Tom 42 (2021): Zeszyt s2 (March 2021)

This article captures the dynamics of a special case when it comes to media systems, namely the Åland Islands, or Åland, with 6,700 islands and 30,000 inhabitants. Åland is one of three self-governed areas in the Nordic region (the others being the Faroe Islands and Greenland) and is an officially monolingual Swedish-speaking part of Finland, where the majority speak Finnish. In this article, I describe how Åland, despite its small size, has a media system characterised by a diverse and complete offering of local media: two daily newspapers, its own public service and public service offerings from both mainland Finland and neighbouring Sweden, a commercial radio station, and several magazines. However, media diversity is limited by the fact that the same person – a local business tycoon, Anders Wiklöf – controls both newspapers. There is one main research question motivating this study: What are the specific features of the media system in Åland? To be able to answer that, I relied on the analysis of three sets of data: nine interviews, a two-part survey and the media policy adopted in 2018, and transcripts of the preceding political debate.

In this article, we propose a history of Sámi journalism and news media as a step in the direction of analysing the existing media system in Sápmi. Numerous Sámi activists and organisations have contributed to the establishment and running of Sámi media – in interaction, cooperation, and conflict with external actors such as missionaries, investors, and state institutions. This has resulted in a rich and vivid Sámi media environment and infrastructure, with many of the characteristics of a media system. However, fundamental processes governing the Sámi media system are subjected to regulations, procedures, and institutions external to Sámi society. This article calls for greater Sámi self-determination over key elements of the media system.

This article describes the historical development of media policy in Greenland, and the shifts in the underlying normative and causal ideas that legitimise media policy. I argue that media policy reflects changes in Greenland's political system. Specifically, under colonial rule, Greenlandic media was state run and media was seen as an instrument to educate the population. Gradually, with the introduction of home rule, a paradigm shift took place, whereby media was seen as a vital instrument to strengthen Greenlandic language and identity. At the same time, normative ideas of media independence appeared which called for institutionalisation of the arm's length principle. Due to the influence and institutional spill-over from Denmark, I argue, Greenlandic media policy fit rather well into the “Nordic media model” although media policy in Greenland is mostly formulated without long-term or broad political agreements.

My main objective in this article is to examine the importance of political parallelism in Iceland through establishing the extent to which political parallelism is perceived to char-acterise political communication in Iceland by politicians and voters. Political parallelism is one of the defining elements of Hallin and Mancini's typology of media systems. Based on candidate surveys from five elections and a voter survey, indexes of perceived political parallelism are configured for politicians and voters. The analysis suggests a high degree of perceived political parallelism and that the perceptions are reflected in partisan ideological views of individual media outlets. The same – or at least similar – perceptions about political parallelism in the media system seem to penetrate the system irrespective of age and at the national, local, and individual level of politics. However, voters and candidates of social democratic and liberal internationally oriented parties perceive a significantly lower degree of parallelism than others.

This article illustrates how the crisis of the news media is impacting political coverage in Iceland. Perceptions of routine political coverage in the Icelandic media have not been studied before, and this article fills this research gap and situates the Icelandic case within the wider news media crisis literature. My exploration is guided by two research questions. The first focuses on how journalists and politicians in Iceland perceive political coverage in the Icelandic media and how the coverage is seen to affect their working practices. The second question concerns how the public in Iceland perceives political news content. Findings show that, according to journalists and politicians, the mix of mainly commercial funding models and the smallness of the media market results in even more superficial and problematic coverage than in larger states. Survey answers illustrate that the public mostly agrees with interviewee perceptions concerning how the Icelandic media covers politics.

News consumption has changed dramatically in the digital age, becoming increasingly complicated and fragmented. In this study, I analyse news consumption patterns in Iceland, drawing on data from a survey conducted in 2017, and compare it with news consumption in other Nordic countries. It is the first such study in Iceland in the digital age. The findings demonstrate that news are widely consumed by the general public, as in general in the Nordic region. Online sites are Icelanders’ most popular main source of news, followed by television and then social media. Legacy media are still most people's primary source of news, even if they are accessed on new platforms. Like in other Nordic countries, a small minority interacts with news online.

This study compares the media systems of the West Nordic countries, namely the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. All three countries are democratic welfare states with considerable institutional transfer from the larger Nordic countries. It is argued that the West Nordic media systems fit into the “Nordic model” when it comes to the perception of media as cultural institutions as well as the central role of public service media. On the other hand, the micro-size of the media systems in the West Nordic countries makes them vulnerable, and makes editorial independence more difficult compared with their larger Nordic neighbours. In particular, media outlets within these micro-size media systems seem more susceptible to clientelism, and journalists seem more inclined towards self-censorship. This article highlights how interplay between small size and distinct local factors shape the media system in each of the West Nordic countries.