The first four articles from this year’s issue of Nordic Journal of Media Studies are now available. Instead of publishing a complete issue at once, the journal is releasing articles on a rolling basis throughout the spring, all centered on the theme “Media and the Past: Mediating the Past.”
This year’s issue of Nordic Journal of Media Studies will be published on a rolling basis, with the articles appearing individually before the issue is concluded with an editorial by the editors.
“This change reflects not only our adaptation to an increasingly digital-only journal publishing landscape, but also our commitment to increasing readership and visibility for our authors. The articles will get more individual attention, but we also highlight on the very first page that they are part of a themed issue – hopefully leading readers to the rest of the articles too”, says Kristin Clay, manuscript editor at Nordicom.
The first four articles are now available – all connect to the overarching theme of the issue – Media and the Past: Mediating the Past.
“Posted pasts: Strategic uses of the past in the 2022 Danish and Swedish national election campaigns on Facebook”, by Kalle Eriksson and Marie Meier.
This study shows that parties in Sweden and Denmark routinely “use the past” in their online campaigning to persuade voters – sometimes to showcase their own roots and successes, sometimes to blame opponents, and often a mix of both.
Swedish parties lean on long-term ideological legacies, while Danish parties focus more on very recent events and achievements. These strategic “posted pasts” help shape how voters see credibility, competence, and legitimacy.
“Mediating the AIDS crisis: The affective and queer politics of cultural memory in film, television, and digital media”, by Michael Nebeling Petersen.
As AIDS is being revisited across film, television, digital culture, and public history. This article examines how media shape the way the crisis is remembered. It identifies three broad waves of representation, from early respectability politics to nostalgic retrospection, to more collective and intersectional approaches today.
“Like a small trip back to the GDR”? East German evaluations of the television serial Weissensee and its authenticity in a dynamic discourse landscape”, by Maria Löblich
How do TV series shape how we relate to the past? This article examines East German audience readings of the series Weissensee and shows how ideas of “historical authenticity” become a way for viewers to negotiate their relationship to GDR history and their own social identity.
“Whose story wins? LLM-powered chatbots as sites and agents of memory-political contestation and corporate greenwashing”, by Nuppu Pelevina and Erkki Mervaala
How do LLM-powered chatbots shape how we relate to the past? This article examines how popular commercial chatbots operate as sites and agents of prosthetic memory, showing how they tend to reproduce hegemonic history narratives while marginalising and obscuring alternative perspectives, especially those rooted in Indigenous knowledge. In the Nordic context, privileging dominant, nationalistic, and stereotypical state and corporate narratives of Nordic history can shape users’ understanding of the past, present, and future.