Smart prisons and smart detention are concerned with the implementation of digital technology for control and surveillance as well as for rehabilitation. Previous research— still sparse—points to tensions between the aim of making the corrections sector more efficient and the goal of rehabilitating incarcerated subjects. An examination of the entanglement of digital technologies and techniques of enclosure and incarceration within prison and detention systems can be viewed through the lens of technologies of incarceration as an alternative to the industry-driven notion of “smart prisons.” In major smart technologies in use globally, three socio-technical registers shape carceral environments: absence and presence, where selective access to media and surveillance technologies creates controlled connectivity; testbedding, where prisons serve as sites for piloting innovations such as electronic monitoring before broader societal adoption; and suspended life, where restricted technological access produces temporal disconnection and prolonged waiting. Situating these registers within historical and contemporary discourses of surveillance, control, and technological solutionism show technologies of incarceration reinforce punitive logics under the guise of care and efficiency, extending carceral imaginaries beyond prison walls into everyday life.

Recent global events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, wars and migration streams, have highlighted the promise of digital infrastructures while also showcasing how dependent we are on digital systems for accessing welfare services such as healthcare, social services and education, as well as for accessing public service media. Notably, in the context of welfare provision, different people and social groups are affected in distinct ways by such digital systems. This Crosscurrent contribution conceptualizes the notion of digital vulnerabilities, which captures some of the contemporary challenges posed to societies increasingly interconnected with and dependent on digital systems. Drawing on feminist moral philosophy, we suggest three layers of digital vulnerabilities: vulnerabilities through digital infrastructures, vulnerabilities in digital infrastructures and vulnerabilities of digital infrastructures. We illustrate these three layers with examples from four critical welfare domains, namely healthcare, education, social services and public service media. We conclude with a call for additional empirical research on how digital vulnerabilities play out in practice, across welfare domains and in welfare regimes beyond the Global North. Such issues need to be explored further to meet contemporary challenges.

Public service-medierna (PSM) befinner sig i en tid av förändring – politiskt, tekniskt och publikmässigt. Men vad vet vi egentligen om dem?

Denna rapport ger en bred internationell översikt över forskningenom public service-medier mellan 1998 och 2024. Genom en analys av 275 vetenskapliga artiklar kartläggs hur forskningen vuxit fram, vilka frågor som dominerat – och vilka kunskapsluckor som ännu återstår.

Rapporten vänder sig till forskare, studenter, journalister, beslutsfattare och alla som vill förstå public service-mediernas roll i ett föränderligt medielandskap. Med tydliga slutsatser och rekommendationer pekar den också framåt: vilka frågor måste framtida forskning ta sig an för att möta kunskapsbehoven i en tid av politisk polarisering och global medieomvandling?

Amanda Ramsälv är fil. dr och biträdande forskare på JMG vid Göteborgs universitet. Hennes forskning kretsar kring journalistiskt arbete och digital nyhetsproduktion.

This volume contains short versions of four noteworthy master theses written within the international master’s programme in Media, Communication, and Cultural Analysis at Södertörn University and defended in 2025. Running since 2009, the programme has more than 100 alumni who are now employed in the media, academia and education. In 2020, the department chose to highlight the best theses in a printed volume. This is the sixth volume in the series. 

The contributions in this volume cover four different topics: the representation of loss in science fiction films in relation to theories of modernity; the portrayal of the same robbery in different TV genres (news, documentary, and dramatised TV series); users’ experience of trust when interacting with communicative AI chatbots; and the ways in which users’ engagement with Spotify Wrapped can be understood as a media ritual. Although stretching across four such different topics, the chapters share an interest in on how media can be understood in relation to narration. In the first two chapters, the authors explicitly use narrative theory as a tool for understanding how mediation always incorporates narrative. The following two chapters focus instead on the narratives that arise when users interact with machines (AI chatbots) and on how algorithms shape annual personal stories about what kind of music listener you are (Spotify). Common for the four chapters is that they fruitfully re-center our attention on how narrating frames our encounter with media.

Public service media (PSM) are undergoing a period of change – politically, technologically, and in terms of their audience. But what do we really know about them?

This report provides a broad international overview of research on public service media between 1998 and 2024. Analyzing 275 scientific articles, it maps how research has evolved, which topics have dominated in research – and which knowledge gaps remain.

The report is aimed at researchers, students, journalists, decision-makers, and anyone who wants to understand the role of public service media in a changing media landscape. With clear conclusions and recommendations, it also points the way forward: what issues must future research address in order to meet the needfor knowledge in an era of political polarisation and global media transformation?

Amanda Ramsälv (PhD) is a researcher at JMG at the University of Gothenburg. Her research focuses on journalism and digital news production.

Although it has been said for some decades that printed newspapers are dying, they are still in existence; however, Swedish newspapers have entered a new era. Throughout the country, the distribution of printed newspapers is slowly ceasing. In this article, we trace the process of the disappearance of printed news through ethnographic field work engaging with the perspectives of the newspaper industry, readers, and civil society. Conceptualizing the disappearance of printed news as an assemblage of imaginaries, materialities, and practices, we are interested in how this disappearance is accomplished, motivated, interpreted, and experienced. The article makes an argument for exploring disappearance in tandem with emergence to develop a deeper understanding of contemporary media culture and society.

Public service broadcasting in Sweden is a well-established and widely used system that enjoys a high level of public trust. However, time, political pressure and regulatory restrictions are increasing, while budgets are shrinking in real terms. Further digitalisation and AI offer new opportunities, but also pose risks to reach and credibility. Particularly controversial are planned funding cuts, debates about impartiality and the role of broadcasters in times of crisis.

This chapter presents the findings of an extensive mapping exercise to systematically identify systems for automated decision-making including aritificial intelligence for welfare provision in Swedisch and Danish municipalities and regions. The starting point for the mapping exercise and the chapter is that knowing the extent and character of such systems is crucial for supporting and maintaining social justice. Theoretically, the contribution is framed through references to discussions of ADM and AI transparency and accountability. While considering the structural and practical limitations of transparency, we end the chapter with suggestions for future research to make welfare automation visible and hence open up for civic participation.

This article explores citizen attitudes towards automated decision-making (ADM) in the public sector, addressing concerns related to social justice and transparency. ADM, used in diverse public services, such as benefit application processing, welfare fraud detection and tax calculation, has sparked public interest and scepticism. To shed light on this complex issue and make ADM more accessible for citizens, we presented three domain-specific scenarios in a population-representative survey in Estonia (n = 1,500), Germany (n = 2,001) and Sweden (n = 1,000). These scenarios involved job seeker categorisation, child welfare risk assessment and predictive policing through facial recognition. Drawing from this survey and adopting an exploratory approach, we analyse attitudes across responses to these scenarios and conduct a regression analysis, integrating individual variables such as age, gender, education, awareness, enthusiasm and trust in ADM systems. Our findings reveal differences in citizens' attitudes based on welfare regimes and individual characteristics. This citizen-focused approach underscores the significance of involving citizens in the governance of ADM in the digital welfare state, transcending the traditional regulatory and stakeholder-centric perspectives.

Katarina Winter och Anne Kaun utvecklar i den här artikeln begreppet ”digitala trygghetsteknologier” för att beskriva nya digitala initiativ för att öka tryggheten i våra offentliga rum. Med avstamp i forskning om säkerhetisering och i teknik- och vetenskapsstudier (STS) visar de att även till synes ”mjuka” teknologier, som ofta presenteras som mindre ingripande och mer legitima, riskerar att normalisera och förstärka en logik där trygghet görs till en fråga om övervakning, kartläggning och kontroll. Den begreppsliga diskussionen illustreras empiriskt med material från tre fallstudier av olika typer av fenomen som faller under deras begrepp. Genom att introducera och problematisera begreppet digitala trygghetsteknologier vill Winter och Kaun möjliggöra analyser av teknologiers diskursiva, materiella och politiska implikationer för hur trygghet produceras, för vilka subjekt som målas upp som hot eller skyddsvärda, samt för hur ansvar förskjuts mellan offentliga och privata aktörer.