Peter Dahlgren
Biographic Data
| ID | 197770 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Dahlgren |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Dahlgren |
| SIGNATURE | DAHLGREN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lund University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3509-3329 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 737 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Media Engagement
Parameters of Media Engagement
Engagement is a tricky term to pin down, shifting meaning in the media industries, across political communication and within popular culture. But the definition of engagement matters, as new currencies circulate in academic and industry discourses. The argument put forward here is that media engagement is a term that has been used in a strategic way within the media industries to capture social media analytics and ratings performance, thus instru…
Selective Exposure to Public Service News over Thirty Years: The Role of Ideological Leaning, Party Support, and Political Interest
The transition from a low-choice to a high-choice media environment has led to concerns about audience fragmentation, ideological enclaves, and selective exposure to partisan news media consistent with people’s political preferences. However, previous research has mainly focused on two-party systems (e.g., the United States) and partisan news (e.g., Fox News or MSNBC), studied at single points in time. The aim of this paper is therefore to provid…
Reinforcing spirals at work? Mutual influences between selective news exposure and ideological leaning
The growth of partisan news sources has raised concerns that people will increasingly select attitude-consistent information, which might lead to increasing political polarization. Thus far, there is limited research on the long-term mutual influences between selective exposure and political attitudes. To remedy this, this study investigates the reciprocal influences between selective exposure and political attitudes over several years, using a t…
Media, Knowledge and Trust: The Deepening Epistemic Crisis of Democracy
The argument has two related parts: firstly, we are witnessing an “epistemic” crisis in public spheres that threatens to undermine political agency. This crisis has to do with the massive amounts and speed of information, the processes by which we construct knowledge, as well as the new forms of knowledge deriving from digital technologies. Many developments in information technologies benefit democracy, but there is a growing concern about cogni…
The humanities as allies: Media studies and the web
From the horizons of media and communication studies, this article begins with the premise that the media, and the in particular the Web, as central features of a turbulent late modernity. The Web has become ubiquitous and central to our sense of who we are, how we live, think, relate to others and experience the world. This process of mediatization is complex and historically without parallel; it affects all aspects of society, culture and polit…
Populism, extremism and media: Mapping an uncertain terrain
Aiming to critically review key research on populism, extremism and media, this article examines some definition aspects of populism as a concept, its relation to ‘the people’ and points to future directions for research in mainstream – and social media – the terrain where so much of the political is played out. An individualisation of civic cultures has emerged in tandem with the growth of mediated populism through the use of new technologies, w…
Journalism between de-professionalisation and democratisation
The article reflects on contemporary processes of de-professionalisation of journalism, its consequences for democratic processes and challenges to citizen journalism. It is argued that both the dilemmas of mainstream journalism and the emergence of citizen journalism are consequences of an array of evolving factors having to do with complex transformations in the media landscape and its industries, professional and ‘leisured’ content creation, e…
Beyond the Internet: Unplugging the Protest Movement Wave
Mass Media: Introduction and Schools of Thought
The global public sphere: Public communication in the age of reflective interdependence
In just a few years after the English translation in 1989 of Habermas’ classic book on the public sphere, discussions on that theme were beginning to intersect with those of globalization. At first
Francisco Political Communication in Europe: The Cultural and Structural Limits of the European Public Sphere
Media Research Paradigms: Conceptual Distinctions, Continuing Divisions
Media and communication research is often believed to represent one of the youngest research areas in the social sciences, but the first essays discussing the nature and social functions of newspapers were written long before the birth of the modern social sciences. The great variety in forms of communication is also reflected in the diversity of research approaches and methods. This chapter deals with these differences and diversities in a broad…
The Political Web: Media, Participation and Alternative Democracy
As democracy encounters difficulties, many citizens are turning to the domain of alternative politics and, in so doing, making considerable use of the new communication technologies. This volume analy
Tracking the Civic Subject in the Media Landscape: Versions of the Democratic Ideal
Research on media and democracy mobilizes a range of conceptual versions of the subject. This is often done implicitly, or out of habit, with a specific model becoming established in any given research tradition. This presentation argues that different theories of the subject can have different implications for our understanding of citizenship and democracy. The text surveys a number of versions, deriving from a large and heterogeneous literature…
Online Journalism and Civic Cosmopolitanism: Professional vs. participatory ideals
Web-based civic participation in democracies, especially in the sprawling domain of alternative politics, continues to grow. In this paper I explore the intersection of two trajectories of such participation: one that takes the form of journalism (broadly understood) and the other that is transnational in character. Participatory journalism unavoidably evokes normative issues that professional journalism has always grappled with. Global activism,…
Public Intellectuals, Online Media, and Public Spheres: Current Realignments
Media and Participation: A Site of Ideological-Democratic Struggle
L'espace public
Pas de démocratie sans espace public. L'espace public est un espace symbolique où peuvent s'exprimer toutes les opinions qui structurent le jeu politique. Ce livre regroupe dans une langue accessible des textes de chercheurs reconnus et offre une compréhension claire de l'espace public actuel.Indispensable pour qui veut comprendre notre société démocratique et les rapports entre communication et action politique.
Jan Ekecrantz (1940-2007): Des médias locaux à la communication globale
From Public Sphere to Civic Culture: Young Citizens’ Internet Use
During the last decade or so, basically ever since access to the internet reached a high proportion of people all over the western world, its ability to revitalize the public sphere has been discussed. Within the discussion, utopian as well as less hopeful future visions have been heard. On the one hand, authors have aired and identified new hope for the public sphere on the internet (cf. Malina, 1999; Slater, 2003); on the other hand, sceptical …
Internationalizing doctoral education: Problems and pitfalls
Media and the Public Sphere
Increasingly, discussions on issues of democracy and the media are framed within the concept of the public sphere. In schematic terms, a functioning public sphere is understood as a constellation of communicative spaces in society that permit the circulation of information, ideas, debates – ideally in an unfettered manner – and also the formation of political will, i.e., public opinion. In the normative vision of the public sphere, these spaces, …
Cultural studies and citizenship
International audience
Doing citizenship: The cultural origins of civic agency in the public sphere
The notion of civic agency gains relevance in the discussions about declining participation in democracy. This article argues that we need to take a ‘cultural turn’ in our understanding of such agency, seeing citizenship not just in formal terms but also in regard to meaning, practices, communication and identities. It pulls together various strands of thought that are helpful in conceptualizing civic agency, first from the republican conception …
The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation
The theme of the Internet and the public sphere now has a permanent place on research agendas and in intellectual inquiry; it is entering the mainstream of political communication studies. The first part of this presentation briefly pulls together key elements in the public sphere perspective, underscoring three main analytic dimensions: the structural, the representational, and the interactional. Then the discussion addresses some central themes…
Television and the Public Sphere: Citizenship, Democracy and the Media
PART ONE: INITIAL HORIZONS Mediating Democracy Prismatic Television Popular Television Journalism PART TWO: SHIFTING FRAMES Modern Contingencies Communication and Subjectivity Civil Society and Its Citizens PART THREE: FLICKERING HOPES Democratic Mediations
Doing citizenship: The cultural origins of civic agency in the public sphere
The notion of civic agency gains relevance in the discussions about declining participation in democracy. This article argues that we need to take a ‘cultural turn’ in our understanding of such agency, seeing citizenship not just in formal terms but also in regard to meaning, practices, communication and identities. It pulls together various strands of thought that are helpful in conceptualizing civic agency, first from the republican conception …
The Internet and the Democratization of Civic Culture
Keywords: Citizenship Civic Culture Identity Internet Political Participation Public Sphere
What's the meaning of this? Viewers' plural sense-making of TV news
Populism, extremism and media: Mapping an uncertain terrain
Aiming to critically review key research on populism, extremism and media, this article examines some definition aspects of populism as a concept, its relation to ‘the people’ and points to future directions for research in mainstream – and social media – the terrain where so much of the political is played out. An individualisation of civic cultures has emerged in tandem with the growth of mediated populism through the use of new technologies, w…
Journalism between de-professionalisation and democratisation
The article reflects on contemporary processes of de-professionalisation of journalism, its consequences for democratic processes and challenges to citizen journalism. It is argued that both the dilemmas of mainstream journalism and the emergence of citizen journalism are consequences of an array of evolving factors having to do with complex transformations in the media landscape and its industries, professional and ‘leisured’ content creation, e…
Public Intellectuals, Online Media, and Public Spheres: Current Realignments
L'espace public et l'internet. Structure, espace et communication
The author examines the role of the Internet in the evolution of public spheres in Western democracies. This new mass medium, torn between the market and communication, between communicational and strategic motives, is studied from the point of view of three dimensions characteristic of the public sphere: structural, spatial and communicational. Deterritorialized communicative practices spawned by the Net generate a plurality of public spaces, th…
Cultural studies and citizenship
International audience
Selective Exposure to Public Service News over Thirty Years: The Role of Ideological Leaning, Party Support, and Political Interest
The transition from a low-choice to a high-choice media environment has led to concerns about audience fragmentation, ideological enclaves, and selective exposure to partisan news media consistent with people’s political preferences. However, previous research has mainly focused on two-party systems (e.g., the United States) and partisan news (e.g., Fox News or MSNBC), studied at single points in time. The aim of this paper is therefore to provid…
An Information Society for Everyone
In 2000, a government bill set out Sweden’s aim to become an information society for all its citizens, with an emphasis on building confidence, developing competence and providing access to new information and communication technologies (ICTs). This article grounds these policy objectives in a study of ICT use among Swedish working-class citizens. Following a discussion of the opportunities which ICT access and usage offer for the exercise of Swe…
TV news as a social relation
Reinforcing spirals at work? Mutual influences between selective news exposure and ideological leaning
The growth of partisan news sources has raised concerns that people will increasingly select attitude-consistent information, which might lead to increasing political polarization. Thus far, there is limited research on the long-term mutual influences between selective exposure and political attitudes. To remedy this, this study investigates the reciprocal influences between selective exposure and political attitudes over several years, using a t…
The global public sphere: Public communication in the age of reflective interdependence
In just a few years after the English translation in 1989 of Habermas’ classic book on the public sphere, discussions on that theme were beginning to intersect with those of globalization. At first
Beyond Information: TV News as a Cultural Discourse
Tracking the Civic Subject in the Media Landscape: Versions of the Democratic Ideal
Research on media and democracy mobilizes a range of conceptual versions of the subject. This is often done implicitly, or out of habit, with a specific model becoming established in any given research tradition. This presentation argues that different theories of the subject can have different implications for our understanding of citizenship and democracy. The text surveys a number of versions, deriving from a large and heterogeneous literature…
Online Journalism and Civic Cosmopolitanism: Professional vs. participatory ideals
Web-based civic participation in democracies, especially in the sprawling domain of alternative politics, continues to grow. In this paper I explore the intersection of two trajectories of such participation: one that takes the form of journalism (broadly understood) and the other that is transnational in character. Participatory journalism unavoidably evokes normative issues that professional journalism has always grappled with. Global activism,…
The Dilemma of Social Demand: Shaping Media Policy in New Civic Contexts
The new media environment is seamless, global and, apparently, boundless in possibilities. Popular misconceptions and dominant discourses about the end of regulation notwithstanding, however, activity within this environment is still based on rules and likely to remain so. The rules are changing, of course, but more significantly, the way the rules are made is changing. New global institutions like the WTO are the site of monumental battles betwe…
L'Espace public et les médias: Une nouvelle ère ?
Peter Dahlgren sets out to describe the public sphere in the new media age, his first step being to critically examine the model evolved by Habermas. This brings him to question the presupposition of an ideal 18th century public sphere, surely more appropriately considered as a normative utopia. Were this model enlarged to include the mass of empirical knowledge acquired since the 1950's, as the author suggests, then, without totally eliminating …
Crime News: The Fascination of the Mundane
This article firstly presents a brief summary of a study done on the crime coverage in eight Swedish dailies over a twelve-month period. The article then asks why such material holds readers' interests, and this leads to a methodological discussion of interpretive analysis. An important feature of news texts, their thematic infrastructure, is seen as a key to their `transcontextual' character. This allows the meaning of the stories to be readily …
Media and the Public Sphere
Increasingly, discussions on issues of democracy and the media are framed within the concept of the public sphere. In schematic terms, a functioning public sphere is understood as a constellation of communicative spaces in society that permit the circulation of information, ideas, debates – ideally in an unfettered manner – and also the formation of political will, i.e., public opinion. In the normative vision of the public sphere, these spaces, …
Theory, Boundaries and Political Communication: The Uses of Disparity
While the themes of fragmentation and insufficient coherence dominated discussions in the field of media and communication studies a decade ago, today they seem less urgent, even if at times still problematic. In terms of theory, the field is well served by its permeable boundaries, since much of its theory is ‘imported’. Moreover, theory needs nondoctrinaire critical stances to address the distress of the world. Systems of political communicatio…
Meaning and/vs. Information in Media Studies
The field of media and communication research is characterized by a variety of theoretical and research strands. This presentation suggests that the various traditional social scientific approaches share what is called an “information perspective”. This perspective emphasizes the discrete, message-like character of media output and its social impact. It largely makes use of quantitative data and causal relationships. The major new development in …
Television journalism as catalyst
Les presentateurs comme catalyseursCet article est inspire par une ambition pedagogique... Servir a l’apprentissage par les telespectateurs des modes de discussion rationnelle qui contribuent a la realisation de l’ideal democratique. Partant de la notion de « sphere publique », l’auteur propose d’en etudier empiriquement le fonctionnement en analysant la dynamique des discussions suscitees par l’information televisee a l’interieur de groupes de s…
Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture
TV News and the Supression of Reflexivity
TV news as a social relation
A Sociology of Contemporary Cultural Change
Beyond Information: TV News as a Cultural Discourse
Crime News: The Fascination of the Mundane
This article firstly presents a brief summary of a study done on the crime coverage in eight Swedish dailies over a twelve-month period. The article then asks why such material holds readers' interests, and this leads to a methodological discussion of interpretive analysis. An important feature of news texts, their thematic infrastructure, is seen as a key to their `transcontextual' character. This allows the meaning of the stories to be readily …
What's the meaning of this? Viewers' plural sense-making of TV news
Les actualités télévisées. A chacun son interpétation
Dahlgren Peter, Sage Publications, Gamberini Anne-Marie. Les actualités télévisées. A chacun son interpétation. In: Réseaux, volume 9, n°44-45, 1990. Sociologie de la télévision : Europe. pp. 297-312
Television journalism as catalyst
Les presentateurs comme catalyseursCet article est inspire par une ambition pedagogique... Servir a l’apprentissage par les telespectateurs des modes de discussion rationnelle qui contribuent a la realisation de l’ideal democratique. Partant de la notion de « sphere publique », l’auteur propose d’en etudier empiriquement le fonctionnement en analysant la dynamique des discussions suscitees par l’information televisee a l’interieur de groupes de s…
L'Espace public et les médias: Une nouvelle ère ?
Peter Dahlgren sets out to describe the public sphere in the new media age, his first step being to critically examine the model evolved by Habermas. This brings him to question the presupposition of an ideal 18th century public sphere, surely more appropriately considered as a normative utopia. Were this model enlarged to include the mass of empirical knowledge acquired since the 1950's, as the author suggests, then, without totally eliminating …
Television and the public sphere: Citizenship, Democracy, and the Media
Media Logic in Cyberspace: Repositioning Journalism and its Publics
Additional informationNotes on contributorsPeter DahlgrenPeter Dahlgren is Principal Lecturer at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication, Stockholm University, Box 27861, 115 93 Stockholm.
Meaning and/vs. Information in Media Studies
The field of media and communication research is characterized by a variety of theoretical and research strands. This presentation suggests that the various traditional social scientific approaches share what is called an “information perspective”. This perspective emphasizes the discrete, message-like character of media output and its social impact. It largely makes use of quantitative data and causal relationships. The major new development in …
Television across Europe: A Comparative Introduction
Television and the Public Sphere: Citizenship, Democracy and the Media
PART ONE: INITIAL HORIZONS Mediating Democracy Prismatic Television Popular Television Journalism PART TWO: SHIFTING FRAMES Modern Contingencies Communication and Subjectivity Civil Society and Its Citizens PART THREE: FLICKERING HOPES Democratic Mediations
The Internet and the Democratization of Civic Culture
Keywords: Citizenship Civic Culture Identity Internet Political Participation Public Sphere
L'espace public et l'internet. Structure, espace et communication
The author examines the role of the Internet in the evolution of public spheres in Western democracies. This new mass medium, torn between the market and communication, between communicational and strategic motives, is studied from the point of view of three dimensions characteristic of the public sphere: structural, spatial and communicational. Deterritorialized communicative practices spawned by the Net generate a plurality of public spaces, th…
The Transformation of Democracy?
Reconfiguring Civic Culture in the New Media Milieu
This chapter introduces the notion of civic culture as a frame for understanding political engagement and civic agency. In particular, the role of the media is underscored in shaping civic cultures; these include such dimensions as knowledge, values, practices and identities.
The Dilemma of Social Demand: Shaping Media Policy in New Civic Contexts
The new media environment is seamless, global and, apparently, boundless in possibilities. Popular misconceptions and dominant discourses about the end of regulation notwithstanding, however, activity within this environment is still based on rules and likely to remain so. The rules are changing, of course, but more significantly, the way the rules are made is changing. New global institutions like the WTO are the site of monumental battles betwe…
An Information Society for Everyone
In 2000, a government bill set out Sweden’s aim to become an information society for all its citizens, with an emphasis on building confidence, developing competence and providing access to new information and communication technologies (ICTs). This article grounds these policy objectives in a study of ICT use among Swedish working-class citizens. Following a discussion of the opportunities which ICT access and usage offer for the exercise of Swe…
Theory, Boundaries and Political Communication: The Uses of Disparity
While the themes of fragmentation and insufficient coherence dominated discussions in the field of media and communication studies a decade ago, today they seem less urgent, even if at times still problematic. In terms of theory, the field is well served by its permeable boundaries, since much of its theory is ‘imported’. Moreover, theory needs nondoctrinaire critical stances to address the distress of the world. Systems of political communicatio…
The Public Sphere: Linking the Media and Civic Cultures
The perspective of the public sphere, despite its utility, has some gaps. Not least is its lack of sociological anchoring in the everyday lives and experiences of citizens. The text argues that we can illuminate the media's role in promoting or hindering participation in the public sphere by making use of the six-dimensional framework of civic cultures.
Communication and Citizenship: Journalism and the Public Sphere
The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation
The theme of the Internet and the public sphere now has a permanent place on research agendas and in intellectual inquiry; it is entering the mainstream of political communication studies. The first part of this presentation briefly pulls together key elements in the public sphere perspective, underscoring three main analytic dimensions: the structural, the representational, and the interactional. Then the discussion addresses some central themes…
Political science (35 works) · Sociology (35 works) · Politics (29 works) · Social Media and Politics (26 works) · Law (24 works) · Media studies (24 works) · Law (17 works) · Media Studies and Communication (16 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Democracy (13 works)