it was created—but it has only been in recent years that the history of knowledge has emerged as an academic field in its own right.In "Circulation of Knowledge", a group of Nordic scholars explore a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to this new and exciting area of histori

This forum article is about the EU’s sanctions levelled at Russian state media, and the steps the Kremlin took to ensure its war propaganda continued to reach Europe. The article examines Kremlin efforts to coordinate cross-platform influence operations on Telegram, as well as the role of digital diplomacy accounts in partially replacing state media reach. This leads to a discussion on the role of

The mass media constructs authority by creating 'intimacy at a distance' (John B. Thompson) between public figures and the people. This chapter argues that, over the course of the long nineteenth century, rulers both gained new possibilities for staging their authority through the emerging mass media, and lost control over this mediated staging under specific circumstances, often turning from mast

Since its heyday in the 1960 and 70s, the sociology of literature has been declared dead and gone, yet research related to the field also seems to be reemerging in the first decades of the 21st century. Research relating to the field is scattered across other disciplines, such as literary studies, media studies and cultural studies; indeed, sociology of literature is “everywhere and nowhere”, as J

Social media have come to influence the way we interact, both on an individual level and an organisational level. Businesses in all industries are quickly realising that if you are not on social media you do not exist. This thesis aim to investigate how social media influence the aid market and how/if the individual consumer has changed their participatory behaviour towards aid organisations. A c

Popular Abstract in English Reel Socialism considers the representation of the communist past in Czech and German cinema after the end of communist rule. The study offers in-depth analyses of numerous feature films, from Oscar-winning box-office hits to half-forgotten art-house offerings. It takes account of the films’ historical and political contexts and thus provides a comprehensive assessment This thesis is a comparative study of the communist past as depicted in Czech and German feature films since 1989, or ‘reel socialism’. It is the first detailed study of post-1989 Czech history films and the first comparative study of German post-reunification cinema. It demonstrates that cinema has been a vehicle of similar sense-making processes in the two history cultures. Much of the research

Religion has become a hot topic in Sweden, often perceived as the most secularized corner of the world. This article analyzes how Islam and Lutheran Christianity come to be used in the construction of national identity, through discourse analysis of an opinion piece by the Christian Democrats in 2021 on banning veils in elementary schools, and the following discussion on Twitter1. The concept “ban

The last few decades have seen the appearance of a number of mosques that do not constitute buildings; they are mosques without bricks. This article therefore defines a new concept, the pop-up mosque, as an analytical term for the temporary conversion of an other-purposed space into a mosque, which is used for Islamic rituals such as Friday prayer and marriages. The pop-up mosque can produce relig

The cellphone footage of Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old white man in his twenties, choking the life out of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Black man, in a New York City subway car during the summer of 2023 made headlines around the globe. The story took off in part because it was identified by the press as existing within the long history of American vigilantism, one that dates to the very founding of th

During the Cold War, along with the Americanization of its popular culture, Finland was also heavily exposed to Soviet ideological influences, including in relation to notions of desirable femininity. From the late 1960s onwards, Soviet influences can be seen in Finnish public discourses on fashion and decorative femininity. Soviet ideals are also reflected in the emphasis on gender neutrality and

Millions of Westerners went on holiday behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. This article considers the place of Eastern Europe in the international travel industry through the prism of Folkturist, a travel agency owned by the Communist Party of Sweden. By analysing Folkturist's business strategies and interactions with the East European tourist industries, the article shows the competing i

This special issue contributes to the emerging research field of religion and populism in contemporary media contexts. With a shared focus on how Protestant Nordic contexts align with populist practices in specific ways, the articles provide illustrative examples of how the entanglement between religion, populism and media needs to be taken into account when dealing with contemporary public and po