Med fokus på undervisning inden for dansk medievidenskab former artiklen sig som en skriftlig dialog mellem medieforskere fra to forskellige generationer. Dialogen viser, hvordan undervisning er indlejret i skiftende videnskabelige prioriteringer og samfundsmæssige tendenser – fra mediekonvergens til GenAI. Samtidig åbner det dialogiske format for vigtige overvejelser over, hvordan faglige og personlige interesser hænger sammen – og ligner hinanden på tværs af forskergenerationer.
We report on an analysis of how language is used to position South Africa’s two largest political parties in the Daily Sun, South Africa’s biggest-selling tabloid newspaper. The concepts of constellations and cosmologies from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT; Maton, 2014) are used to show how political positioning is accomplished. Negative characteristics of South Africa’s two largest parties, the African National Congress (ANC) and Democratic Alliance (DA), are foregrounded. This contributes to a narrative depicting politicians as ‘trash’, characteristic of what Barnett labelled “the age of contempt” (2002, p. 405). This narrative appears to be inimical to the development of healthy political discussion in the alternative public sphere (Örnebring & Jönsson, 2004, p. 284) facilitated by the Daily Sun. Despite this, the Daily Sun and other tabloids remain useful vehicles for constructive public dialogue about South Africa’s future, and we suggest some ways in which such discussion could be facilitated.
Focusing on the theme of international and global perspectives, this article presents excepts from three intergenerational dialogues on pivotal academic texts for both authors, bringing together insights from global studies, journalism studies, media studies, and communication and social change. The discussions explore key themes including postcolonial critique, hybrid cultures, data colonialism, and methodological developments. By reflecting on past frameworks and advancing fresh perspectives, this piece celebrates and seeks to inspire continuous scholarly dialogue on MedieKultur about global media studies.
This article explores how researchers exposed to digital harassment affectively experience and then transform the negative affects of these encounters through everyday media practices of disconnection. Based on interviews with 28 Danish researchers, the analysis shows that researchers’ experiences of digital harassment are related above all to affects of losing control over one’s public reputation. Researchers navigate and attempt to disconnect from these affects through three micro-media strategies: 1) responding to aggressors in alternative formats with the aim of defending their research; 2) saving harassing content, so as to create an imagined pause in the uncontrollable digital circulation of their reputation; and 3) blocking, deleting, and (de)selecting platforms to withdraw from the digital turmoil towards a sense of peace. The article concludes by discussing whether this form of affective (media) labor can be understood as a “hidden” digital work aimed at avoiding becoming the subject of a mediated scandal.
This article reviews the evolution of digital media research from the early 1990s to the present through an experimental interview with large language models. Treating generative AI as a situated, fallible “expert,” it combines exploratory review, qualitative probing, and reflexive analysis to trace conceptual shifts in the field, drawing on the archive of MedieKultur. We examine the evolution of digital media technologies and their uses, from online communities to data and AI, as well as changing research agendas, from early techno-utopianism to platformization. Critical towards the epistemic limits of LLMs, we urge to consider its outputs as prompts for synthesis, interpretation, and critical reflection, rather than as evidences.
Media theories are best understood backwards, even if they must be articulated forwards. Media theories have continuously responded to practice – to historically changing technologies and institutions of communication – in shifting local and global research environments. This article addresses the understanding of media prevailing in Danish media and communication research at two pivotal moments –1981 and 1996 – adding a diagnosis of 2026 and a prognosis for coming generations of colleagues to better understand media and theories when looking backwards to the 2020s.
Mens receptionsforskningen internationalt definerede sig som nyt paradigme i modsætning til effekt- og uses-and gratifications-paradigmerne, var det i Danmark den ideologikritiske indholdsanalyse, der i den tidlige fase i 1980'erne udgjorde hovedmodstanderen for receptionspionererne. Artiklen tegner med børne- og ungdomsperspektivet som vigtigt fokuspunkt et rids af receptionsforskningens udvikling fra TV-alderen frem til et medielandskab præget af digitale platforme, algoritmer og sociale medier. Teoretisk lader receptionsforskningen sig fortsat inspirere af et mindset med oprindelse i Stuart Hall’s encoding/decodingmodel; metodisk spænder den fra kvalitative interviews og hverdagsetnografi til datadonationer og virtuel etnografi, og undersøger i dag aktive, meningsskabende mediebrugere i en dataficeret kontekst.
Bidraget undersøger tv‑forskningens historie, aktuelle position og udviklingsmuligheder gennem en faglig, digital korrespondanceform. Perspektiverne tager afsæt i personlige erfaringer, som anvendes til at diskutere feltets udviklingstrin, metodiske skift, sproglige forankring og fremtidige retninger. Tv-mediet betragtes ikke som forældet, men som et område, der i stigende grad integreres i bredere medieforskning, særligt i lyset af streamingtjenesternes udfordringer i distributionslandskabet. Gennem dialogen udfoldes centrale tendenser, profiler og institutionelle forhold, ligesom udviklingshistoriske aspekter ved tidsskriftet MedieKultur inddrages som refleksionsrum.
Audio-visual communication takes up a large amount of everyday communication, including in the political and news spheres. With this proportion still growing, and the emergent logics of sound/music as sharing principle/vector, it is striking that sound/music is still understudied in its ability to communicate outside of a stricter arts-related sphere. This is not least true with regard to music’s ability to influence affect and emotions. In this article, I use the case of the 2023 Australian Voice to Parliament referendum to further the understanding of the audio in audio-visual communication. Through a qualitative analysis of two videos, one arguing for and one against the referendum proposal, I show the differing strategies of the campaigns as well as how deliberate use of audio functions as political speech. Thus, I take steps toward bridging a disciplinary divide and highlight the contribution of music as a medium of political communication.
Gennem et historisk og tematisk blik på MedieKultur viser bidraget, hvordan tidsskriftet over fire årtier har været i dialog med skiftende forskningsstrømninger inden for medier, køn og diversitet. Udgangspunktet er en forståelse af diversitet som forankret i sociale og kulturelle differentieringer – fra køn, alder og seksualitet til race/etnicitet, klasse og funktionalitet – og intersektioner mellem dem. Bidraget placerer desuden MedieKultur i en nordisk og international kontekst.
This article presents a mixed-method literature review exploring the (dis)connections in user research between media & communication and computational methods. Drawing on a large dataset from Scopus, the study combines network and keyword analyses with qualitative inquiries to assess interdisciplinary engagement regarding literature that relies on digital traces to produce user studies. Findings reveal limited interaction between the media & communication and computer science literatures, each field maintaining distinct research agendas, vocabularies, and epistemologies. While computational work emphasizes methodological innovation and data analysis, media & communication research critically contextualizes digital traces within cultural and theoretical frameworks. The review identifies emerging interdisciplinary journals and calls for greater integration through shared language, collaborative research, and methodological reflection.
Med afsæt i en række temanumre af MedieKultur fra 1990’erne og 2000’erne belyser artiklen, hvordan samspillet mellem journalistik og politik havde en central plads i tidsskriftets faglige drøftelser af den bredere mediekultur i denne periode. Artiklen peger også på, hvordan samspillet mellem journalistik og politik har stået mindre centralt i tidsskriftet fra 2010’erne og frem i takt med en ny samfundsvidenskabelig drejning, en øget internationalisering samt etableringen af journalistik som et selvstændigt forskningsfelt fra starten af 2000’erne og dermed i takt med en række bredere tendenser i dansk medie- og kommunikationsforskning.
Research on climate change has focused on news media’s framing of climate issues. With a shifting media landscape, news media face increased competition from other actors, including climate movement groups. This study examines how credibility and trustworthiness of a source (source ethos) influences attitudes toward information dissemination and collective action on climate change. Respondents (N = 507) were randomly assigned to news stories that varied in source ethos – legacy media (Dagens Nyheter), a conventional climate movement group (Fridays for Future), and a disruptive climate movement group (Extinction Rebellion) – as well as emotional appeals (hope, fear, balanced). While most results were not significant, Fridays for Future seems more effective in shifting attitudes on information dissemination in the balanced and hope conditions. Dagens Nyheter and Fridays for Future influenced attitudes toward collective action in balanced conditions. Findings suggest that source ethos shapes climate perceptions and that different sources play distinct roles in raising awareness and mitigating action.
This special issue on media and the environment grows out of the biennial meeting of the association of media and communication researchers in Denmark (SMiD) held at Aalborg University in Copenhagen in early May 2024. The theme of that meeting was “Media (and) sustainability: Crises, paradoxes and potentials”. After the meeting, we circulated a rather broad call for papers to the conference participants and other interested researchers. The aim was to get a sense of research being conducted in Denmark and the Nordic region under the broad heading of media and the environment. Most of the contributions in this special issue focus on media content and journalism (Agin & Karlsson; Zelenkauskaite et al.; Frig; Horsbøl & Eskjær; Sarras; Roslyng et al.). Those not dealing with journalism cover fashion (Mishra & Sandberg), computer games (Fernandes), and municipal climate communication (Grønning & Henriksen).
Instigated by climate change and environmental challenges, consumption of food and drinks has become an arena increasingly entrenched with identity and ethics. In this article, we examine the contested field of plant-based milk alternatives to consider how the cultural and discursive meanings of plant-based milk alternatives are represented in news media in relation to climate and environmental sustainability. Our theoretical point of departure is political discourse theory combined with sociocultural theories of consumption, and we apply these perspectives to our empirical data, consisting of 340 news articles from Danish newspapers across five years (2019 – 2023). The analysis shows a dislocation of the hegemonic understanding of what healthy and sustainable food is. Significantly, this takes place within a discourse of lifestyle where identity is negotiated as tensions in food culture.
The aim of this paper is to identify the network of meanings constructed around the hijab in YouTube videos made by Muslim women between 2015 and 2021 in Spain. To this end, a discourse analysis is performed on the 20 videos with the greatest number of interactions as well as on the interviews with six of their creators. The two focal points around which this network revolves are based on religious and cultural factors. Among the main ideas observed is the hijab in dialogue with fashion trends that emerges on social networking sites likeYouTube and which highlights the cultural hybridisation experienced by first- and second-generation Muslim women born or raised in Spain.
This article examines the challenges that arise as news media organizations address the climate crisis as commercial journalistic organizations. Following a communicative constitution of organization (CCO) approach, we analyze how Nordic commercial news media organizations navigate the climate crisis through the dynamics between words (“talking”) and actions (“walking”). Using a combination of document data and interview data, we examine such talk–walk dynamics in organizational communication about carbon footprint and carbon handprint. Our findings demonstrate how these talk–walk dynamics shift when “talk” – sensegiving about climate change – is positioned as the core product of commercial operations. We identify three key challenges in media organizations’ climate change communication: demonstrating credibility through leading by example, relevance through reflecting environmental concerns and values, and leadership through renewing practices when necessary. Finally, the findings suggest that while organizations grapple with measuring the carbon handprint, the concept serves as a tool to enable sensemaking on the dual climate impact of media organizations.
This study investigates new and alternative communication models of sustainable fashion within Instagram thrift stores in India using digital affordances of social media platforms. Drawing from interdisciplinary areas of fashion, media, and sustainability, we explore how social media platforms, such as Instagram, enable sustainable fashion systems of creation and consumption in distinct socio-ecological contexts. Addressing the current gap in the study of environmental communication and consumer behaviour, the study explores how Instagram affordances facilitate the promotion of fashion as an experience service through affective communication. Based on qualitative interviews with eight Instagram thrift store owners in India, our analysis reveals how these small businesses leverage Instagram to engage, interact, and foster a community with their customers to drive sustainable fashion consumption, contributing to the broader social and ecological well-being.
