Research conducted at JMK is at the forefront of both scholarly and popular dialogues regarding the role of media and communication, its artifacts, processes and institutions in society. JMK scholars draw on research questions and methods emanating from both the humanities and social sciences. Comparative studies - over time, between media genres and across cultures - are a strong suit. Our current research concentrates around the following thematic constellations from critical and societal perspectives.

 

Media, Politics and Culture

A central and historically prominent research focus at JMK, this broad rubric includes studies of the societal roles played by the news media, especially in relation to class, gender, ethnicity and generation. This includes power relationships between politicians and journalists; the politics of news reporting and identity processes; surveillance, social movements, political extremism and the media; political communication and PR; gender and diversity aspects of journalism; media in historical conflicts and social media in contemporary ones; and how media narratives and social media negotiate emotions and existential issues. In much of this work, media representations, often with a focus on the visual, are a continuing theme.

 

Global Media Studies

JMK’s research on globalization and media incorporates interdisciplinarity and critical edge and aspires to combine theoretical finesse with innovative scholarship. We pay attention to both culturally and locally specific, translocal and transnational dimensions of cross-border mobilities and media flows. Equally significant are expressive cultures and cross-cultural social movements as well as broader concerns with the globalization of formats and styles, media technology, and narrative forms, often including a critical interrogation of visual dimensions of these forms and practices. In addition to political economic and culturalist analyses of media globalization and transnational news corporations, our research in this area comprises cosmopolitanism, war and conflict, identity and politics; global media events, media witnessing, cultural diversity and geography; climate change and the media; critical geopolitics and popular communication; representation and the media; and, audiences and consumption.

 

Nationally funded projects headed by JMK colleagues include: ‘Cosmopolitanism from the Margins: Mediations of Expressivity, Social Space and Cultural Citizenship’ (Miyase Christensen), ‘The Nature and Impact of the Arabic Blogosphere: What kind of publics?’ (Kristina Riegert) ‘Changing Places. Mediating local and global events through screen practices in public space’ (Karin Becker), ‘Europe as Other. Difference in Global Media Discourse’ (Alexa Robertson), and ‘I-Witnessing: Global Crisis Reporting Through the Amateur Lens’ (Kari Andén Papadopolous), ‘The Social Journalist: News Work and News Organizations in an Age of Networked Sociality’ (Christian Christensen). We have strong presence in international initiatives and networks including two we host: the Nordic Research Network in Journalism Studies (2009-2013) and currently Nordic Research Network in Digital Visuality. http://research.jmk.su.se/nndv. (2011-2014)