<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> The article seeks the roots of the journalistic concept of objectivity in various theoretical schools. It argues that the concept of objectivity in journalism originates in the positivistic tradition and, furthermore, that it is strongly related to tan earlier theoretical school within historiography. Journalism has made several attempts have been made by journalism to break free of the positivistic objectivity paradigm, none of them very successful, however. The paper discusses each of these attempts. Finally, using the concept of objectivity as a prism, the paper sketches out what might be termed a landscape of journalism theory.</abstract>

Defining Objectivity within Journalism

PLENARY SESSION III. Media, Globalization and Identity. The Globalization of Language

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> Web sites are rapidly becoming the preferred media choice for information search, company presentation, shopping, entertainment, education, and social contacts. At the same time we live in a period where visual symbols play an increasingly important role in our daily lives. The aim of this article is to present and discuss the four main areas in which aesthetics play an important role in the design of successful Web sites: aesthetics play an important role in supporting the content and the functionality, in appealing to the taste of the target audience, in creating the desired image for the sender, and in addressing the requirements of the Web site genre.</abstract>

The Role of Aesthetics in Web Design

Where is Visual Culture in Contemporary Theories of Media and Communication?

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>The purpose of the present article is to examine the prevailing model of systematic organizational conflict management from an organizational communicative perspective and to suggest directions for improvement. Particularly the model of conflict management system (CMS) is examined at the macro-level from the novel theoretical perspective of social complexity augmented with an interpretive view of organizational communication. Specifically two models – the dual function of communication and the arena model – are utilized to illustrate weaknesses and points of development in traditional CMS thinking. CMS was found to represent a rather limited vision of contemporary conflict management. It is rooted in a mechanistic view of organizational communication, which, we assert, is problematic from the organizational conflict management perspective, both theoretically and practically. The differences between CMS and social complexity approaches are identified, and a fresh framework for strategic conflict management is introduced.</abstract>

Professor, Media and Communication Studies, Department of Social Science, University of Helsinki

Researcher, Media and Communication Studies, Department of Social Science, University of Helsinki

Organizational Communication and Conflict Management Systems

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> Electoral research has demonstrated how men and women sometimes have different political preferences. Men are typically thought to be more concerned about taxation, business policies, etc., while women care more about issues related to the welfare state. Thus, it seems obvious that stereotyping influences candidate evaluation with regard to issue competence. In this article, we investigate whether stereotyping also influences how the electorate views the communication skills of the candidates. We ask whether the gender of politicians affects the way citizens evaluate various aspects of the qualities of a political speech, and thus their support for political parties. The experiment used in this study is based on a pre- and post-stimuli questionnaire. Stimuli are videotapes of genuine political speeches (originally given by party leaders in October 2000) performed for the experiment by one female and one male actor. Our main finding is that the male “politician” was believed to be more knowledgeable, trustworthy and convincing than the female “politician” even though they presented the same speech verbatim. These differences in scores were the result of the male part of the audience consistently rating the female lower and the male higher than did the females in the audience. Among the female audience, the two politicians received almost identical scores on all traits. The candidate’s popularity and the popularity of the candidate’s party were also affected by the gender of the politician who performed the speech.</abstract>

Dr Polit., Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU, N-7491 Trondheim,

Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU, N-7491 Trondheim,

Gender Stereotyping of Political Candidates

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
In recent years, politicians and political parties have increasingly adopted various social media as political communication platforms. While the research on the topic has provided valuable knowledge about politicians’ use of these platforms and the immediate effects, the literature has mainly studied the usage in isolation from their broader communication with citizens. This article provides an overview of the emerging literature that examines politicians’ social media usage in a broader context. Through a scoping review of 49 studies published between 2008 and November 2022, the study identifies three main themes and seven subthemes in the literature and calls for more research to build more robust knowledge across different study contexts. In particular, the review emphasises a need for more longitudinal and qualitative perspectives to assess how politicians navigate between competing media logics in a hybrid media environment, how the new reality impacts them, and whether it alters their communication with citizens over time.
</abstract>

Politicians’ social media usage in a hybrid media environment: A scoping review of the literature between 2008–2022

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Over the last decade, the news media increasingly seem to have become a target for politically motivated criticism seeking to delegitimise the news media. The prevalence of delegitimising media criticism is, however, unclear. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which Swedish members of parliament (MPs) engage in delegitimising media criticism on Twitter, the party distribution of those engaging in such media criticism, and the targets and expressions of such media critique. Among other things, the findings show that when MPs tweet about the news media, they are more likely to be critical than supportive, and that a clear majority of tweets that are critical toward the news media contain delegitimising media criticism. Moreover, the results show that MPs from the political right – in particular the Moderate Party and the Sweden Democrats – are most active in tweeting delegitimising media criticism, and that the most common target is public service media.
</abstract>

Undermining the legitimacy of the news media: How Swedish members of parliament use Twitter to criticise the news media

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
In this article, we investigate the rhetorical uses and media frames associated with the term polarisation in Swedish print media from 2010 to 2021. We first produce a qualitative and detailed assessment of a sample of 240 articles and then proceed to a computational (word2vec) analysis of all major Swedish newspaper articles including the term (<italic>N</italic> = 32,805). We find that the term has changed its rhetorical function over time. Initially used to describe, – that is, used as a technical descriptor of events and issues in society – this use later became increasingly vague and general. Instead, it has been rhetorically used to <italic>amplify</italic>, implying a sense of urgency, conflict, or threat. Over time, the term has been used increasingly frequently, but has been applied less to Sweden and, instead, most often associated with political actors and events in the US. Moreover, we find that, for Sweden, the term polarisation was mostly related to social and political issues, whereas for the US, it carried affective associations.
</abstract>

The uses of the term polarisation in Swedish newspapers, 2010–2021

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Political communication has taken new and complex forms within the contemporary hybrid media system. In this article, we examine how political campaigning that draws on television news forms utilises the increasingly blurred boundaries between news journalism and politics online. We assess the digital television news channel Riks, which during the 2022 national election was operated by the Sweden Democrats party and distributed via YouTube. Deploying a mixed-methods approach, we analysed all videos published by Riks four weeks prior to the election. Results show that Riks blends descriptive, interpretative, and outrage genres, and strategically frames the most important political issues of the election campaign in favour of the party’s policies. Hence, the study contributes to political communication scholarship by emphasising how news has become an integral part of strategic party communication, challenging established scholarly conceptualisations of alternative media and hyperpartisan news.
</abstract>

Political communication as television news: Party-produced news of the Sweden Democrats during the 2022 election campaign

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Social media has contributed to the spread of populist political communication, yet we still lack systematic knowledge of the contextual factors affecting its use. In this study, we investigated how and to what degree platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) and party characteristics (populist vs. non-populist parties; political ideology) affected the use of populist communication by Norwegian political parties on social media during the 2021 national election campaign. Based on a tripartite conceptualisation of populist communication consisting of people-centrism, anti-elitism, and the exclusion of out-groups, we conducted a standardised content analysis of the official social media accounts of nine parties and their party leaders. Populist communication was overall rather rare, being most widespread on Facebook and least widespread on Twitter. Which parties used populist communication the most depended on the platform, and it was not always the populist Progress Party [Fremskrittspartiet] that communicated in the most populist manner. Parties located towards the fringes of the political party spectrum used more populist communication. Anti-elitism was more widespread among left-wing parties, and almost exclusively the right-wing Progress Party excluded out-groups.
</abstract>

What makes the difference? Social media platforms and party characteristics as contextual factors for political parties’ use of populist political communication

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
This article explores the contextual nature of fragmentation and polarisation – subjects that have attracted significant concern in the age of social media. I investigate the media sharing practices of Scandinavian Twitter users discussing the 2020 American presidential election, an event that attracted international attention. Using links in tweets, I map the media networks of users in Sweden and Norway in their national languages and in English. This intranational approach provides a view into whether fragmentation and polarisation are characteristic of the audience or the media milieu. The findings show Scandinavian users exhibit low audience polarisation within their national languages, but they display polarisation similar to American users when engaging with English-language media. At the same time, media fragmentation is higher in the Norwegian language than in any other sphere. This article sheds light on the relationship between the sometimes-conflated concepts of fragmentation and polarisation and provides a discussion of the implications of political information sharing on transnational digital platforms.
</abstract>

American media, Scandinavian audiences: Contextual fragmentation and polarisation among Swedes and Norwegians engaging with American politics

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
In this article, we examine how journalists try to uphold ideals of objectivity, clarity, and epistemic authority when using four overlapping terms: fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation. Drawing on 16 qualitative interviews with journalists in Denmark, our study finds that journalists struggle to convert the ideals of clarity and objectivity into a coherent conceptual practice. Across interviews, journalists disagree on which concepts to use and how to define them, accusing academics of producing too technical definitions, politicians of diluting meaning, and journalistic peers of being insufficiently objective. Drawing on insights from journalism scholarship and rhetorical argumentation theory, we highlight how such disagreements reveal a fundamental tension in journalistic claims to epistemic authority, causing a continuous search for unambiguous terms, which in turn produces the very ambiguity that journalists seek to avoid.
</abstract>

Facts, values, and the epistemic authority of journalism: How journalists use and define the terms fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
During crises, news headlines not only communicate objective information but also express attitudes and emotions towards the reported events through different linguistic markers of evaluation. By analysing Finnish headlines from digital news sources on 16–17 March 2020, in this article we unravel how evaluative parameters, themes, and actors construct evaluative images of Covid-19 in Finnish news media. The results show how themes such as daily lives, health, and restrictive measures are evaluated, for example, through emotivity, mental state, evidentiality, and style. Findings also highlight the variety of different actors, from authorities to ordinary citizens, involved in the headlines. Consequently, three evaluative images emerge: 1) the pandemic that evokes concern and solidarity in the everyday lives of citizens; 2) the pandemic as a challenging health crisis, with the authorities as responsible decision-makers; and 3) the pandemic as a crisis that creates concern and negatively impacts the different functions of society.
</abstract>

Health crisis communication in Finnish news media: Evaluative images of the Covid-19 pandemic in digital news headlines

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Nordic countries have experienced an upsurge of partisan alternative media positioning themselves as correctives of the mainstream, but only little is known about how many and who uses them. Building on original survey data from a representative sample of the adult Danish population (<italic>n</italic> = 2,455), this article presents the first study of the use of left-wing and right-wing alternative media in Denmark. Findings show that users are generally more likely to be older, male, and live in disadvantaged parts of the country, but that alternative media appeal across all levels of education and urban–rural divides. Results also show positive associations with use of national dailies and high political interest. Furthermore, use of alternative media is associated with taking ideological positions further to the left or right. Yet, the findings do not indicate that users generally take extreme positions. This study thus adds considerable nuance to the picture of alternative news users and also finds that alternative media with different degrees of alternativeness attract similar users.
</abstract>

Who are the users of Danish alternative media? A survey study on the prevalence of alternative news use in Denmark and profiles of the users

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
This article addresses the question of whether and how sourcing practices of journalistic news media have been transformed by online-first publishing and the hybridisation of the media system. Focusing on four Finnish news outlets from 1999 to 2018 (a daily newspaper, a news agency, a tabloid, and a public broadcaster), we analyse the essential gatekeeping practice of giving voice to actors by quoting them directly or indirectly. According to our data, the hybrid media context does not lead to an increased diversification of sources. Instead, our analysis indicates a concentration and consolidation of sources across different news outlets: a continued elite source dominance in domestic political news. This development we term institutional alignment, suggesting that, by foregrounding elite sources, the news media seeks to maintain both its gatekeeping function and its key position in networks of power.
</abstract>

Enduring elites in quoted sources: Institutional alignment in Finnish media, 1999–2018

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
This article focuses on user-generated discussion threads in journalistic online publication platforms. We investigate how journalists can apply deliberative norms to promote a democratically sustainable discussion within the threads. We also examine which opportunities and challenges journalists currently see with such threads in relation to central citizen democracy principles such as user participation and interactivity. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 18 Finnish news journalists and personnel in charge of moderation strategies. The findings show that deliberative norms are used to some degree in discussion-thread moderation, and that such norms are a key factor to promote democratically sustainable discussions in media organisations. The findings also show that threads can be useful tools for promoting citizen democracy due to their participatory features, but that several current challenges affect this, including uncivil user-generated content, limited representativeness among active users, and lacking resources to handle content in smaller media organisations. One main implication is that journalists see a risk of challenges with discussion threads outweighing benefits for democracy.
</abstract>

Online discussion threads as promotors of citizen democracy: Current opportunities and challenges for small- and medium-sized media organisations in Finland

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> Using mediatization as the key concept, this article presents a theory of the influence media exert on society and culture. After reviewing existing discussions of mediatization by Krotz (2007), Schulz (2004), Thompson (1995), and others, an institutional approach to the mediatization process is suggested. Mediatization is to be considered a double-sided process of high modernity in which the media on the one hand emerge as an independent institution with a logic of its own that other social institutions have to accommodate to. On the other hand, media simultaneously become an integrated part of other institutions like politics, work, family, and religion as more and more of these institutional activities are performed through both interactive and mass media. The logic of the media refers to the institutional and technological modus operandi of the media, including the ways in which media distribute material and symbolic resources and make use of formal and informal rules.</abstract>

The Mediatization of Society

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>This article argues that the theory of social representations can give valuable contributions to media research. It offers a new theory-based approach for studying how the media and citizens socially represent societal and political issues colouring our age, or some specific time period. Two fundamental communicative mechanisms – anchoring and objectification – are posited by the theory. These mechanisms, with a set of subcategories, are presented and it is shown how they can be used as conceptual analytical tools in empirical analysis. Concrete examples are given from a study on climate change and the media.</abstract>

Social Representations Theory

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> From the perspective of journalism, weblogs can be seen as a new category of news and current affairs communication. Although most weblogs do not even pretend to be journalistic or related to current events in the sense shared by institutional media, when bloggers approach the arena of journalism, some of their working principles can challenge traditional professional standards: Conversation with the audience, transparency in the reporting process or even participatory news production are common in blogging. By challenging the conventional understanding of what journalism is, weblogs have revitalized the voices that expect a paradigm shift in journalism in the Internet era. In order to contribute to the debate on the influences of weblogs on journalism and make it more systematic, we propose a typology of journalistic weblogs, along a continuum ranging from the least to the most institutionalized in terms of their relationship to the established media: At one end, we find weblogs produced by the public outside media companies, and at the other end, we find those that are part of media content and produced by professional staff journalists. We argue that weblogs are a symbol of the ongoing change in the relationship between citizens, media and journalists - a change that questions the basic assumptions of the traditional roles of institutional journalism.</abstract>

Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Iowa, and Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Sant Pau 4, 43003 Tarragona, Catalonia,

D.Soc.Sc., Senior Lecturer, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, FI-33014 University of Tampere,

Weblogs and Journalism

Journalistic and Commercial News Values

PLENARY SESSION II. Digital Aestethics. What’s the Point of an Index? or, Faking Photographs

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
This article investigates the concept of autonomy within the journalistic institution. A review of the literature reveals that journalist autonomy is restricted at the political, economic and organisational levels of news production, negotiated at the editorial level, and exercised at the level of practice. The article addresses the limits of professional autonomy, aiming for a wider contextualisation of the question to analyse the factors that restrict and enable journalistic autonomy. By investigating journalistic autonomy within the duality of structure, the analysis finds that autonomy is attained when journalists engage in the recursive reproduction of the institution. The level of autonomy enjoyed by journalists therefore remains a fluid concept that is continually adjusted to manage the daily task of reporting the news.
</abstract>

Journalistic Autonomy: Between Structure, Agency and Institution

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Nordicom Review

A journal published by Nordicom at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden

About the journal  Since 1980, Nordicom Review has been a journal devoted to new Nordic media and communication research. The journal is published by Nordicom, a...

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About the journal  Since 1980, Nordicom Review has been a journal devoted to new Nordic media and communication research....