The focus of this paper is rural inhabitants in Sweden and their re-negotiation of rural spaces through mediated practices. This question is primarily based on the idea that individual actors’ chances to negotiate space have increased due to mediatization processes. Practices of different kinds – professional, political, social and cultural – are not to the same extent as earlier tied to particular time-space contexts. In addition to this underlying point of departure, rural inhabitants’ negotiation of space can be related to the prevailing complex and dynamic relationship between the urban and the rural. With a ‘Lefebvrian’ perspective this relationship is a three-fold construction, constituted by (1) (material) localities, (2) (mediated) representations and (3) everyday life (including imaginations) (Lefebvre, 1974/1991; cf. Halfacree, 2007; Jansson and Falkheimer, 2006). When communication is considered in such a framework the following can be stated: (1) the infrastructure of communication (roads, public transports broadband, etc) has increased the bonds between the country and the city. For example, it is very possible to live in either the city or the countryside and work in the ‘other’ area. Commuting and telecommuting (but also ‘urban sprawling’) blur the geographic boundaries. This is then in contrast to (2) media representations, which tend to reproduce the distinction between urbanity and rurality, for example through depictions of ‘hectic and stressful city life’ in contrast to ‘calm rural idylls’. Worth mentioning here is lifestyle media, for example glossy magazines and TV-programmes, which often create paradoxical links between the urban, creative and dynamic nodes and the aestheticized, ‘idyllicized’ and presumed ‘fixed’ countryside (cf. Jansson, 2010). This leads to the empirical focus of this article; (3) everyday life and its imaginations. Based on ethnographical interviews with rural inhabitants in southern Sweden, the paper argues that the inhabitants mediated practices may contribute to convergence of rural and urban spaces – as well as separation between them. Of particular interest in this context are mediated practices related to salaried work (telecommuting) and communication practices in support for a local village community – practices, which many times are conducted by the same people. The paper will consider and problematize the spatial aspects of these practices; the consequences for: the individuals and their activity spaces; the local community and its boundaries; and, at last, the general relationship between the urban and the rural.

Recension av: Edström, Maria, TV-rummets eliter : föreställningar om kön och makt i fakta och fiktion, Göteborg : Institutionen för journalistik och masskommunikation, Göteborgs universitet (JMG), 2006, ISBN 91-88212-40-8

In present paper, the debates around mediatization and transnationalism constitute the backdrop for a discussion on the media and communication practices among Swedish expatriates in the Netherlands and forced migrants from Bosnia in Sweden. The complex relationship between (transnational) identity, place and mobility is studied at three intersections between media and migration: (1) creativity and connection-making, (2) The boundaries of mediated freedom and (3) the transnational production of locality. The paper stresses the importance of a contextual and non-media-centric perspective (see Morley, 2009); it is in agents’ daily activities – where media practices and social practices are interwoven with each other – the interplay between processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization take place.

Influenced by the call for ‘non-media-centric media studies’, and based on interviews with transnational professionals and forced migrants, this article scrutinises transnational identifications under mediatised conditions. With the point of departure in space/mobility and everyday life practices – the common denominators in the perspectives of transnationalism and mediatisation – the analysis shows that mediated deterritorialisation is conditional due to migrants’ sociocultural resources and earlier life experiences. Hence, experiences of war and conflict may reduce the potential of mediated mobilities. The article demonstrates how media are an integrated part of migrants’ multiple identifications with the city they reside in and their country of origin. Besides establishing multiple identifications, the article shows how these identities are linked to particular contexts, practices and socialities in the migrants’ everyday lives. The conclusion is that mediatisation and transnationalism are complex matters yet a transdisciplinary, contextual and ‘non-media-centric’ approach seems to be a promising way to grasp these complexities.

This paper focuses on the global presence in the local processes of place-making in a rural area in Sweden. As a result of increased competition--fueled by a reorganization of global capitalism--between places, symbolic strategies (i.e. place marketing and place branding) have become a central dimension of both urban and rural governance. As a consequent, places–while still being sites for the residents’ day-to-day life–are being turned into commodities in the market of potential investors and tourists to a great extent. Subsequently, this paper deals with how this global agenda affects a rural municipality in the Swedish countryside suffering from depopulation. The paper confirms earlier statements (Woods, 2007) that globalization processes should not be considered as external forces reshaping and homogenizing rural villages; rather, globalization processes are locally negotiated. This, however, does not mean globalization has no impact on rural places. In these negotiation processes global and local virtues are intertwined but not evenly. In some municipal strategies, the impact of global discourses is more explicit, for example, policy-makers accept and incorporate strategies of place branding and policy networks while they neglect other aspects of a relatively standardized “place marketing tool kit”. Furthermore, the study shows that rural residents, also, consider the village and its global future carefully but differently from the policy-makers. The residents dislike expressions of urbanity and advocate a general small-scaleness as a strategy for the future.

I en dialog mellan medieforskare ur två generationer diskuteras centrala frågor kring kulturperspektivets aktuella roll i medieforskningen. Begreppet kulturalisering relateras till medialisering och mediering; det slås ett slag för mediekulturbegreppet och ett vidgat mediebegrepp prövas kritiskt. Samspelet mellan gränsdragningar och överskridanden tematiseras på olika nivåer, dels i förhållande till frågor om intermedialitet och konvergens, hybridisering och differentiering, dels beträffande medieforskningsfältets relation till närliggande fält. Även frågor om mening, tolkning, identitet, symbolinvestering och makt berörs. Författarna analyserar på detta vis en rad olika omdebatterade problem och fenomen i skärningsfältet mellan kultur- och medieforskning, går emot vissa problematiska tendenser och söker påvisa kulturperspektivets fortsatta aktualitet och fruktbarhet för att vidga och vitalisera medieforskningen.

The significance of mediatization in countryside settings is an under-researched topic in media studies. In this paper, based on qualitative fieldwork carried out in two rural areas in Sweden, we study how mediatization integrates the prospects of cosmopolitan social change. The current phase of the mediatization process, which imposes a more dynamic register of networked communication, nourishes a new type of cosmopolitan identity in the countryside. As shown in the study, this development is constituted by complex configurations of different forms of mobility and connectivity. We argue that these spatial processes are socially structured, meaning that certain social groups are better equipped, through the appropriation of network capital, for turning cosmopolitan dispositions into a transformative resource, a ‘cosmopolitan politics of place’. Such alterations of the social structure may successively destabilize the relationship between ‘the urban’ and ‘the rural’.

This article discusses children as contributors to sustainable ecological development. The aim of the article is to develop a framework for researching two questions: What are the prerequisites for children to become responsible environmentalists? What actual and potential influence do children have on their family’s consumption? Three theoretical perspectives are elaborated in relation to relevant empirical research: children as cosmopolitan actors and world citizens, children as ‘subjects of responsibilization’ in relation to the discourse on sustainable development and children as actors influencing family negotiations about consumption. The article concludes by suggesting methodological implications that follow from this framework.