Stockholm archipelago’s exalted position in the national narrative of Sweden wasinvented during the second half of the 19th century when writers and artists startedto depict the archipelago as an idyllic rural region. Previous studies have shown thatthe landscape imaginaries of Stockholm archipelago have successfully migrated overdifferent media for more than a century. However, it has not been investigated whethersocial media has influenced the imaginaries. The aim of this study is to investigatehow the landscape imaginaries of Stockholm archipelago have been influenced byrepresentations of the region on Instagram. By utilizing Instagram posts pertaining toStockholm archipelago, the present case study aims to investigate how establishedlandscape imaginaries appear in the light of visual conventions, online environment,and social codes that accompany social media. The analytical approach stems from theconcept of landscape imaginaries, how collective understandings and representationsof landscape render space. The method combines thematic analysis, netnography,and semiotic analysis. Research on how Instagram influences landscape imaginariessuggests that Instagram induced landscapes have the ability to change material life incertain places and that it has the capacity to rejuvenate criticized dormant discourses,like colonial ones. This study, however, suggests that the landscape imaginaries ofStockholm archipelago on Instagram not only cement, but reinforce the establishedimaginary archipelago. This is especially done through conventional romanticlandscape pictures which defy the idea of social media’s anticipated proliferation ofindividual and unique representations of the world.

This study explores the meaning-making of amateur videos on YouTube pertaining to the Swedish Cold War heritage and it contributes with a discussion on how videographic conventions and social media platform logics intervene in the ongoing informal heritagization of the Cold War era. The heritagization process of the Cold War remains in Sweden during the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium coincided with the advent of the online society. The process seemed to resonate of the democratic ideals from the discourse of Heritage from below. Now it seemed like anyone had the possibility to become a heritage producer. However, heritagization from below came with unintended implications. The analysis of YouTube videos in this study suggests that the vernacular Cold War heritage is colored by an easily digested format containing of moving still pictures, mood-inducing soundtracks, luring camera perspectives, rhythmic editing, and genre loans from video games and horror films, which tend to safeguard the naturalness of filmed sites and an entire era.

In the wake of the Cold War obsolete military infrastructure was transformed into visitor attractions by traditional heritage stakeholders or was left as ruins for the war history buffs to reveal. However, the heritagization of the Cold War remains during the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium coincided with the advent of the digital society. This led to an inclusion of new actors and arenas on the terrain of heritage production. In this paper we focus on how the logics of the digital age have affected the Cold War heritage in Sweden, where it is both popular and contested, through an investigation of the social media platform Youtube and the video content pertaining to the Swedish Cold War. We suggest, like previous research has indicated (Gillespie 2015; van Dijck 2013; Pietrobruno 2013; Reider et al 2018; Bishop 2018), that social media should be understood in relation to opaque economic (e.g. monopolies) and technological (algorithms) frames that intervene in the supposedly democratic universe of social media.

In addition, given notions that todays’ situation is unique, we problematize views that emphasize the difference between heritagization online today and heritagization in pre-digital contexts: Yesterdays’ heritagization in many ways looked different from todays’ online-age, but was it not also influenced by phenomena that we usually think did not exist in the past, for example so-called filter bubbles? And, despite ongoing de-politization in contemporary neoliberal discourses, is not the post-Cold War era still marked by ideology?