Urban Catastrophe and Sheltered Salvation

The media system of Swedish civil defence, 1937–1960

Bibliographic Data

ID12604342
AuthorsPeter Bennesved (0000-0003-0080-3324, Twitter (United States), corresponding author), Fredrik Norén (0000-0001-8820-1082)
Year2018
Volume26
Issue2
Pages167-184
Publication date2018-07-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedia History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1368-8804 • E-ISSN: 1469-9729
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13688804.2018.1491792
OpenAlexW2884876479
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited22

The Swedish civil defence organizations have a long tradition of balancing their messages to the public through diverse media use. Over the course of the early Cold War, however, the political and technical circumstances of the civil defence organizations changed, rendering old methods from the 1930s obsolete. To keep their relevance, the narratives of the civil defence organizations had to be carefully remodelled in accordance with the current situation, obscuring some facts while stressing others more clearly. By operationalizing the concept of media system, this article examines how the Swedish civil defence organizations used the media, broadly defined, to deal with the two main narratives that their practical work was based upon: urban destruction as war unfolds, and the safety of air-raid shelters. The article shows how these narratives were constructed and connected between various media, but also their changing and dynamic character over time. Over the course of the 1940s and 1950s, the narrative of urban destruction changed from a concrete to an abstract mediation, while the narrative of sheltered salvation took an opposite direction

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Operationalization · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Law · Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis

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