The Media Welfare State

Taking a comparative approach, the authors provide an overview of media institutions, content, use, and policy throughout the region, focusing on the impact of information and communication technology/internet and digitalization on the Nordic media sector. Illustrating the shifting media landscape the authors draw on a wide range of cases, including developments in the press, television, the public service media institutions, and telecommunication.

"While many in critical media studies bemoan a homogeneous media culture and global neoliberalism, the authors undertake a sophisticated analysis of a ‘Nordic model’ of the media welfare state that is culturally and institutionally grounded, but avoids crude comparativism and is sensitive to economic and technological forces challenging long-established policy settlements."
—Terry Flew, Queensland University of Technology

“The Media Welfare State carefully amplifies a Nordic model in the media sphere. Here, as elsewhere, a Nordic model is essential for global sanity and we can all think of ways the model can be adapted, changed and emulated. Throughout the book, the text highlights complex, uncertain technological, economic and ideological areas of change in speech and society. Everywhere there is tumult: the authors' gift is helping us see how significant and important journalistic, political and social values might persist in a time of such transformation."
—Monroe Price, University of Pennsylvania

“The Media Welfare State is an ambitious account of the Nordic media landscape. It is an innovative, timely, and well-illustrated commentary on the future of mass/public media and national media systems in the digital era of globalization, marketization and authoritarianism—trends that are not by any means specific to the Nordic region. An important intervention to the study of the welfare state, the book brings the media into the equation of its success and future sustainability.”
—Minna Aslama Horowitz, St. John's University, New York

Trine Syvertsen is Professor of Media Studies and currently Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo, Norway.
Gunn Enli is Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway.
Ole J. Mjøs is Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Norway.
Hallvard Moe is Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Norway.

ISBN - Hardcover 978-0-472-07215-6 Paper 978-0-472-05215-8
University of Michigan Press 2014