This is a qualitative study about Art transformation and commodification in the digital age. The study applies a rhetoric analysis with the aim to understand how art sellers, gallery owners and entrepreneurs take part in this transformation process through their websites’ presentation texts ”about us”. The analysis is related to communication theories but it is also inspired by other theories such as Gramsci’s hegemony theory and Bourdieu’s cultural critical theory. The study shows that in an environment of ”Global Communication”, activities that are related to the visual art on the net are strongly influenced by the commodification. Marketers and business managers have a big advantage of this phase of change in Art activities on the net. As senders in a one-way communication process, they use their rhetorical skills in their presentation texts to build identities or to enhance their business, depending on the positions of power they have in the market. They invest in art and artists, in order to expand their businesses and to capture a wider audience of recipients on World Wide Web to get more money and power. The study recommends further research about the Art commodification, preferably from the receiver’s and the artists’ sides to reveal more aspects of the effects of this transformation process in Art and its values.

Medical professionals are increasingly assuming the role of maker and creator. At the same time, digital innovations, as part of evolving information infrastructures, are becoming increasingly prevalent in healthcare. In this paper, we adopt a Schönian approach to understand how a medical professional, who is not an IS designer by trade, engages in the design of digital practice - turning what may appear as a failed digital innovation effort into a successful design of digital practice. Our inquiry suggests three pragmatic principles that call for further investigation: (a) professionals can make a significant contribution to design work by inventing means for fact-based, reflective engagement with the situation; (b) the reorganization of work practice involves organizational design, information system design, and communication design; and (c) developing design as digital practice entails the development of fact-based design practice and must engage practical theories.

This special issue introduction explores the need to study information systems as symbolic action systems, defines broadly the research domain and related assumptions, notes the origins of this perspective, articulates its key lines of study, and discusses the state of the field in light of published research. The essay also positions the three papers of the special issue in the broader Information Systems (IS) discourse and notes their specific contribution in bridging so far unconnected streams of research and expanding research methods amenable to symbolic action research. This introductory essay furthermore observes some unique challenges in pulling together the special issue that invited the editors to combat against the tendency to approach communicative processes associated with information systems as primarily psychological processes. In closing we note several lines of inquiry that can strengthen future studies of symbolic action including better design theories, more flexible and open use of methods, and attentive use of rich traditions that inform symbolic action research in IS.

This study is an investigation of how members of the Norwegian and the Swedish parliaments relate to and perceive their relationships with the media. Based on surveys conducted among members of the Norwegian Storting and the Swedish Riksdag, we find that male MPs have more frequent and somewhat less formal relationships with media and journalists compared with female MPs. The results also suggest that male MPs have adapted to the media and their logic more than female MPs. Female MPs also appear to be more critical towards the requirements imposed on politicians who want to get media exposure, compared with male MPs. Analysis reveals that gender differences are smaller among Swedish than Norwegian MPs.

A key concept in research on the media coverage of politics is the game or strategy frame. Contrasted with coverage of politics as issues, theframing of politics as a strategic game is marked by features such as winning and losing as the central concern and a focus on how candidates or parties are doing in opinion polls. The pervasiveness of such framing is, however, disputed since (1) the way in which the frames are conceptualized and operationalized differs significantly; and (2) while some use terms such as 'game frame' and 'strategy frame' as synonymous, others argue that there is a conceptual difference between them. Against this background, this article reviews research on the media's framing ofpolitics as a strategic game, what concepts have been used, and how they have been operationalized; and suggests a synthesis and ways of improving conceptual clarity and comparability in research on the media's use of strategy and/or game frames. © SAGE Publications 2011.

När den legendariska svenska reportern Barbro Alving, signaturen Bang, 1951 åker på reportageresa till det svenska Norrland gör hon sig till talesperson för myndigheternas framväxande välfärdsprojekt. Detta innebär att norrlänningar ska uppfostras till bättre hygien, bättre matvanor och bättre läsvanor. Den här artikeln gör generaliserande värderingar synliga när narratologisk och medieretorisk analys samt stilanalys belyser ett samspel mellan berättarperspektiv och berättarröst i Bangs åtta reportage från Norrland. Analysen visar hur valet av källor återspeglar ett klassamhälle där högre samhällsföreträdare, tillsammans med den berättande reportern, får stå för artikelseriens problemformuleringar samtidigt som framför allt fattiga kvinnors livssituation skildras med medkänsla men sällan någon djupare inlevelse. Med en närmast filantropisk blick görs norrlänningar till föremål för ”folkhemmets” välfärdsförbättrande insatser, samtidigt som de själva inte inkluderas i det ”vi” där reportern och hennes Stockholmsläsare ingår.

Hur ser berättelsen om svensk gängkriminalitet ut i tre aktuella reportageböcker och med vilken berättarteknik är den konstruerad? Med en blandning av narratologisk och medieretorisk analysmetod undersöker den här artikeln hur innehåll och form samspelar i Mammorna av Alexandra Pascalidou, Familjen av Johanna Bäck- ström Lerneby och Tills alla dör av Diamant Salihu. En slutsats är att skiftande berättarperspektiv kan motverka ensidighet, samtidigt som narrativ medkänsla utan parallell narrativ inlevelse kan hindra läsarens möjlighet att föreställa sig de skildrade människornas situation. Dramatiserade händelseförlopp kan öka närvarokänslan, medan en reporter som ifrågasätter sin egen auktoritet uppmuntrar läsaren till att undvika förenklande slutsatser. Till sist bidrar person- beskrivningar och urval av fakta i de tre böckerna till skilda budskap. Studien visar att reportagegenren tack vare sin narrativa form har potential att skildra samhällsproblem på komplexa sätt. Detta gäller särskilt när gestaltningen kombineras med gedigen faktaresearch. 

In recent years, media researchers have displayed an increased interest in emotion as an element of the content in both news journalism and narrative journalism. These studies lack a theoretical definition of emotion and do not usually specify what characterizes narrative journalism more than it being "not objective" and, consequently, not similar to conventional journalism. In practice, they identify emotion through frames of personalization or explicit expressions of feelings and evaluations. However, narrative journalism integrates implicitly conveyed emotion. To enable a broader understanding of the function of emotion in narrative journalism, this article gives examples of and analyzes how emotion and the related concept subjectivity is used and discussed in two different fields of research: social sciences-influenced journalism studies and literature-influenced studies. The dualistic view on journalism as either subjective or objective is questioned when narrative journalism (also known as reportage or literary journalism) is placed in a professional context, where the genre is based on its own tradition and represents its own form of knowledge, due to its main characteristic: a narrative form. Finally, the article demonstrates how tools drawn from narratology can illuminate diverse storytelling techniques that transmit emotion implicitly rather than explicitly.

The European Union (EU) initiative on the Digital Transformation of Health and Care (Digicare) aims to provide the conditions necessary for building a secure, flexible, and decentralized digital health infrastructure. Creating a European Health Research and Innovation Cloud (HRIC) within this environment should enable data sharing and analysis for health research across the EU, in compliance with data protection legislation while preserving the full trust of the participants. Such a HRIC should learn from and build on existing data infrastructures, integrate best practices, and focus on the concrete needs of the community in terms of technologies, governance, management, regulation, and ethics requirements. Here, we describe the vision and expected benefits of digital data sharing in health research activities and present a roadmap that fosters the opportunities while answering the challenges of implementing a HRIC. For this, we put forward five specific recommendations and action points to ensure that a European HRIC: i) is built on established standards and guidelines, providing cloud technologies through an open and decentralized infrastructure; ii) is developed and certified to the highest standards of interoperability and data security that can be trusted by all stakeholders; iii) is supported by a robust ethical and legal framework that is compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); iv) establishes a proper environment for the training of new generations of data and medical scientists; and v) stimulates research and innovation in transnational collaborations through public and private initiatives and partnerships funded by the EU through Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe.

This study explores children’s appropriation of media rules in a group of boys (10 years) in Sweden. The analysis is based on focus-group interviews where rules regulating children’s use of mobile phones in school was discussed. Drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, the focus is on how rules are made sense of and appropriated, and how this contributes to establishing, negotiating, and sustaining a moral order for digital media use. The findings show that the children justify rules by discussing them in relation to their school context, through criticism of the enforcement of rules, and through navigating different rule systems.

With the development of visual digital technologies it has become more common in the social sciences to both use and present research visually. This article explores different strategies for working with and including images in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA) transcriptions. The purpose is to investigate how, and if, the ontology of the transcript changes when verbal transcripts become visual transcripts. The article explores what ensures that a transcript is still a transcript and what happens to the reflexive interpretative strategy fundamental to EMCA when new digital technologies make it possible to incorporate images in transcripts. The articles focus is on the social life of methods as well as methodological productivity showing how images can enact different social realities and scientific knowledge.

This report started with the guideline project that revolved around two problems in the game industry, the hypersexualization of female characters and their stereotypical designs in games, and a wish to solve these problems. Fashion was chosen as a new approach to solving them and the question formulation for the guideline project was: how can we incorporate fashion in order to strengthen a female characters personality, role and overall design in games? 

Three methods were used; firstly a systematic literature review to gather knowledge about the fashion industry as well as the game industry’s character design process. Secondly, the creation of the guideline, “The design handbook – how to improve female character design”, which would serve by presenting a solution to the problem. Thirdly, qualitative interviews to test whether or not the guideline could serve as a possible solution against the problems of sexist and stereotypical designs and if it could overall improve female character design in games.   

The results of the qualitative interviews deemed the project a success; nine out of ten interviewees answered that it would serve as a solution against the problem of both hypersexualization and stereotypical designs. The results of the guideline project and the interviews answered the bachelor’s thesis’ question formulation about how to improve female character design through fashion in the following way:  

• Be inclusive. The priority should be to design interesting characters, regardless of gender.
•  Know who your character is. Give the character a complex and interesting personality and design with that personality in mind; it should be strengthened through all the other design choices (be it color, silhouette or outfit details).  
• Make it believable. The outfit needs to work like a second narrator and should not contradict the setting, the personality or the character’s role.  

With the intention of surveying the field of research in adaptive audio systems for interactive media, a suggested audio system design for adaptive music control is described, and a prototype implementation of key parts of the system is presented and evaluated.

Foregoing midi-triggered sound banks, the proposed design uses layered segmented audio files, defined and controlled by XML-scripts. The results demonstrate an inclination of a flexible system, capable of adequate adaptive behaviour of high quality sound.

The implemented system will serve as an extensive basis for future work contributing to the research of adaptive behaviour to both music and sound effects for interactive media, and also as a preliminary foray into the more experimental field of stand-alone non-linear music playback.

Business Intelligence (BI) system facilitates informed and timely decision making incompetitive business environment. However, decision making can turn out to be highlychallenging if information delivered by BI system does not meet certain level of quality.Organization can benefit from provided information if they are correct, comprehensive,current, and accessible. The organizational members who use BI application to make decisionare best informants to verify the quality of delivered information. Additionally,the implementers of BI system are the one who must be aware of delivering high qualityof information and can explain the reason of failures if any. It is critical to inquire bothimplementers and users. Therefore, the factors that can affect the quality of informationwere studied through comprehensive literature review. Low quality of information maymake customers/ suppliers’ relationship worse, shrink the efficiency of the business performance,decrease the level of trust on BI, and eventually cause to lose the competitivenessin market place. This thesis is intended at investigating fundamental dimensionsthat hinder effective utilization of information in BI system and realizing how these dimensionscan affect the quality and outcome of decisions. Study with an exploratorypurpose was designed and conducted at a chain retail stores in Iran to gather empiricaldata from both group of BI users and implementers through focus group interview. Theresult of investigation shows the main BI system utilized to facilitate customer/ supplierrelationship management and store operation management. Business areas and activitiesinfluenced by the quality of information include, inventory management, customer loyalty,competitiveness, and supplier management. The information quality issues are encounteredmainly due to technical failures, lack of competent system developers, changesin business environment, inappropriate documentation during the system developmentlifecycle, and logical error in programming and designing algorithms. The time, effort,and resources spent on exploring and resolving problems regarding to the quality of informationhad a great influence on efficiency and effectiveness. Documentation duringsystem development life cycle is emphasized as a crucial factor that necessitates furtherstudy in documentation subject. The preliminary findings signify the importance of study to consider information quality in BI practice.

Aim: This study examines the discursive construction of medical cannabis in Swedish newspapers, with the aim of understanding how the news media recontextualise the medical potential of cannabis.

Design: The study is centred on the concept of recontextualisation, which focuses on how discourses are reinterpreted and reshaped when moving from one context to another, with a special focus on recontextualisation in relation to the media. Methodologically, the study uses critical discourse analysis to qualitatively analyse 134 articles of different subgenres, published in four Swedish newspapers between 2015 and 2020.

Results: The study shows that medical cannabis is constructed around myriad topics and contexts, ranging from news that focuses on the medical potential of cannabis to articles where medical cannabis is mentioned in passing and constructed in a more abstract form. The media have difficulties retaining a conceptual boundary between medical and recreational cannabis. Moreover, the study shows that the medical potential of cannabis is discursively constructed using three different discourses: patient discourse, strong science discourse, and weak science discourse.

Conclusions: The study suggests that there is a widening of the debate on cannabis in the Swedish public sphere, giving more recognition to the potential medical use of cannabis. The media, however, show difficulties in refining discourses on medical cannabis, which results in an altering between constructions that are strongly connected to science, and those that are not.

By applying the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis this paper aims to explore how ideology works within the discursive construction of class, in the representation of the supporters and opponents of the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. News items from New York Times (US), El País (Uruguay) and Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) constitute the analyzed material. The paper argues that class-markers are important in the representation of government supporters, whom many times are constructed as belonging to the poorer sectors of society. Class is however less explicit in the representation of Chávez-opposition, which in fact is lead by elite groups. It is therefore argued that class in this context becomes a marker of deviance, which in turn works ideologically in legitimizing oppositional groups and disqualifying the support for Chávez’ government.

By applying the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis this paper aims to explore how ideology works within the discursive construction of class, in the representation of the supporters and opponents of the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. News items from New York Times (US), El País (Uruguay) and Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) constitute the analyzed material. The paper argues that class-markers are important in the representation of government supporters, whom many times are constructed as belonging to the poorer sectors of society. Class is however less explicit in the representation of Chávez-opposition, which in fact is lead by elite groups. It is therefore argued that class in this context becomes a marker of deviance, which in turn works ideologically in legitimizing oppositional groups and disqualifying the support for Chávez’ government.

Despite scholarly consensus about the importance of the media for democracy, scant attention has been paid to what democracy means to journalistic discourse and how discourses on democracy are interrelated with legitimacy. The aim of this paper is to explore how (il)legitimate democracy is constructed in newspaper discourse. By using critical discourse analysis (CDA), this paper examines foreign news items about Venezuela, a country that under the presidency of Hugo Chávez has challenged the dominant global political and economic orders. The analysis section focuses on two discourses about the Venezuelan government: the constructions of populism  and power concentration, which serve to mark deviance from what is perceived as a legitimate democracy. This paper argues that a liberal perception of democracy constitutes a central framework for the construction of (il)legitimate democracy, which is revealed not least by news discourse’s focus on what is morally unacceptable political conduct according to liberal democratic norms. In this respect, the media discourse serves to denounce potential abuses of governmental power but fail to recognize democracy in the context of a social struggle against the effects of neoliberalism and capitalism. In this case, the news media is hegemonic in the Gramscian sense, because it provides a framework of democracy that remains within the dominant economic and political structures.

Despite scholarly consensus about the importance of the media for democracy, scant attention has been paid to what democracy means to journalistic discourse and how discourses on democracy are interrelated with legitimacy. The aim of this paper is to explore how (il)legitimate democracy is constructed in newspaper discourse. By using critical discourse analysis (CDA), this paper examines foreign news items about Venezuela, a country that under the presidency of Hugo Chávez has challenged the dominant global political and economic orders. The analysis section focuses on two discourses about the Venezuelan government: the constructions of populism  and power concentration, which serve to mark deviance from what is perceived as a legitimate democracy. This paper argues that a liberal perception of democracy constitutes a central framework for the construction of (il)legitimate democracy, which is revealed not least by news discourse’s focus on what is morally unacceptable political conduct according to liberal democratic norms. In this respect, the media discourse serves to denounce potential abuses of governmental power but fail to recognize democracy in the context of a social struggle against the effects of neoliberalism and capitalism. In this case, the news media is hegemonic in the Gramscian sense, because it provides a framework of democracy that remains within the dominant economic and political structures.

This study examines the media discourse on the 2002 coup d’état against the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, with the aim of exploring how ideology in media discourse helps construct democracy in a Latin American political context. Critical discourse analysis is used to examine written pieces from Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), El País (Uruguay), and the New York Times (US). The study finds that the discourse on the overthrow and the events preceding it constructs the coup as a potential victory for democracy and as the definitive end of Chávez. However, after the failure of the coup and the reinstallation of Chávez one can perceive discursive renegotiations, such as the publishing of non-fundamental criticism of the overthrow. The study argues that the media discourse on the coup displays a highly relativistic attitude towards democracy, which serves the interests of the elite classes in Venezuela and of US hegemony in global politics. The article also argues that the flexibility of the discourse at hand shows the need for a detailed analysis of how ideology is (re)formed in media discourse.

This study examines the media discourse on the 2002 coup d’état against the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, with the aim of exploring how ideology in media discourse helps construct democracy in a Latin American political context. Critical discourse analysis is used to examine written pieces from Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), El País (Uruguay), and the New York Times (US). The study finds that the discourse on the overthrow and the events preceding it constructs the coup as a potential victory for democracy and as the definitive end of Chávez. However, after the failure of the coup and the reinstallation of Chávez one can perceive discursive renegotiations, such as the publishing of non-fundamental criticism of the overthrow. The study argues that the media discourse on the coup displays a highly relativistic attitude towards democracy, which serves the interests of the elite classes in Venezuela and of US hegemony in global politics. The article also argues that the flexibility of the discourse at hand shows the need for a detailed analysis of how ideology is (re)formed in media discourse.

Denna studie undersöker hur svenska nyhetsmedier rekontextualiserar kunskapsläget om konstgräsets miljöpåverkan och hur de skapar expertis om detta. Syftet med detta är att utveckla förståelsen för mediernas roll som förmedlare och skapare av expertkunskap om miljöfrågor och miljörisker. Material från nio svenska nyhetsmedier studeras kvalitativt genom kritisk diskursanalys. Resultaten visar att en central utgångspunkt för medierna är att konstruera konstgräs som en miljörisk, speciellt gällande risken för spridning av mikroplaster i vattenmiljöer. Emellanåt främjas en alarmistisk diskurs om konstgräsets miljöpåverkan. Viktigt för konstruktionen av denna risk och för att förmedla expertkunskap i fråga är en rapport om källor till mikroplast där konstgräs rankas som den näst största mikroplastkällan. Medierna uppvisar svårigheter i att problematisera denna källa, vilket bland annat leder till att mediediskursen emellanåt slår fast konstgräsets negativa effekter på miljön, men också till konstruktioner av ovisshet. En viktig strategi, både för att konstruera konstgräs som miljörisk och för att säga emot en sådan diskurs, är att knyta argument till en vetenskaplig diskurs. Studien visar också att medierna har svårt att hantera kunskapsosäkerhet, vilken emellanåt blir en drivkraft i befästandet av konstgräset som miljörisk. Studien avslutas med en diskussion om hur journalistiska villkor och rådande tankemönster om miljön bidrar till att främja riskdiskurser framför ett helhetsperspektiv på miljön.

Denna studie har som mål att undersöka hur svenska nyhetsmedier gestaltar konstgräs som miljöfråga. Detta görs i syfte att dels öka kunskapen om hur medierna rapporterar om mikroplastrelaterade miljöfrågor, ett forskningsområde som är outforskat i både svensk och internationell kontext, dels bidra med kunskap om hur miljövinsterna med konstgräs (återvinning/cirkulär ekonomi) porträtteras gentemot de miljörisker som det ger upphov till (utsläpp av plast och gummi). Rapporteringen från 15 nyhetsmedier och ett totalurval om 250 artiklar publicerade under perioden 2014–2018 studeras genom kvantitativ innehållsanalys. Resultaten visar att konstgräs som miljöfråga förekommer sparsamt i svenska nyhetsmedier, men att rapporteringen har ökat från och med 2016. Från och med detta år börjar konstgräs att allt tydligare kopplas till spridning av plast och gummi i naturen, vilket också är det vanligaste miljöproblemet som konstgräs kopplas till överlag. Detta kan, mot bakgrund av den traditionella medielogikens främjande av risker, i sin tur förklara mediernas ökade intresse för konstgräs som miljöfråga. Miljövinster med konstgräs framkommer inte i normalfallet, vilket betyder att denna aspekt överskuggas av de miljöproblem och risker som finns med konstgräs. Däremot konstaterar ungefär var tredje artikel som fokuserar på konstgräs och miljön i huvudtemat någon form av vetenskaplig osäkerhet kring konstgräsets miljöpåverkan. Gestaltningen av konstgräs som miljöfråga är till viss del formad av samhällsdebatten kring spridningen av plast i naturen, vilket ger medierna tolkningsramar för att förstå frågan, samt gör frågan nyhetsvärdig i sig.

Denna studie intresserar sig för förhållandet mellan medierna och andra intressenter i kommunikationen av miljön, och centrerar kring medieringen av mikroplastutsläpp från konstgräsplaner. Med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer undersöks kommunikationsstrategierna hos centrala aktörer i medieringen av dessa miljöfrågor. Syftet är att bidra till teoretiseringen av hur kommunikationsstrategier och institutionella logiker hos olika intressenter möts och omförhandlas i den medierade kommunikationen om specifika miljöfrågor. Studien bygger på 14 intervjuer med totalt 15 journalister och redaktörer, myndighetsföreträdare, politiker, forskare och representanter för däckbranschen. En tematisk analys visar att konstgräsfrågan blir intressant för redaktioner på grund av konfliktytorna som kan exploateras i frågan, och osäkerheten som finns kring konstgräsets utsläpp av mikroplaster integreras i strategierna som styr det journalistiska hantverket. Studien visar också att kommunikationsstrategier som är i linje med den så kallade medielogiken möjliggör för intressenter att nå fram med sina perspektiv i medierna och vice versa. Detta mönster visar sig exempelvis i däckbranschens kommunikativa arbete i konstgräsfrågan. Studien visar också att Naturvårdsverket, som innehaft en nyckelroll i frågan om mikroplaster, har haft en ambivalent kommunikationsstrategi i denna fråga. Myndigheten både använder sig av och bortser från medielogiken. Studien diskuterar också riskerna med miljökommunikationens anpassning till medielogiken, där denna anpassning riskerar att bli ett problem ur ett hållbarhetsperspektiv.

This paper examines the representation of the then president of Uruguay, José Mujica, in a long-read feature story published in the Saturday supplement of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. This is done with the aim of contributing to the understanding of how international journalism constructs distance and proximity in the reporting of distant subjects, and more specifically, how such constructions connect the Swedish audience to (or disconnect it from) political processes and relations in Latin America. In this way, the study contributes to the field of media representation in general, as well as to research on the representation of Latin America, more specifically. Critical discourse analysis is used to analyze the text and visuals. Three result topics are presented. The first comprises discourses that construct difference, such as those highlighting personal characteristics that make Mujica different from other presidents. The second centers on discourses that construct proximity between Mujica and the audience, such as those addressing sustainability and the connections between Sweden, Uruguay and Mujica. The third highlights discourses that distance or downplay difference and revolve around constructions about Mujica’s political past. The paper ends with a discussion of how this representation is able to construct Mujica as a close other without, in the process, abandoning key tenets of contemporary capitalist ideology.

This paper discusses news journalism about inequality from a critical point of view, with the aim of contributing to the critical theorization of the relationship between journalism and sustainability. Sustainability and journalism on social inequality are perceived as intersecting in at least two ways. On one level, journalism can serve sustainable development by providing high-quality content that can help citizens to better understand the causes behind social inequality and how it can be overcome. On another level, journalism would itself gain much from sustainable development on a global level, since that would provide a good ground for a high-quality journalism characterized by its professional and democratic ethics rather than one that is strained by market-logics. The paper focuses on reification and problematizes the ways in which social inequality is reified in news journalism. Basing the argumentation on examples from international journalism, it is argued that although the existence of social inequality in a specific country can be acknowledged in the reporting – for example by the reference to rich and poor people and rich and poor geographic spaces – the social, political and historical causes of this inequality remain abstracted. In this sense, reification provides a rather objectivist account on inequality, which in turn limits the critique of the mechanisms that lie behind it. On the long run such constructions serve the legitimation of social inequality, which indeed ought to be seen as a sustainability problem. The paper also argues that for a more sustainable journalism to take place, a shift in the attitude towards social inequality and sustainable development must take place in the broader sociocultural context that surrounds journalism.

This study analyzes the journalistic construction of the ongoing international renegotiation of cannabis, with the aim of contributing to the theorization of how journalism mediates between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic positions at times of crisis of hegemonic values. The study perceives the many ongoing attempts of legalizing and decriminalizing cannabis for recreational use as providing a disequilibrium to the hegemonic view of the substance as a dangerous narcotic that is rightly banned, and as intensifying a hegemonic struggle over the meaning of cannabis. Swedish print news journalism about cannabis legalization in different countries and contexts is studied, using critical discourse analysis. The analysis shows that journalism allows for debate between positive and skeptic discourses about the effects of recreational cannabis consumption and its medical benefits, and that voices that argue for cannabis legalization to combat organized crime are given important framing power. This means that a measure of legitimacy is given to discourses that counter the prohibitionist hegemony in Sweden, which means that mainstream journalism in this specific case serves as an arena for challenging hegemonic values that are in crisis.

This study examines the reporting on legal cannabis in order to explore the operation of neoliberal ideology in journalistic discourse. Cannabis legalisation is here understood as a way for capitalism to create new market opportunities, besides being a turn away from the so-called ‘war on drugs’. The study understands neoliberalism as operating via market-based logics that are interrelated with other social logics, such as those pertaining to journalism (Phelan 2014). Critical discourse analysis is used for studying Swedish newspaper reporting on legal cannabis between 2013 and 2018. The study shows that a struggle between market-based logics and journalistic practices is visible, where journalism has difficulties in challenging core tenets of neoliberal ideology. The article concludes with a discussion of how the current conditions of journalism limit its ability to challenge neoliberal perspectives.