In fiction, narrative dissonance highlights a narrator’s retrospective perspective at the expense of a character’s perspective. In literary journalism/reportage, narrative dissonance presents a method for questioning any absolute truth in a specific context. As a narrative technique, it expresses a structural tension between the narrator and the main character, but it can also be created indirectly, through shifts in the narrator’s voice or a split within an experiencing character. The latter is possible with a double persona, belonging to a reporter who is working undercover. In literary journalism/reportage, there is additionally an approach that can be characterized by prospectivity, called alternative dissonance, for which there is no general counterpart in fiction. Consequently, it is possible to find not only a narrating reporter who questions her earlier experiences, but also to find an experiencing reporter who questions her forthcoming ability to tell a story. Using tools from narratology, this essay identifies and describes narrative constructions behind different kinds of dissonance in literary journalism and illustrates them with analysis examples selected from different traditions, times and countries. The analyses also demonstrate how these intricate narrative techniques fulfill different functions in different contexts but always enable a nuanced and complex picture of the depicted reality. Finally, crucial differences between dissonance in literary journalism andfiction are emphasized.

Sociala reportage skrivs av reportrar med ett personligt engagemang.De är hängivna det självpåtagna uppdraget att berätta om sintids stora frågor. Så ser mytbildningen ut. Men vad avgör hur reportagenutformas? Baserat på journalistikhistorisk forskning och narratoligiskanärläsningar av reportage av Ester Blenda Nordström,Gustaf Hellström, Stig Dagerman, Ivar Lo-Johansson och BarbroAlving, fem särskilt hyllade svenska 1900-talsreportrar, pekar denhär artikeln ut hur det finns ett direkt samband mellan den förmedlademänniskosynen och textens berättarteknik. Artikeln visar vidareatt tidsandan präglat vissa texter, inte minst när det gäller idéerom reporterrollen: hur bör en reporter framstå i sin text? Samtidigtvisar den i ännu högre grad hur profilerade reportrar kan välja enegen väg.

In recent years, media researchers have displayed an increased interest in emotion as an element of the content in both news journalism and narrative journalism. These studies lack a theoretical definition of emotion and do not usually specify what characterizes narrative journalism more than it being "not objective" and, consequently, not similar to conventional journalism. In practice, they identify emotion through frames of personalization or explicit expressions of feelings and evaluations. However, narrative journalism integrates implicitly conveyed emotion. To enable a broader understanding of the function of emotion in narrative journalism, this article gives examples of and analyzes how emotion and the related concept subjectivity is used and discussed in two different fields of research: social sciences-influenced journalism studies and literature-influenced studies. The dualistic view on journalism as either subjective or objective is questioned when narrative journalism (also known as reportage or literary journalism) is placed in a professional context, where the genre is based on its own tradition and represents its own form of knowledge, due to its main characteristic: a narrative form. Finally, the article demonstrates how tools drawn from narratology can illuminate diverse storytelling techniques that transmit emotion implicitly rather than explicitly.

När den legendariska svenska reportern Barbro Alving, signaturen Bang, 1951 åker på reportageresa till det svenska Norrland gör hon sig till talesperson för myndigheternas framväxande välfärdsprojekt. Detta innebär att norrlänningar ska uppfostras till bättre hygien, bättre matvanor och bättre läsvanor. Den här artikeln gör generaliserande värderingar synliga när narratologisk och medieretorisk analys samt stilanalys belyser ett samspel mellan berättarperspektiv och berättarröst i Bangs åtta reportage från Norrland. Analysen visar hur valet av källor återspeglar ett klassamhälle där högre samhällsföreträdare, tillsammans med den berättande reportern, får stå för artikelseriens problemformuleringar samtidigt som framför allt fattiga kvinnors livssituation skildras med medkänsla men sällan någon djupare inlevelse. Med en närmast filantropisk blick görs norrlänningar till föremål för ”folkhemmets” välfärdsförbättrande insatser, samtidigt som de själva inte inkluderas i det ”vi” där reportern och hennes Stockholmsläsare ingår.

Sociala reportage skrivs av reportrar som strider för de svaga och avslöjar missförhållanden. Så har det hetat inom yrket, i handböcker och bland genrens supportrar. Men vad döljer sig bakom idealet? Och hur ser engagemanget ut när det omvandlas till text? Den här boken lyfter fram reportage av några av 1900-talets mest hyllade svenska reportrar och synar på vilka sätt texterna förmedlar ett engagemang till läsaren. De narratologiskt grundade analyserna utförs mot en bakgrund av skiftande idéer om en reporters samhällsroll. Det visar sig att engagemanget ofta är tidsanknutet och kan motarbetas av generaliserande värderingar om porträtterade människor. Här blir skillnaden mellan inlevelse och medkänsla avgörande.

De valda reportrarna representerar det svenska sociala reportaget vid centrala brytpunkter inom traditionen. Ester Blenda Nordström och Gustaf Hellström har valts för 1910-talet, Ivar Lo-Johansson för åren kring 1930, Barbro Alving för 1950-talet, Jan Guillou för 1970-talet och Maciej Zaremba och Karen Söderberg för 1990- och 2000-talen.

Social reportages are written by reporters who fight for the weak and expose injustices. So it is said in the profession, in handbooks and among the genre’s supporters. But what is hidden behind the ideal? And what does the commitment look like when it is converted into text? This book highlights reportages by some of the 20th century’s most celebrated Swedish reporters and examines the ways in which their texts convey a commitment to the reader. The narratologically based analyses are performed against a background of changing ideas about a reporter’s role in society. It turns out that the commitment is often time-related and can be counteracted by generalizing values about the depicted people. Here, the difference between empathy and compassion becomes crucial.

The selected reporters represent Swedish social reportage at central turning points within the tradition. Ester Blenda Nordström and Gustaf Hellström have been chosen for the 1910s, Ivar Lo-Johansson for the years around 1930, Barbro Alving for the 1950s, Jan Guillou for the 1970s and Maciej Zaremba and Karen Söderberg for the 1990s and 2000s.

Hur ser berättelsen om svensk gängkriminalitet ut i tre aktuella reportageböcker och med vilken berättarteknik är den konstruerad? Med en blandning av narratologisk och medieretorisk analysmetod undersöker den här artikeln hur innehåll och form samspelar i Mammorna av Alexandra Pascalidou, Familjen av Johanna Bäck- ström Lerneby och Tills alla dör av Diamant Salihu. En slutsats är att skiftande berättarperspektiv kan motverka ensidighet, samtidigt som narrativ medkänsla utan parallell narrativ inlevelse kan hindra läsarens möjlighet att föreställa sig de skildrade människornas situation. Dramatiserade händelseförlopp kan öka närvarokänslan, medan en reporter som ifrågasätter sin egen auktoritet uppmuntrar läsaren till att undvika förenklande slutsatser. Till sist bidrar person- beskrivningar och urval av fakta i de tre böckerna till skilda budskap. Studien visar att reportagegenren tack vare sin narrativa form har potential att skildra samhällsproblem på komplexa sätt. Detta gäller särskilt när gestaltningen kombineras med gedigen faktaresearch. 

This article discusses the genre of literary journalism/reportage against a background of earlier assumptions on fictionality. At a local level in nonfiction, fic- tionality can be expressed through invented stories and scenarios that create a con- trast to the global, nonfictive context. However, fictionality can also be expressed through stylistic devices that traditionally have been associated with narrative fic- tion. A local contrast may appear, but only if the genre in itself is not narrative. If the focus is on the nonfictional and narrative genre of literary journalism/reportage, there will be no contrast. Here, the rhetoric will work just like in narrative fiction and should be considered to be part of the features of narrativity. Furthermore, the concept imagination should be perceived in close relation to Monika Fludernik’s understanding of narrative as experience. The conclusion is a call to partly rethink existing connections between fictionality, narrativity, and imagination in order to better understand the narrative nature of reportage. 

Tysk höst (German Autumn) is perhaps the most famous Swedish reportage book from the twentieth century. It was written as a series of reportages by the young author Stig Dagerman and depicts the life of ordinary people in Germany in 1946. Themes such as suffering, guilt, and feelings of dejection are discussed, framed by an atmosphere of grayness. The reader is invited to empathize, not with certain individuals but rather with anyone who is cold, hungry, and bereaved of their beliefs. This chapter explores how these themes are made universally human by an advanced literary technique. Dagerman links the abstract to the concrete, the argumentation to what he has observed on the spot. This is achieved through figurative language, where key words are repeated, gradually transforming them in meaning and blurring the line between illustrated scenes and metaphors. The result becomes a paradoxical kind of gray expressiveness, where the power of the language seems to contradict the gloomy content.

Reportage/literary journalism is a narratively multifaceted genre that has attracted little interest from a theoretical point of view. There have been some studies of style and content inrelation to specific reporters and periods and some descriptionof narrative features typical of eyewitness reporting. However, until now, international narrative studies have lacked a theoretical model that in detail systematizes different types of narration that may be found within the genre. This article uses narratology to divide reportage/literary journalism into five types of narration based on how the narrative situation reflects the collecting situation. Within this typology, a reportage can be told in either the first or third person and the physical reporter caneither have been present or not present in the unfolding realityof events. This differentiation of subcategories will help us to better understand connections between a reporter’s working conditions and specific narrative constructions.

The 1910s was a dynamic period in Swedish journalism when reporters became professionals and the largest newspapers engaged their own foreign correspondents. A prominent correspondent of the time was Gustaf Hellström, also a famous writer. His reports from France during the First World War, collected in the book 1 1/2 mil härifrån står världens största slag, are known for their dedicated attitude. An assumption in this essay is that such an attitude corresponds to a narrative commitment, which could be divided into narrative empathy and narrative compassion. 

Using tools from discourse narratology and cognitive narratology, I investigate narrative techniques and strategies at work when a narrative commitment is constructed in the reportages from France. A conclusion is that parallel perspectives and a multitude of voices within the narrative construction connect the individual to the general and convey empathy with all victims of the war, civilians as well as soldiers on both sides. 

In a final section, I place Hellström’s series of reportages from France within a broader context where I highlight similarites with Stig Dagerman’s series of reportages Tysk höst from 1946 and Svetlana Alexievich’s documentary books from the 1980s and onwards.