Språk och medier är intimt sammanvävda och ömsesidigt beroende av varandra. Medierna (analoga och digitala) är inga oskyldiga verktyg med vilka språket förmedlas eller skriftspråk produceras. Språket i sociala medier får konsekvenser för språket i samhället samtidigt som språket i samhället påverkar språket i medierna. Språk är föränderligt och förändringarna blir mer omfattande och snabbare genom att olika språkkulturer möts och blir tillgängliga via de moderna medierna. Dagens elever växer upp i denna dynamik och kommer till skolan med olika språk som de informellt ”lärt” via medier. Skolan måste i sin språkundervisning vara medveten om och förhålla sig till de språk- och genrehybrider medietätheten ger upphov till.

För att utveckla språkämnenas användning av medier har det på Högskolan i Jönköping skapats en disciplinöverskridande plattform som bedriver forskning med medie- och språkdidaktisk inriktning. Ett inledande steg i detta arbete är att med en enkätstudie fånga in vad blivande lärare vet om och hur de tänker kring den beskrivna dynamiken. Denna förståelse ska ligga till grund för utvecklandet av medie- och språkdidaktiska arbetssätt i undervisningen av blivande lärare och i förlängningen ute i den dagliga skolverksamheten.

Enkäten undersöker inte bara kopplingen mellan språk och medier, utan även blivande lärares tankar kring sin egen och elevers medieanvändning. För att få en referenspunkt till antagandena om elever, undersöker vi även elevers användning. Enkäten ställer slutligen också frågor om de blivande lärarnas dagliga användning av medier.

Samtliga studenter på lärarprogrammet vid Högskolan i Jönköping kommer att få besvara enkäten under början av september 2011. Speciella frågor kommer också att gå ut till högstadie- och gymnasieelever på skolor i Ulricehamn och Gränna. För att få ett internationellt jämförelsematerial kommer enkäten också att utformas på franska till studenter vid Enssib i Lyon i Frankrike. Alla studenter och elever får avge sina svar under lektionstid. Eftersom enkäten kommer att ligga på webben kan svaren direkt importeras för analys i SPSS. Arbetet med att tolka resultaten kan påbörjas så snart svaren analyserats, dvs. från mitten av september.

De resultat som kommer att presenteras vid konferensen kommer att vara fokuserade på svensklärarstudenters svar på frågeställningarna om kopplingen mellan medier och språk: Hur man tror medierna påverkar språket generellt och hur man tror den egna medieanvändningen påverkar det egna språket samt hur elevers medieanvändning påverkar elevers språk. Som en logisk följd av dessa frågeställningar ställs också frågor om hur man ser på vilka konsekvenser detta får för svenskundervisningen i skolan.

SCIRA 2013 (Literacy and the social media/Digital literacy)

– Anders Svensson & Ylva Lindberg, HLK, Jönköping

Normer och attityder i ett allt mer digitaliserat svenskämne.

När skriftkulturen förändras genom de digitala medierna, håller även svenskämnet på att förändras (Erixon 2012). Privata och offentliga texter glider in i varandra, liksom privata och offentliga skriftpraktiker (Meyrowitz 1985). Även om skolan i flera avseenden kommit långt med att integrera ny teknik i undervisningen, betyder det inte att lärare arbetar medvetet för att svara upp mot de datormedierade skrivmöjligheter som används i samhället (Sofkova Hashemi 2008). Digital literacy kan ses som en kompetens som byggs i samverkan, via nätet och mot ett gemensamt mål (Gee & Hayes, 2011; Kalantzis and Cope 2011). Vi menar dock att denna kompetens även beror av attityder och normer gentemot medierna.

I vår studie har vi via en enkät tillfrågat alla studenter, däribland blivande svensklärare, på Högskolan för lärande och kommunikation (Jönköping) under vt 2011 om deras syn på medier i förhållande till språk. Deras svar kompletteras med intervjuer med svensklärare på fältet. I materialet urskiljer vi i stora drag dels en normativ uppfattning om vilka medier som har företräde, dels en mer öppen attityd till medieanvändning. Vi kallar dessa större grupper för ”whatevers” och ”controlers” (Baron 2010). Intervjuerna ger indikationer om hur de olika kategorierna arbetar didaktiskt i svenskan och hur deras attityder påverkar svenskans innehåll och metoder.

Resultaten väcker även frågor kring hur lärarutbildningen förhåller sig till begreppet medier, då en stor del av de blivande svensklärarna uppvisar normativa attityder som kan kategoriseras som ”controlers”.

Referenser:

Baron, N. S. (2010). Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Erixon, P.-O. (2012). Svenskämnet i ett nytt medieekologiskt sammanhang. In Skar, G. & Tengberg,

M. (red.). Svenskämnet i går, i dag, i morgon. Stockholm: Svensklärarföreningen/Natur & Kultur, 178-193.

Gee, J. P. & Hayes, E. R. (2011). Language and Learning in the Digital Age. New York: Routledge.

Cope, Bill, Kalantzis, Mary & Magee, Liam (2011). Towards a semantic web: connecting knowledge in academic

research. 1. publ. Oxford: Chandos.

Meyrowitz, Joshua (1985). No sense of place: the impact of electronic media on social behavior. New York:

Oxford University Press.

Sofkova Hashemi, S. (2008). Kommunikationsteknik och skrivande hos svenska barn. In Domeij, R.

(red.). Tekniken bakom språket. Stockholm: Norstedts, 121-142.

Swedish governmental policy insists on the need for public museums to turn to digital users.  This applies in particular the need for urban-centered societal institutions with regional responsibility, like regional public museums, to reach out to and include rural and coastal citizens. Most public Swedish museums today offer limited digital participatory opportunities to its users, such as blogs, on-line compe­titions, web shops, etc., however, still mostly at an experimental stage. The simple fact that there are various functioning forms for digital participa­tion available, does not in any simple way transform into actual, well-functioning user participation. Such practices instead need to become parts of museums’ overall strategies and also have to be thoroughly appropriated into everyday institutional practice.

Drawing on the notion of social demand (Olsson & Svensson 2012) this paper will present and discuss a research and development approach that we are applying in our effort to ana­lyse and to help elaborate instances of user participation among regional Swedish museums. In general terms, the approach is sensitive towards the web’s co-creative possibilities by help of analyses of best (participatory) web-practices, and it includes a research design that both accounts for and involves users’ deliberate and reflexive preferences.

More particularly, this paper will discuss strategies to examine the preferences of a regional museum’s users’ in general, and their rural and coastal potential users in particular. Drawing on methodology from audience research the paper will outline a potential design to document and map citizens demands on their regional (digital) museum.

Is contemporary media ecology an ecology that offers unprecedented freedom for producing participators, the “prod-users,” or could it also be understood as an ecology in which various forms of user participation are in fact conditioned, or manufactured, by professional producers? Considering the increasing research attention paid to various notions of user participation, these questions become important. This article critically discusses the theorising of mediated participation by illustrating and analysing ways in which users’ participatory practices in fact can be both conditioned and formatted by producers making strategic use of participatory opportunities. By drawing on an ethnographically inspired case study of a web company, Moderskeppet, this analysis reveals how the actual possibilities for participation thoroughly are conditioned by producers. The paper also analyses strategies and techniques applied by the producers to create a sense of participation among users.

On September the 7^th , in 2011, all players and managers in KHL team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl were killed in a plane crash. Among the victims were the Swedish goalie Stefan Liv. The collective grief stroke not only his home district but gripped nationwide and also included people far beyond Sweden’s borders. Men and women, old and young, addicted fans and people totally indifferent to ice hockey expressed personal sorrow and sympathy with Stefan Liv’s family, friends and home team HV71.

The vast majority of these grieving people had never met Stefan Liv in person. Yet people mourned, as one does when a close and dear person passed away. Interviews, with a selection of local people of different origin, age, gender and interest in ice hockey, show how close this relation was. The interviews display varied but also consistent perceptions about Stefan Liv as a role model, both on and off the ice hockey rink. Besides these perceptions may have been formed under the influence of recurring media representations of the goal keeper, interviews indicated that media contributed to the reproduction of the ongoing collective grief, partly by retelling their own representations, and partly by publishing bereaved people’s private memories and perceptions of Stefan Liv.  

In light of sociological theory of collective memory, and drawing on agenda setting and reception theory, this extended abstract examines the relation between bereaved people’s memories and images and the media representations of an admired and mortally wounded sports celebrity. Through a content analysis of local media coverage during the weeks after the accident, the media representation of Stefan Liv is constructed. This is compared with the interviewees’ perception in order to highlight the link between the local media agenda setting effects and the media consumers’ reception.

This study explores the character of an online discussion, with a view to determine whether it tends to be social or democratic. The examined discussion revolves around sports whose discourse normally exhibits no explicitly expressed political aims. The study also attempts to  determine to what extent concepts developed within political theory are applicable to nonpolitical contexts, namely sports. Adapting Schudson’s (1997) model that distinguishes sociable conversation from problem-solving democratic talk, I conducted a content analysis of 3993 postings on the web site hvfantasten.com. This web site is a venue for HV71’s fans, one of the top clubs in the Swedish National Hockey League. Since the sociable talk, according to Schudson, tends to occur between like-minded others, there are reasons to believe that the discussion mostly tends to be a social conversation. The results, however, seem to contradict the assumption. The discussion would not have been feasible without media, with regard to both its range and performance. Ostensibly, it looks spontaneous but in fact it is rather structured due to both an open and hidden, but fully accepted, thematic agenda. Taking part requires knowledge about the norms governing the discussion which can not be said to rest upon egalitarian conditions. The media dependency, the civilized structure, and the fact that it is norm-governed indicate that the discussion first of all tends to be problem-solving democratic, and then sociable. The study shows that concepts from a political context, at least in this case, are applicable to a nonpolitical context. The reason might be that the political goes beyond its traditional reaches.

Internet involves possibilities for public debate and civic participation in democratic life. Space is provided on the World Wide Web for new communities and public discussions, both with and without explicit political intentions. The starting point of this study is that online discussions in everyday life, political or not, contribute to the reproduction of democratic and civic culture.

The aim of the study is to analyze whether an un-political discussion forum in everyday life can be described as a public sphere and the discussion on hockey as communicative, democratic and deliberative.

The data consists of contributions to the discussion from three seasons, 1999–2002, of the Swedish National Hockey League. The final sample, 3993 contributions posted during totally 149 days, have been undergone a content analysis.

The results show that the discussion is open to anyone but dominated by one group of supporters and this status affect the discussion in several ways. The forum can be considered a public sphere principally because new areas and perspectives are continuously discussed. The participants cope well with language, truth and truthfulness but normative conflicts sometimes strongly challenge understanding. Yet communicative action is frequent enough to guarantee the survival of the discussion. The overarching character of the discussion is, due to its inequality, ordered structure and media dependency, a problem-solving democratic dialogue. Furthermore it is deliberative in several respects. Compared with political discussions on Usenet and America Online, the hockey supporters seek information and use arguments to a lower degree. On the other hand they interact much more frequent, incorporating and reflecting upon other contributions, and are much less homogeneous in their opinions than political debaters are.

The conclusion is that an un-political discussion in the cultural public sphere shows even more deliberative merits than discussions in the political public sphere. In addition, by publishing new subject matters and perspectives and being a problem-solving dialogue with a potential for communicative action, the discussion is a soil for reproduction of civic and democratic culture for far more tangible reasons than just being an association of people in every day life, supposed to produce the more indeterminable qualities solidarity and social capital

Research on media and sport has successfully contributed to an understanding of the structures, political economy, production and content of mediasport, for instance in terms of global media events first and foremost in television, the predominant distributor of mediasport. Less attention has been given not only to media based on the new information- and communication technology but also "the consumption of sport and the role of audiences in the communication process". This paper will therefore present findings from a swedish dissertation project concerning the consequenses of the communication arising when an audience in a local mediasport context takes possession of the new information- and communication technology. The technological development has involved not only an increasing supply and consumption of mediasport but also possibilities for audiences to create space where formerly interpersonal discourses are mediated independently of time and place. Clearly these discourses challenge the expert discourses of mass media, and audience members consequently could be said to act as citizens in a popular cultural public sphere which of the mediasport forms an increasingly significant part. The generally public nature of this space, websites and discussion forums, also create great opportunities for researchers to investigate discourses of audiences on media and sport. During a couple of seasons I have followed an independent discussion forum on the Internet frequented by the audience supporting a club in the Premier division of ice hockey in Sweden. To begin with the discussion forum is placed in a historical and structural context describing the development of the club into an actor in entertainment business; the development of media into a differentiated mediasport structure; and the development of the audience from consuming spectators into a productive fan culture. The content of the discussion forum is then briefly characterized on the basis of preliminary categories drawn from a content analysis in progress. Finally a discussion is introduced concerning the possibilities for discourses of audiences to find ways into and furthermore influence the public by means of online discussions.

En av de största och mest populära innehållskategorierna i medierna år sport. Symbioses mellan idrott och medier kan beskrivas med begreppet mediesport. Det är inte bara medierna och sporten som på detta vis växer samman. Hjälpta av mediesportutvecklingen tenderar också olika medier att konvergera på de plattformar som informations- och kommunikationsteknologins nätverk skapat. Här finns bl.a. sekundsnabb uppdaterad information, resultatservice till mobiltelefonen och s.k. webbradio från arenorna. Internet innehåller inte bara nätsportmagasin utan också de traditionella mediernas liksom förbundens och idrottsklubbarnas hemsidor. Vid sidan av detta har en flora av supporterproducerade elektroniska fanzines (fanmagasin) vuxit fram; en alternativ journalsitik som utmanar den traditionella. Genom utnyttjandet av nätverksteknologins speciella möjligheter till interaktivitet kan därmed även publik och supporters göra sina röster hörda.

It has been acknowledged the importance of associations, political as well as nonpolitical, for the foundation of democracy. In the last three-four decades the number of associations in Western countries have decreased rapidly and there is a fear of negative implications for the future of democracy. Putnam suggests the importance of associations to be their production of social capital, that is, reciprocal trust between people involved in such networks. This article argues for a shift from this focus of social capital to the communicative, relational and cognitive aspects suggested by Nahapiet & Ghoshal. This makes conversation and achieving common goals playing a significant role in associations’ positive effects on democracy. Today people increasingly build their relations and perform communicative action on the Internet, to achieve the same common goals they used to strive for in real life associations. Taking off from Schudsons model, distinguishing social and democratic talk, the communicative and democratic implications of participating in an online discussion performed by a fan culture, is investigated. The conclusion is, something Putnam hints at in his broad investigation into the decreasing activity in American associations, that the production of social capital might today also be digital.

Loyal customers, optionally distributing promoting communication about brands they identify with, are called customer evangelists. Within media theory they resemble the two-step hypothesis’ opinion leader. The promoting practice they carry on is called Word of Mouth (WoM), or Word of Web (WoW) when it is exercised on the internet. The aim of this paper is to investigate when, where, and how loyal users and customers of the Swedish web company Moderskeppet promote the company in their digital and social networks. The following overarching questions will be answered: What characterizes the promoting communication of Moderskeppet’s customer evangelists on the internet (WoW) and in real life (WoM) respectively? On the basis of these data different types of customer evangelism will be identified. A typology will furthermore be established in order to heterogenize the still rather homogenous concept of customer evangelist.

Civic culture refers to cultural patterns in which the foundations for civic agency are embedded. Furthermore, civic culture highlights those features that serve as preconditions for people’s actual participation in the public sphere. The features in question Dahlgren has pointed out as six dimensions: knowledge, values, trust, spaces, practices and identities, all of which can serve as empirical entry points into the study of citizens’ engagement and participation. In this paper one of the key practices of civic culture will be examined, namely discussion. Taking on Putnam’s acknowledgment of non-political associations and networks, an internet community of sports fans is examined with regard to how the participants maintain the quality of their online discussion in order to warrant the survival of the conversation. The overarching aim has been to draw nearer to whether such endeavour potentially facilitates an informal learning of civic culture.

The data was drawn from a content analysis of 3993 messages posted to the hockey fan community HVfantasten.com  during 149 days, spread over three seasons of the Swedish Premier League of ice hockey. One of four grand subject matters on the agenda was the debate itself, i.e. a meta debate keeping a close check on the quality of the discussion by commenting on violations of the norms. This subject matter, consisting of 400 messages, constituted the basic data for the analyses.

Drawing on Habermas’ theory of universal pragmatics and McLaughlin’s et al conceptualization of netiquette, an analytical tool was constructed, distinguishing easy violations of the discussion standard from severe violations jeopardizing the basic foundations for common understanding. The distribution of critical comments on easy respectively severe violations was used  for measuring to what extent the maintaining of standard facilitates civic culture: emphasis on easy violations was perceived a low facilitating factor, and vice versa, emphasis on severe violations a potentially high facilitating impact on informal learning of civic culture among participators and readers in the sports fan community.

On September the 7^th , in 2011, all players and managers in the Russian KHL team Yaroslavl were killed in a plane crash. Among the victims were the Swedish goalie Stefan Liv. The collective grief stroke not only his home district but gripped nationwide and also included people far beyond Sweden’s borders. Men and women, old and young, addicted fans and people totally indifferent to ice hockey expressed personal sorrow and sympathy with Stefan Liv’s family, friends and hockey team HV71.

The vast majority of these grieving people had never met Stefan Liv in person. Their perception of him must have been created in other ways. One of these is most likely the media in which Stefan Liv recurrently was depicted as a sportsmanlike gold hero with a sparkle in his eye and his feet on the ground. Probably, media also contributed to the reproduction of the ongoing collective grief by portraying people’s passionate expressions of the loss of the apparently positive identity represented  by Stefan Liv.

Drawing on the understanding of collective grief as an inversion of Durkheim’s notion of collective effervescence, this paper examines the relationship between media representations of identity and people’s perceptions of it as the basis of their unexpected temporary social relations caused by a tragic incident. Data were collected through interviews with people involved in the collective grief. Respondents were selected  in order to achieve variation in gender, age and interest. The answers describe different views of the identity that formed the basis of the collective grief, media’s contribution to the creation of it, and to the reproduction of the grieving process after the  goalkeeper Stefan Liv’s tragic death.

Blivande svensklärare och sociala medier

Läroplanen för grundskola och gymnasium i svenska 2011 talar om integrering av olika former av medieteknologi. Språk ska läras i olika situationer, genom skilda genrer och eleverna ges möjlighet att reflektera över olika typer av språk som medierna genererar. Det framgår således att medier inte bara är ett kommunikationsverktyg. Hur ser det då ut för blivande svensklärare i deras utbildning? Den senaste forskningen (Pearson Social Media Survey 2010, Hrastinski 2011) visar att sociala medier används just som kommunikationsverktyg mellan lärare och studenter, i syfte att organisera och informera. Men målet med dessa medier är mer ambitiöst ställt, då styrdokumenten visar att de ska vara en del av svenskämnet.

Som ett första led i utvecklandet av tvärvetenskaplig didaktisk forskning vid högskolan i Jönköping, har därför en enkät genomförts i syfte att ta reda på villkoren för studenters medieanvändning. Frågor har ställts om studenters: - uppfattningar om medier - användning av medier och medieutbud - samt, uppfattningar om mediernas påverkan på språket Av de ca 700 respondenterna, som återstår efter bortfall, är 60 blivande svensklärare.

En del av undersökningen fokuserar på sociala medier då dessa idag är väl integrerade i unga människors livsvärldar och informella lärande. Aktuell forskning visar att svenskundervisningen därför kräver matchning mellan elevernas erfarenheter och undervisningens innehåll (Olin-Scheller 2006). Ur detta perspektiv är det betydelsefullt att undersöka förutsättningarna för hur blivande svensklärare integrerar sociala medier i sin undervisning.

I vår föredragning kommer vi att diskutera två viktiga förutsättningar för integration av sociala medier i, såväl högre som mer grundläggande, undervisning. Vi vill, för det första, problematisera förståelsen av begreppet sociala medier, för det andra, problematisera användandet av sociala medier i undervisning.

När vi använder begreppet sociala medier, menar vi webbaserade applikationer på nätet som gör det möjligt för användarna att ta del av, producera och distribuera information. Vår undersökning visar att vi måste gå från att oreflekterat använda begreppet sociala medier till analys av varje applikations särdrag och användbarhet (Dawson 2007), samt i skolans fall hur de ska förstås i ljuset av ämnesdidaktisk forskning.

Vår undersökning visar också att man vid integrering av sociala medier i undervisning måste ta hänsyn till olika kategorier bland användarna, i detta fall studenter och elever.

Resultaten visar på gruppskillnader och därmed olika förutsättningar hos studenterna, som kan vara av betydelse för integreringen av sociala medier i undervisningen. Resultaten har vidare betydelse för utvecklingen av svenskämnet inom lärarprogrammet.

Språk och medier är intimt sammanvävda och ömsesidigt beroende av varandra. Medierna (analoga och digitala) är inga oskyldiga verktyg med vilka språket förmedlas eller skriftspråk produceras. Språket i sociala medier får konsekvenser för språket i samhället samtidigt som språket i samhället påverkar språket i medierna. Språk är föränderligt och förändringarna blir mer omfattande och snabbare genom att olika språkkulturer möts och blir tillgängliga via de moderna medierna. Dagens elever växer upp i denna dynamik och kommer till skolan med olika språk som de informellt ”lärt” via medier. Skolan måste i sin språkundervisning vara medveten om och förhålla sig till de språk- och genrehybrider medietätheten ger upphov till.

För att utveckla språkämnenas användning av medier har det på Högskolan i Jönköping skapats en disciplinöverskridande plattform som bedriver forskning med medie- och språkdidaktisk inriktning. Ett inledande steg i detta arbete är att med en enkätstudie fånga in vad blivande lärare vet om och hur de tänker kring den beskrivna dynamiken. Denna förståelse ska ligga till grund för utvecklandet av medie- och språkdidaktiska arbetssätt i undervisningen av blivande lärare och i förlängningen ute i den dagliga skolverksamheten.

Enkäten undersöker inte bara kopplingen mellan språk och medier, utan även blivande lärares tankar kring sin egen och elevers medieanvändning. För att få en referenspunkt till antagandena om elever, undersöker vi även elevers användning. Enkäten ställer slutligen också frågor om de blivande lärarnas dagliga användning av medier.

Samtliga studenter på lärarprogrammet vid Högskolan i Jönköping kommer att få besvara enkäten under början av september 2011. Speciella frågor kommer också att gå ut till högstadie- och gymnasieelever på skolor i Ulricehamn och Gränna. För att få ett internationellt jämförelsematerial kommer enkäten också att utformas på franska till studenter vid Enssib i Lyon i Frankrike. Alla studenter och elever får avge sina svar under lektionstid. Eftersom enkäten kommer att ligga på webben kan svaren direkt importeras för analys i SPSS. Arbetet med att tolka resultaten kan påbörjas så snart svaren analyserats, dvs. från mitten av september.

De resultat som kommer att presenteras vid konferensen kommer att vara fokuserade på svensklärarstudenters svar på frågeställningarna om kopplingen mellan medier och språk: Hur man tror medierna påverkar språket generellt och hur man tror den egna medieanvändningen påverkar det egna språket samt hur elevers medieanvändning påverkar elevers språk. Som en logisk följd av dessa frågeställningar ställs också frågor om hur man ser på vilka konsekvenser detta får för svenskundervisningen i skolan.

Visual Climate Change Communication: The Role of Images in Teaching Media

The field of climate change communication has long been dominated by text analyses, where the visual representations accompanying the textual have been more or less neglected. However, in recent years scholarly work on visual environmental communication has made progress. Hansen & Machin (2013) lists research encompassing a variety of media and communicative contexts, including television news, newspapers, news and other magazines, advertising, environmental campaigns, and films.

Previous research on media representations of climate change has shown a tendency, in some countries, to “nationalize” the global problem of a climate change – to turn mitigation and adaptation responses into a national responsibility (Berglez, Höijer & Olausson 2009). These processes of nationalization are evident not least in the visual communication of television news by means of, for instance, pictures of maps of the topical country recurrently fading in and out between images of volumes of water. In newspapers, visual nationalization occurs through, for instance, photomontages of the national capital desolated by severe flooding. There are, however, also visual signs of “europeanization” by means of images such as those of the EU flag flying (Olausson 2010).

Research indicates that visual representations of environmental issues and climate change tend to be decontextualized and aestheticized (Linder 2006, Doyle 2007), resulting in symbolic and routinized images whose semiotic openness allows new flexible significations and usage across different genres of communication. The same images meet news organizations need for familiar frames of reference to make issues more easily recognizable to audiences, and the need in advertising and marketing for products and services charged with a moral sense of connecting with nature and the environment. According to Hansen & Machin (2008), commercial image suppliers have significant influence over the visual representation of climate change by providing media with cheap and attractive images.

One genre of communication, not listed above, is teaching media. In order to enter this obviously under-researched area as regards visual environmental communication, this study examines teaching media used in primary and secondary school: Which visual representations are used in order to provide young generations with climate change knowledge? Do we see similar patterns as in news and advertising, or may pupils meet alternative representations that are not primarily characterized by nationalization, decontextualization, aesthetization, and routinization?

In order to avoid a decontextualized analysis, we regard image and text as interacting sign systems and the visual images are analyzed in their textual context. The analytical framework of the study is visual rhetoric, inspired by Kjeldsen (2009) whose analytical concepts have been developed from analyses of Scandinavian political advertising, a genre that is both persuasive and pedagogical. Kjeldsens theoretical point of departure is that images are visual signs that communicate with various rhetorical means.

Swedish governmental policy insists on the need for public museums to turn to digital users.  This applies in particular the need for urban-centered societal institutions with regional responsibility, like regional public museums, to reach out to and include rural and coastal citizens. Most public Swedish museums today offer limited digital participatory opportunities to its users, such as blogs, on-line compe­titions, web shops, etc., however, still mostly at an experimental stage. The simple fact that there are various functioning forms for digital participa­tion available, does not in any simple way transform into actual, well-functioning user participation. Such practices instead need to become parts of museums’ overall strategies and also have to be thoroughly appropriated into everyday institutional practice.

Drawing on the notion of social demand (Olsson & Svensson 2012) this paper will present and discuss a research and development approach that we are applying in our effort to ana­lyse and to help elaborate instances of user participation among regional Swedish museums. In general terms, the approach is sensitive towards the web’s co-creative possibilities by help of analyses of best (participatory) web-practices, and it includes a research design that both accounts for and involves users’ deliberate and reflexive preferences.

More particularly, this paper will discuss strategies to examine the preferences of a regional museum’s users in general, and their rural and coastal potential users in particular. Drawing on methodology from audience research the paper will outline a potential design to document and map citizens demands on their regional (digital) museum.

Ever since its breakthrough in the 1990s, the internet has inspired numerous theoretical discourses to analyse “the Net’s” significance: What will it mean to the world we once knew? Within these debates a number of conceptualisations have been especially significant, notably the early ideas of an “Internet Culture”, and later on analyses connecting the internet to a “Participatory” or a “Convergence Culture”.

Even though these conceptualisations differ in-between one another, they share a number of important features. One such feature is their preference for understanding the internet as a sphere that is dominated by everyday users, who act as active but “disorganised producers” on the internet through practices such as blogging, face-booking, website production, social networking etc.

This preference has given the theoretical discussion a problematic bias. Among other things, it has effectively discouraged research to really take on and analyse the many and very often powerful “organised producers” of internet content, who make use of economic power, discursive resources, and marketing strategies to reach out to everyday users (and curiously enough also offering them to “participate”).

This paper presents the theoretical foundation and describes the empirical design of an ethnographic research project* aiming to start compensating for this bias by analysing and theorising “organised internet producers”. The paper also illustrates the approach through initial analyses from one of the five case studies within the project.

Can contemporary media ecology be understood as an ecology that offers unprecedented freedom for producing participators – the so-called “prod-users”? Or should it rather be understood as an ecology in which various forms of user participation in fact are conditioned, or even manufactured, by organized, professional Producers (with a capital “P”)? Considering the increasing research attention that has recently been paid to various notions of participation, most often with reference to the so-called Web 2.0, these questions – as well as a number of similar ones – become important to ask. They call attention to the need to both critically discuss and investigate the supposedly transformative potential of the emerging, participatory media ecology. This paper aims to critically reflect on the theorizing of the ecology of participation. It does so by illustrating and analyzing some ways in which users’ participatory practices in fact can be both conditioned and formatted by organized producers making strategic use of the participatory facilities offered by the internet. The empirical case presented is the Swedish web company moderskeppet.se, today the nationally leading site for people interested in increasing their knowledge and skills in photography and “photoshoping”. Among other things, our analysis reveals that the actual participation of the 120 000 monthly visitors is thoroughly conditioned by the producers of moderskeppet.se. For instance, in order to avoid instances of “low standard” on the web site, no discussion forum is available. Hence, there are no open possibilities for users to participate, despite the website’s inclusive and “participatory” rhetoric. The only possibilities to participate is to either write non-public mails to the staff and/or comment on the producer’s blog posts. As a consequence, the actual participation on the website is – by all standards – quite low. Nevertheless, the producers of moderskeppet.se posit power to communicate the impression of both frequent and widespread user participation. The paper will critically analyze and discuss the strategies and techniques applied by moderskeppet.se in creating a sense of belonging, inclusion and participation among its users. How do they make people consider themselves participators within a consumer community, deeply involved in the activities of the website, whereas their actual participation is very limited? Or put somewhat differently, how do they Produce the sense of being a “prod-user” among their users?

Within dominant branches of contemporary research and public debate, applications like Facebook and Twitter are perceived as social media for user participation. Technical possibilities and socio cultural restrictions for user involvement are identified and discussed. Common to both perspectives is that users’ willingness to participate tends to be taken for granted. By studying a case where the users’ response indicates weak willingness to participate, despite the website producers’ efforts to offer social media for participation, this article wish to contribute to a better understanding of the conditions for online participation on the so-called social Web.

UMO is a very popular Swedish health promoting website intended for offering adolescents knowledge and advisory service on sexual, reproductive and psychical health. In 2010 UMO extended the use of social media by opening a Facebook fan page. One of the reasons was to attract new segments of the target audience, another was to make adolescents become fans. More than a year after the start, none of this have developed in accordance with the intentions and expectations. Analyses of data, gained from a content analysis of UMO’s Facebook fan page besides completing interviews with the administrator of the fan page and adolescent users of UMO, indicates a whole set of possible explanations for UMO’s shortcomings.

The study shows on yet another problem with uncritically asserting that the new Web 2.0 and social media benefit participation. What has been overlooked is that obstacles to participation might as well be sought from the participants themselves, and be an active choice by the audience. The bottom line is that mediatization does not describe a fait accompli, and that socio-cultural change in its wake in no way is universal, but rather is characterized by a set of particularities.