This volume contains adaptions of two excellent master theses that were written and defended within the international master’s programme media, communication, and cultural analysis at Södertörn University in 2023. Running since 2009, the programme has more than 100 alumni who are employed in the media, academic and education. In 2020, the programme coordinator together with the programme council and the department council, chose to distinguish the best theses in a printed volume. This is the fourth volume in the series. 

The contributions in this volume cover two very different topics: how social media and content streaming sites are used to shape relationships between K-pop superstars BTS and their fan base in Sweden and how vegans/vegetarians respectively meat eaters react to the use of shock advertisements by the organization for animal advocacy, PETA. Although stretching across two such different topics, the chapters share an interest in zooming in on how media can be understood in relation to engagement and emotions.

This chapter focuses on an essay by French philosopher and cultural theorist Roland Barthes. His book from 1980 attempts to answer the question: What is the essence of photography? It is also an attempt to think beyond structuralism and semiotics, which were previously important to him. The media-ontological approach of Barthes’s essay is also relevant in relation to other media, and opens a range of important questions in media studies. Moreover, his book is still useful for thinking about the role and importance of photography in our digital age. It demonstrates the limitations of structuralist semiotics and highlights the importance of affect and personal life experience in the process of meaning-making.

This volume contains adaptions of three excellent master theses that were written and defended within the international master’s programme Media, communication, and cultural analysis at Södertörn University in 2022. Running since 2009, the programme has more than 100 alumni who are employed in the media, academic and education. In 2020, the programme coordinator together with the programme council and the department council, chose to distinguish the best theses in a printed volume. This is the third volume in the series. 

The contributions cover a broad range of topics: how the Sami community is implicated and affected by the data center industry that is increasingly being established in the Northern parts of Sweden, Finland and Norway directly impacting Sápmi; how the NIPCC (The Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change) can be understood as a cultural industry producing social meaning, not knowledge, in its dissemination of climate disinformation; how what has been coined the contemporary space race has very little to do with its precursor in the 1960s, today it stands for a particular vision for humanity envisioned by tech billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. 

The aim of this study is to understand the ‘photographic selves’–the collective competences and skills required for making, interpreting, and communicating through photographs — that are articulated in the educational framework for future photographers in Russia and Sweden. These are two countries with very different histories in relation to photographic practices. Theories on photography from recent decades have emphasized that digital photography is a different medium from analogue photography. This study seeks to understand whether and how this is addressed in two different cultural contexts, based on interviews with teachers and department heads, combined with written descriptions of courses and educational programs. The material makes visible different ideal photographic practices. One, the most common in both countries, is firmly embedded in the international documentary tradition. Other ways, represented by teachers at a Russian art school for photography, stress a more critical perspective toward established conventions. However, absent at the studied schools are more freer understandings of photography in the wake of digitization. Photography is still framed by the historically anchored indexical relation to the surrounding world and as a fixed object.

Today it often happens that the protagonist in crime fiction is a journalist-for instance, in the globally spread sub-genre of Nordic noir. This article examines what readers can learn about journalism by comparing crime fiction (a widely popular genre fostering society critique) from Russia, Sweden, and USA. These countries with significantly different press traditions have in the post-1991 era been involved in transformations of the media landscapes which have led to a public distrust in traditional media. We approach these novels as a form of adult media education and thereby as a resource for the reader to develop a critical thinking about journalism. The novels under consideration are permeated with transnational understandings and provide a rich ground for reflections around challenges for finding the truth, such as news-making as a male-dominated activity, journalism as a publicity arena, and an accelerating news environment (i.e., information overload paired with a competition for immediate reporting) as a threat to investigative journalism. The struggling, truth-seeking protagonists can be understood as an answer to a widespread cultural anxiety about journalism's questioned authority as a truth-telling occupation.

С развитием цифровых технологий и онлайн-среды профессии фотожурналистов был брошен вызов. Несмотря на то, что использование любительских фотографий, монтаж и редактирование изображений появились в журналистике не сегодня, по мнению некоторых исследователей, нынешняя ситуация позволяет говорить не просто об изменениях, а о смене парадигм (Solaroli 2015). Одним из аспектов смены парадигм является распространенность гражданской фотожурналистики и моментальность распространения снимков; другим – легкость пост-продакшна, где редактирование фотографий является скорее правилом, чем исключением (Stiegler 2002, Van Dijck 2008). Более того, мы живем в эпоху, когда социальные медиа стали центральным источником новостей, что привело ко все возрастающему недоверию к фактам и элитам. Эти факторы бросают вызов профессиональному журналистскому сообществу и его методам освещения ситуации в мире, идеалам объективности и реалистичности (Mäenpää 2014). Тем не менее, среди множества голосов в цифровом медиа-ландшафте остается необходимость в профессиональном фотографе как надежном источнике интерпретации реальности (Åker 2012).

В эпоху “пост-правды” и “альтернативных” фактов особенно важно понимать возможности и ограничения фотожурналистики в том, что касается правдивого освещения общественной ситуации. В данной презентации мы представляем исследовательский проект, целью которого является изучение изменений и вызовов профессии. Объектом исследования являются образовательные программы для будущих фотожурналистов в России и Швеции. Данные программы представляют собой пространство, в котором будущие профессиональные фотографы, преподаватели и опытные фотографы встречаются и формируют дискурсы и практики «фотографического реализма» (Schiller 1977, Barnhurst & Nerone 2000). Для их изучения мы используем теории о фотографической правдивости, культурах (фото)журналистики и визуальной грамотности (Messaris 1998, 2012). Сравнительный исследовательский проект отталкивается от предыдущих исследований, демонстрирующих, что российская и шведская журналистские культуры отличаются в подходах к объективности и реалистичности (Nygren et al 2015, Voronova 2014). Выбор данных двух контекстов может помочь в поиске как отличий, которые бросают вызов представлениям об универсальности журналистских идеалов, так и схожих характеристик.

The front pages of Scandinavian “quality newspapers” often include aesthetically pleasing and enigmatic photographs that dominate the whole page. These pictures seem to deviate from the traditional function of press pictures as facts in news stories. At the same time, they can be understood as part of a modernist tradition in journalism where objectivity is the norm. By adopting a historical perspective, this article highlights the subjective and artistic dimension in photography as it developed in parallel with the ideal of objectivity in the 1930s. This approach makes it possible to understand today's front-page photographs as well suited in meeting the effects of digitalization such as “multivocality” and a general mistrust in photography's indexical status.

Universitet och högskolor ses som viktiga symboler, "motorer" och "kärnverksamheter" i dagens medialiserade kunskapssamhällen. Högre lärosäten beskrivs ofta, precis som medier, som länkar mellan det lokala, nationella och det internationella. Den här studien tar avstamp i tre lärosätens engelska webbplatser för att studera hur de profileras och länkas till andra sammanhang. De tre lärosätena representerar platser inbegripna i dynamiska förändringsprocesser: Södertörns högskola utanför Stockholm, universitetet i Tammerfors i Finland och Tartu universitet i Estland. Vilka geografier öppnar sig utifrån lärosätenas webbplatser? Skapar den gynnade geografin specifika förståelser av de olika platserna? Kan framställningen av platserna kopplas till vissa rumsliga aktiviteter som underlättas genom kommunikationsteknologin Internet? Och vidare, kan detta i så fall kasta ljus över de traditionella mediernas betydelse som samhällsinstitution?

Patrik Åker är lektor i medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap vid Institutionen för kultur och kommunikation, Södertörns högskola.