Public Discourse on Immigration in Scandinavia, 1970-2018, Vol. 26 - 2019, No. 2
Guest Edited by Jostein Gripsrud
Comparing Public Discourse on Immigration in Scandinavia: Some Background Notes and Preliminary Results
This article briefly presents the SCANPUB project, devoted to the comparative study of public discourse on immigration in Scandinavia from 1970 to 2016, from which this issue of Javnost/The Public stems. Its emphasis is on a discussion of the terms “nation” and “nationalism,” particularly the notion of “methodological nationalism” in relation to the project. SCANPUB is not least about how the public sphere in liberal democracies handles large, complex issues over time, and the article thus deals with relatively recent contributions to the theory of the public sphere, concluding with a turn toward deliberative systems theory. Some preliminary empirical results are reported and references are made to the other articles in this issue.
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Increasingly Controversial, Cultural, and Political: The Immigration Debate in Scandinavian Newspapers 1970–2016
Earlier accounts of the immigration debate in Scandinavia have suggested that despite the countries’ many similarities, Swedish newspapers are dominated by immigration friendly views, that Danish papers are very open to strongly negative views on immigration, and that Norwegian press occupies a middle position. However, this argument has until now not been tested through a large systematic, comparative, and historical study of newspaper coverage of immigration in these countries. As a part of the SCANPUB project [https://scanpub.w.uib.no/], a content analysis of a representative sample of articles for two newspapers for each country for the period 1970–2016 (one constructed month pr. year, N = 4329) was done. Focusing on broad Scandinavian trends and major national differences, the results support the general claims about national differences in Scandinavian immigration debate, and also suggest some major developments, in particular the rise of immigration as an issue for debate and for national politicians.
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Identity, Empathy and Argument: Immigrants in Culture and Entertainment Journalism in the Scandinavian Press
Cultural and entertainment journalism deals with aesthetic experiences, advice on cultural consumption, as well as reflection and debate on ethical and moral humanistic issues. Does this sub-field of journalism systematically represent immigrants and integration differently than the other news and commentary articles? Comparing immigration discourse in a representative sample of six Scandinavian newspapers between 1970 and 2016 using content analysis we find that cultural journalism, while clearly reverbing with the dominant national issues at the time, did provide alternative perspectives. It not only brought up themes like racism, multiculturalism, national identity and religion more often, but was also more positive, more gender-balanced and more often gave a voice to immigrants than other news did. A closer qualitative reading further suggests a typology of ten main story-types, varying relatively little over time and across national borders. Cultural journalism in this case illustrates how the cultural public sphere can positively contribute to the debate of complicated issues in the public sphere by offering resources for identification, empathy and arguments for specific points of view.
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Wikipedia as an arena and source for the public: a scandinavian comparison of “Islam”
This article compares Wikipedia as an arena and source for the public through analysis of articles on “Islam” across the three Scandinavian languages. Findings show that the Swedish article is continuously revised and adjusted by a fairly high number of contributors, with comparatively low concentration to a small group of top users. The Norwegian article is static, more basic, but still serves as a matter-of-factly presentation of Islam as religion to a stable amount of views. In contrast, the Danish article is at once more dynamic through more changes up until recently, it portrays Islam differently with a distinct focus on identity issues, and it is read less often. The analysis illustrates how studying Wikipedia can bring light to the receiving end of what goes on in the public sphere. The analysis also illustrates how our understanding of the online realm profits from “groundedness,” and how the comparison of similar sites in different languages can yield insights into cultural as well as political differences, and their implications.
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Personal Emotions, Experiences and Attacks: Immigration Debate in Scandinavian Comment Sections
The public sphere is where citizens can come together to discuss issues of public concern and attempt to influence the political handling of these. Social media and online discussion forums have created new arenas where citizens can participate in the public debate. Discussions found in these arenas, however, seldom hold deliberative qualities. This paper examines how one increasingly complex and controversial issue – immigration – is discussed in Scandinavian newspapers’ comment sections. It does so through a case study of discussions about the arrival of Syrian refugees to the three nation-states. Rather than evaluating the deliberative functions of these discussions, the paper asks how the rhetorical situation influences how attitudes are expressed, and how these utterances in turn function in the particular situation. The analysis finds that similar rhetorical practices are performed independent of the national context, suggesting that the individual speaker’s rhetorical latitude is contingent upon the issue and the arena. The ways in which these practices are performed, however, differ between the three national contexts, suggesting that the cultural context in which the discussion takes place also influences the individual speaker’s rhetorical latitude.
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From The Club Stage to the National Scene: How Mass Media Interpreted Two Comedians as Important Immigrant Voices
This article investigates how comedians with an immigrant background gain political relevance, taking two contemporary comedians from Norway and Sweden as cases. The study uses media's interpretive power as a way to explore Habermas’ ([1996]. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) claim that the borders between the cultural and the political public spheres are porous. A reading of the press coverage of the comedians is used to discover patterns in how media interpreted the comedians as immigrant voices and as humourists. It is demonstrated how the comedians get moulded into certain positions through mass media interpretations, as well as explained where these interpretations come from historically. Furthermore, it is shown that the coverage of the two comedians to a large degree conformed to existing immigration discourse, challenging the view of comedy as a subversive force.
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Royal Interventions in the Public Discourse on Immigration: Rhetorical Topoi on Immigration in the New Year’s Speeches of the Scandinavian Monarchs
This paper explores how the Scandinavian monarchs work through the issue of immigration in their New Year’s speeches during the years 1972–2017. Exploring immigration debate through the royal speeches provides new understanding of the issue, because the opinions of the monarch are supposed to be apolitical. Royal rhetoric is expected to embrace the whole nation, and not evoke debate. Thus, the New Year’s speeches, offer a unique insight into how identity and immigration are worked through and negotiated nationally. Comparing Denmark, Norway and Sweden is particularly revealing, because these countries share dominant traits and circumstances such as religion, institutional and political systems, common history, party dominance, size and more. In spite of this, they differ significantly in the way they deal with citizenship regulation and the way they debate immigration. Exploring how the royal speeches use different topoi and constitute nationhood and immigrants, provide an understanding for the values and moral foundations that the differences in rhetoric and regulation is built on. The study reveals that the speeches of the Danish Queen constitute Denmark as a rooted nation, the Norwegian King constitutes Norway as a rights nation, and the Swedish King constitute Sweden as an immigrant nation.
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