Around 1960, the politics of the emerging media society in Sweden tended to fixate the formative functions of mass communication. The monopoly of public service broadcast media, press subsidies and new tendencies in film policy were some of the issues around which uncertainty prevailed. New methods to provide reliable data were sought by politicians, since empirical facts were required as arguments for an updated media policy. This article examines the different ways that the field of media studies was introduced in Sweden between 1960 and 1980. We argue that Swedish academic media studies departed from, and emerged within, a rather diffuse borderland between industry, politics and academia. The formation of national media research in Sweden can partly be seen as an effect of politicians and the media industry wanting to be better informed on issues such as media influence, media ownership and the habits and composition of the media audience.

The newspaper press is in a state of flux, reflecting both technological, cultural, economic and political changes. The digitization of the media is expected to bring about major changes in the media landscape and many are predicting the demise of the traditional newspaper.

However, the media landscape has always been in transition and the press has always had to adapt to new competing media as well as new economic circumstances. The focus of this study is on the meaning production of newspapers and the overarching question is how, at different times, newspapers have marketed their products, communicated their identities and legitimated their privileges.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the self-images of local newspapers in a historical perspective. It contributes to the study of the media history of the press by investigating how four local newspapers in the county of Gävleborg in Sweden have formulated and communicated their self-images over time. Self-image is defined broadly and contains different meanings of, and aspects on, the concept of newspaper. A common feature of the texts included in the empirical material of this study is that they, in different ways, describe what the newspaper is, what it does, how and/or why.

The period studied comprises ninety years, from 1920 and the time of the modernisation of the Swedish press after the First World War, until 2010 and the changing media landscape of today. The overarching questions for this study are: (1) What aspects of newspaper (institution or individual newspaper, opinion making or news reporting, the organisation or the audience) have been emphasised in the meaning production at different times? (2) What differences and similarities are there between the different newspapers regarding the self-images? (3) How have the self-images changed over time?

The study concludes with a historical periodisation covering the most important changes in the self-images. The period studied is divided into four sub-periods in which different aspects of newspaper have been prominent in the self-images: (1) Mobilization (1920-1945). The newspapers are described primarily as a means of political mobilization and the medium is understood as a political tool or weapon. (2) News reporting(1935-1965). The newspapers (and their supporting technologies, especially the teleprinter) are characterised as a fast and technologically sophisticated media between the readers and the world beyond the local. (3) Critique (1965-1995). The local newspapers portray themselves as scrutinizers of the local governments and others in power. (4) Construction(1995-2010). The newspapers start to describe themselves as constructors and maintainers of local communities and identities. In a globalized and boundless world, the local newspapers provide their readers with a sense of place and community.

The overall conclusion of this dissertation is that the self-images of the local press has undergone significant changes in the period studied. What the press – according to itself – is, what it does, how and why, and to whom, are questions that have received very different answers at various moments in history.

This chapter examines how the concept of innovation is used to transfer funding from teaching and research to industry and transform the concept of the social to the concept of the economic, through an examination of one Swedish Research Council, the Knowledge Foundation. In its most ambitious scheme to date, the funding of so-called KF Research Centres, the aim is to support the integration of research and teaching at regional colleges with regional industries and individual companies. The interests of major actors in business and industry are systematically described as the interests of “society” or “the region”. College teachers and scholars, especially in the social sciences and the humanities, are pressured to produce educational programmes and research that are considered desirable for these actors or see their disciplines disappear. In short, they must choose between economic or professional bankruptcy.

Bilder av Bergslagen, denna region utan fasta gränser, som sägs utgöra grunden inte bara för Sveriges utan hela Europas välstånd, vilar i bruksarkiv och i privata fotosamlingar men också i rumsliga iscensättningar av tidigare industrimiljöer. Men även i människors attityder och åsikter. I den här antologin skärskådas regionens gränser och idealiseringen av den vallonska invandringen; flyttmönstren och myterna om Bergslagens ungdom korrigeras; holländarnas och västeråsarnas relation till trakten undersöks liksom kvinnornas företagsamhet; i några essäer diskuteras idrotten, upplevelseindustrin och filosofiska aspekter på vad som gör en plats till en plats.

De 15 författarna från högskolor och universitet i Bergslagen diskuterar föreställningar om Bergslagen i ljuset av aktuell forskning inom olika områden som medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap, informationsdesign, kulturgeografi, ekonomisk-historia m.m. Boken vänder sig även till läsare utanför akademierna och kan bli en utmärkt reskamrat vid utflykter i trakter, där förändringen från tung industri till kultur- och naturturism blir allt påtagligare för varje år.Fram träder Bergslagen är rikligt illustrerad.