Political structures and the evolution of late capitalism in liberal Western democracies lend a common frame to the development of national media systems. However, whereas media policy from the post-war period to the mid-1980s was largely driven by socio-political concerns and coextensive with policy for public service television, this model has been vehemently challenged. Key factors were the convergence of erstwhile-separated industries and infrastructures, as well as the ambitions of the corporate sector and governments alike, to benefit from the economic opportunities offered by the communications revolution. By assessing the changing relationship between the role of the state, economic structures and technological innovation, this research investigates these processes in the UK and Germany. Both countries have the two key public service systems but also feature striking differences such as the antithetic political systems and democratic processes (majoritarian vs. consensus democracy). The basic assumption suggests that a genuine understanding of contemporary developments is only possible if political/economic as well as historic/sociological perspectives are incorporated into the holistic approach applied. Thereby this study gives consideration to key processes and events which have determined transitions between communications policy paradigms and regulatory regimes. Given the Anglo-Saxon tradition of regulating, key processes and events in the UK are often indicated by the appointment and report of a committee of enquiry. For the purpose of this study the most crucial of these is the Committee on Financing the BBC (1986), which first applied market-driven politics onto British broadcasting, and whose recommendations still serve as a blueprint for current communications policy-making. In Germany the KtK Report (1974) formed the basis for decisive reforms in broadcasting and communications. Apart from that, however, Germany features the characteristic of administering state interventions in as detailed a manner as possible through legislation. Of central importance are, therefore, the rulings of the Federal Constitutional Court, which continuously set decisive parameters for the development of the broadcasting system. The thesis follows two driving themes which have been identified as crucial in terms of the comparative dimension and are elaborated continuously in more detail. First, the focus is on the interdependencies between public and private sector. Second, implications and responses of the central vis-à-vis federal characteristic of state formation are investigated. In doing so, the thesis draws on vast sources of archival documents as well as exclusive material from a series of elite interviews with a purposively-selected sample of very high-level sources, including Chairmen, Director-Generals, ministers, very senior civil servants and so on. The thesis demonstrates how communications policy-making is carried out in both countries and how these processes are determined by national regulatory frameworks which are rooted within the borders of the nation state. As such the research findings have broader implications for commercial and public sector regulation.

Dissertation Transformation of a profession of a news editor in the Czechoslovak/Czech Radio describes a formation and development of a newsroom in Czechoslovak and later Czech Radio and the development of its employees' job content in connection with technological progress, ideology, organization, but also with the amount and structure of news' content. The thesis begins with the birth of first Czech Radio station called Radiojournal and year 1923, despite the fact that the news were prepared by Czech News Agency at that time. A big part of the thesis deals with the period, when Czechoslovak Radio began to prepare its own news. Author focuses on a connection between the Radio and Communists Party of Czechoslovakia, the role of radio news coverage in the years 1948, 1968 and 1989, which are very important to Czech history in the 20th century and deals with then censorship as well. The thesis also tries to illustrate an atmosphere and working environment in the newsroom.

The thesis Media in Czech Fine Arts deals with the relationship between media and fine arts. The thesis aims to find, among other things, whether media can be considered a distinct theme in arts. The objective, methodology, and resources utilized are all addressed in the first chapters. A brief overview of how the topic was addressed in foreign fine arts follows; this was the main inspiration for the pursuit of this work. The main part consists of a selection of works of art where the topic of media appears and where the author of the work was a Czech fine artist. The thesis focuses mainly on painting, drawings, graphic arts and sculpture. The artworks are sorted into several subheads, primarily by the topic they portray, then chronologically. Each thematic unit makes a connection between history and theory of media, and the history of art.

The dissertation analyses changes in the role of editors-in-chief in ten leading Norwegian and Swedish media houses – today owned by either Bonnier or Schibsted – in light of the potential tensions between journalistic ideals and market demands. This duality is studied over a period of 30 years, from 1985 to 2015. The most defining changes in the structural framework under which editors-in-chief work are the ongoing technological revolution, the transformation from an analogue into a digital society, and structural, economic changes related to this development. Methodologically, the study builds on data from qualitative in-depth interviews, mainly with 33 past and present editors-in-chief. It also contains a study of how the role of editors-in-chief has been reported and discussed in the magazines of two media branch organisations. The changing role of editors-in-chief is analysed within an institutional perspective. The main empirical results are as follows: (1) Owners and company management have considered the recruitment of editors-in-chief to be highly important throughout the period, and they have used their influence actively. Internal recruitment processes are a standard procedure. Very few of those chosen are women; men recruit other men. The last decade shows a recruitment process becoming more centralized and professionalized. (2) Most editors-in-chief represented in the study have a background in the newsroom. This has traditionally been the main qualification. (3) Regular meetings have structured most of the working hours for editors-in-chief. From an institutional perspective, meetings have played a norm-setting and ritualised role. During the last decade, some of those meetings have included not only journalists but also employees from other departments. (4) Those respondents who were active during the last period investigated perceive the increased speed of work on a daily basis and the more complex editorial role as the main changes and challenges. (5) Many of the respondents are so-called ‘silent’ editors. Due to a lack of time, they do not write much in their own papers. Lately, this has changed to some extent, especially among Swedish editors. This finding is one of the major differences between Norwegian and Swedish editors-in-chief. (6) Editors are still responsible for journalistic content, but demands on the part of commercial management have gradually become more important, and strategic decisions have become more centralized. The metaphor about the need to balance the demands of the ‘Marketplace and Cathedral’ has been replaced by the metaphor ‘We are all in the same boat’. The journalistic institution is under pressure. (7) Despite the immense technological and economic changes in the business and in the structural framework, there is also stability in the role due to the robust nature of journalism as an institution. The role of editor-in-chief is complex, and during the last 30 years, it has become even more so. The structural conditions have affected the role in various ways. While the basic tasks of editors-in-chief remain rooted in editorial work, downsizing and market demands have simultaneously undermined the autonomy and power of editors-in-chief, especially in relation to central media group management.

This thesis uncovers and analyses the relationship between forms of talk on British television between 1970-1990, and the uneven transformations in gender politics that occurred in this period, which encompasses both the second wave feminist movement and the rise of neoliberal politics. It presents five historical case studies of talk-based television programmes from across this time period: No Man’s Land (Associated Television/ITV, 1973), Good Afternoon! (Thames Television/ITV, 1971-1984), Pictures of Women: Sexuality (Channel 4, 1984), Watch the Woman (Channel 4, 1985), and Question Time (BBC One, 1979-present). These case studies offer a deliberate selection of television texts that differ according to their institutional contexts; their position in the schedules; their status in existing broadcasting histories; their discursive arrangements; and their modes of address. The thesis seeks to consider how the communicative ethos of television talk has been gendered in three key ways: at the level of production - in the sense of when, how, and why television spaces have been opened up for gendered forms of talk in relationship to wider shifts in gender politics; at the level of the text - in terms of how the discursive arrangements of talk-based programmes have worked to include, exclude, legitimise or disavow women’s voices; and at the level of critical reception - in the sense of how television talk has been evaluated in profoundly gendered terms. The thesis is methodologically innovative because it theorises gendered forms of television talk in relationship to histories of television production, as well as to broader political, cultural and gender histories. It carries out important empirical ‘recovery work’ of hidden women’s television histories through the presentation of original archival research. It also presents theoretical work, which re-evaluates the distinctive communicative ethos of television – or its “sociability” in light of feminist theories of language, gender and power. Moreover, it sheds some historical light on why the institutional parameters of television still delimit the available spaces for women's speech.

In the midst of Frances revolution, and the shockwaves it sent all over Europe and further, another revolutionary change took place. It was the threat of literature. This paper studies certain political actor’s solutions to the challenges that faced but also shaped politics and the technologies themselves, such as reading, in England during the 1790’s. For many the spreading of literature was an end in itself. It held the enlightenment promise of a world runned by reason. But it was also a means. The intellectuals typically associated with the revolution in France, and the welcoming of it in England, – say Voltaire and Thomas Paine – were all well versed in the workings of literature. Pitted against the revolutionaries we usually find political actors such as Edmund Burke. This paper argues for more nuanced and historical understanding of the conflict, one that doesn’t give literature any inherent properties, as an a priori radical tool. We need to understand these technologies as something that there could be a different kind of solution to than repression, that Burke and his fellow hostiles to the revolution rather shaped these technologies in a mould that would fit their political cast. In this way there was, besides the ideological disputes, a struggle for the nature of literature. This took shape through a renewed interest in educating the people in institutions such as Sunday schools, and by press efforts like the magazine Anti-Jacobin; or, the weekly examiner, which form the basis of the study. This paper argues that they changed the rules of literature. Therefore it is not the immediate introduction of a technology or media that necessarily is revolutionary – not Gutenberg, nor Arpanet – but when it is spread to the people and when certain protocols for the media is shaped, that is, when they are assigned a function. This paper is a study of the shaping of literatures protocols and with that the anti-Jacobins themselves.

The subject of this study is August Strindberg’s interaction with the visual media of his day. Its dual aim is to examine Strindberg’s work in the light of media history and to allow Strindberg’s work in turn to illuminate the media history of the fin de siècle. Taking its cue from the commonplace scholarly observation that Strindberg’s drama, particularly that of his later phase, is strikingly “cinematic”, it asks: What do such comparisons really tell us about Strindberg’s art and what, if anything, do they tell us about cinema? The thesis of this study is that the putatively “cinematic” style of Strindberg’s writings can only be understood against the backdrop of a mass culture, oriented towards the visual sense, which was undergoing rapid expansion at the turn of the last century. In devising his “dream play techniques”, it argues, Strindberg both drew on and reacted against various image-based modes of representation that had become extremely widespread in the late nineteenth century. The loss of reality that is so prominent a feature of works such as To Damascus (1898) or A Dream Play (1901) should in this sense be regarded as marked by an experience of mediatization, that is, the steady incorporation of all aspects of daily life by mass media technologies. Shifting the spotlight away from cinema, a critical encounter with Strindberg’s work can cast light on largely overlooked media practices such as magic lantern or Sciopticon exhibition, panoramic entertainments, instantaneous photography, and the introduction of the halftone process in printing. At the same time as it unsettles received notions of Strindberg’s drama as “cinematic”, the study seeks to show how the writings of this revolutionary artist can provide fresh material for a reassessment of life in a media-saturated age.

This thesis analyses the development towards a mass market pornographic press. Sweden (in addition to Denmark) is often described as a forerunner in this development when the so-called “porn wave” hit most of the Western world in the late 1960s. The “porn wave” was the starting point of the contemporary pornographic press, which put sexually explicit pictures on the international market. Denmark was the first country in the world to decriminalize pornographic pictures in 1969 and Sweden followed in 1971. While previous research in Sweden often blames decriminalisation for the growth of the pornographic market, this thesis shows that the “porn wave” preceded the alteration of the Freedom of the press act and thus calls for a more multifaceted analysis of the development. Very few studies have been made about the development from an underground exclusive market of explicit pornography to a legal mass market. This thesis, however, makes a survey of all the Swedish publishers of pornographic magazines, their length on the market, and the market conditions. By analysing the regulation of pornography prior to 1971 and the legal cases leading to prosecutions of the publishers, the strategies used to challenge the regulation are traced. Special attention is also paid to how the monopoly on distribution held by Pressbyrån, a company owned by the Swedish press, affected the pornographic press. By cooperating and starting their own distribution channels, the pornography publishers managed to challenge Pressbyrån’s regulations. Great emphasis is laid on the discursive construction of pornography in mass media and in the parliamentary debates. This thesis argues that the antagonisms between the pornographic press and its critics are central in understanding how pornography was perceived and that these debates have decisively impacted the market conditions. Sensation-seeking articles in the evening papers, and the politicians’ liberal attitudes towards the pornographic press, made the market seem more open and lucrative. The resistance towards the establishment of a mass market and explicit pornographic press was strong during the whole period – but these critics used quite varying arguments. By analysing these arguments, this thesis shows how the pornographic press touched on sensitive cultural norms regarding marriage, young people’s sexuality, homosexuality, gender and love. The second half of the 1960s was a turning point in the development of the pornographic press, the discursive construction of pornography and in the political strategies used to combat pornography. In just a few years, the pornographic press grew substantially and started to publish explicit pictures of intercourse. In that same period, the construction of pornography went from a conservatively Christian understanding to a sexually liberal – and later to a feminist understanding of its problems. The government introduced a “porn raid” against the magazines, prosecuted many of them, and then paradoxically decriminalized pornography in 1971. Theoretically, the conclusion is made that pornography has to be seen in its historical context and in relation to its special market conditions. Since pornography continually has been a contested commodity, its controversial status has resulted in special regulations, marketing difficulties and lack of income from advertisements.

Denna avhandling handlar om hur samhället presenterades för barn via skolradion och Folkskolans barntidning under 1930-talet. I avhandlingen granskas hur såväl barnen som medierna i sig gjordes till redskap i den ideologiska striden om välfärdsstatens förändring och innebörder under 1900-talet. Studien handlar om innehållet i medierna och de om de aktörer som utformade program och texter. Vilka aktörer ville ha med barn och varför blev barn användbara i striden om skolradions innehåll och utformning? Vad fanns det för likheter och skillnader i sättet att tilltala och beskriva barn i de båda medierna? Ett viktigt resultat i avhandlingen är hur genus och etnicitet relaterades till barn i skapandet av en svensk folkhemsidentitet. / 2000

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The present research takes as motif the meanings and historic changes in science and technology discourse of farming and agriculture specialty in the Platina Region. It is oriented by the rationale of perceiving how discourses about the topic, disseminated by journals specialized in farming and agriculture, deployed and enabled meanings to ideal readers during the 20th century in the Platina Region, specifically the Campanha Area in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and Uruguay. By other means, it is aimed at recognizing how power relations are exercised in the scope of scientific knowledge, enabling changes in the discourse of science public communication throughout such century. To answer to such questions, the present study is aimed at investigating the meanings and changes occurred on discursive regularities of periodicals that spread scientific knowledge in Brazil and Uruguay. Brazilian trimestral publications are edited under the responsibility of Associação Brasileira de Criadores Ovinos (Brazilian Association of Ovine Breeders; Bagé Rio Grande do Sul) and disseminated since 1942. From Uruguay, the monthly, commercial and independent magazine La Propaganda Rural (Montevideo-UY), published since 1901, was analyzed. The choice for such periodicals was made in view of the long production period, which allows the analysis of changes occurred on discourse during the 20th century and by their characterization as media products specialized in spreading information about farming and agriculture, including scientific and technologic knowledge of the area. The theoretical-methodological outlook is based on the scope of the Discourse Analysis of French origin, in order to determine which different discursive genres were produced by the periodicals and which discursive formations the enunciations are conditioned to throughout the decades. With such theoretical approach, we understand that the discourses about sciences obey the ideological formation of will to know and carry the concepts of scientific communication, scientific dissemination and scientific journalism as discursive formations. The concept of scientific popularization is adopted as a device that enables the exercise of power relations by non-specialists in the scope of sciences. The analysis taken noted the existence of four discursive genres: the qualifying, the prescriptive, the technical, particular to specialists elaboration, and the scientific-informative genre, produced by journalists. Furthermore, we understand that changes in meaning and enunciation constructions are associated to the beginning of the production of the periodicals by their journalist s editorial staff. Therewith, the discursive practice moves from an exclusive conditioning of scientific communication formation to a double conditioning of scientific communication and scientific journalism formations, period in which the beginnings of the use of the scientific popularization device is presented, by means of the scientific-informative genre. / Esta pesquisa tem como tema os sentidos e mudanças históricas no discurso sobre ciência e tecnologia da especialidade agropecuária na região Platina. É orientada pela justificativa de conhecer como os discursos sobre a temática, veiculados por revistas especializadas em agropecuária, implantaram-se e possibilitaram sentidos para leitores ideais durante o século XX na região Platina, especificamente a zona da Campanha do Rio Grande do Sul e o Uruguai. Por outra via, almeja-se reconhecer como as relações de poder são exercidas no âmbito dos saberes científicos, possibilitando mudanças no discurso da comunicação pública da ciência no decorrer desse século. Para responder a tais inquietações, objetiva-se investigar os sentidos e mudanças ocorridas nas regularidades discursivas de periódicos que difundem os saberes científicos do Brasil e do Uruguai. As publicações trimestrais brasileiras são editadas sob a responsabilidade da Associação Brasileira de Criadores Ovinos (Bagé-RS) e veiculadas desde 1942. Do Uruguai, analisou-se a revista mensal, comercial e independente La Propaganda Rural (Montevidéu-UY), publicada desde 1901. A escolha por ambas foi realizada tendo em vista o longo período de produção, que permite a análise das mudanças ocorridas no discurso durante o século XX, e por elas se caracterizarem como produtos midiáticos especializados em difundir informações sobre agropecuária, incluindo os saberes científicos e tecnológicos da área. O panorama teórico-metodológico baseia-se no escopo da Análise do Discurso de origem francesa para apreender quais diferentes gêneros discursivos foram produzidos pelos periódicos e a quais formações discursivas os enunciados estão condicionados no decorrer das décadas. Com a abordagem teórica, entende-se que os discursos sobre ciências obedecem à formação ideológica de vontade de saber e utilizam-se os conceitos de comunicação científica, divulgação científica e jornalismo científico como formações discursivas. O conceito de popularização científica é adotado como um dispositivo que permite o exercício das relações de poder por não-especialistas no âmbito das ciências. A análise empreendida constatou a existência de quatro gêneros discursivos: o qualificativo, o prescritivo, o técnico, próprios da elaboração por especialistas, e o informativo-científico, produzido por jornalistas. Entende-se, ainda, que as mudanças na construção enunciativa e de sentido estão associadas ao início da produção dos periódicos pelas equipes editoriais de jornalistas. Com isso, a prática discursiva passa de um condicionamento exclusivo à formação de comunicação científica para um duplo condicionamento às formações de comunicação científica e de jornalismo científico, período no qual se apresenta os primórdios do uso do dispositivo de popularização científica, através do gênero informativo-científico.