Articles de revues sur le sujet « Swedish cinema analysis »

Focusing on the introduction of a new government film policy in 2017, this article explores how the audience for Swedish cinema – little-watched art films in particular – is conceptualized in the context of film policy and as a topic of debate within the Swedish film industry. The analysis shows that the new film policy contributes – against its own explicit aims – to reproducing a deep-seated distinction between ‘wide’ and ‘narrow’ films. In addition, Swedish film policy has yet to adapt to the conditions of today’s digital screen culture. As a result, ‘narrow films’ are subject to low audience expectations and a de facto lack of performance accountability. This, the article argues, could be more a blessing than a curse, suggesting a need to rethink the notion of ‘failure’ and to further explore the prospects of ‘failure studies’ in the context of Swedish cinema.

Why is it that some film directors become and remain central in the reception of their works and others do not? Classical auteur theory suggests the answer lies in the personality of the director. In this article, we explore and re-conceptualize the status of auteur du cinema Ingmar Bergman, Swedish film director. In line with Dyer’s gap between the institution and the audience, we explore Bergman’s self-fashioning through his own published writings and compare this to what was written about him in the Swedish press between 1944 and 1983, his most active years as a film director. The result is an analysis of dominant and alternative cultural discourses concerning Bergman’s authorship that facilitates an exploration into the corresponding interpretative strategies located in the audience. Here, Bergman’s status as popular celebrity in Sweden contributes to a paradoxical image – and recognition – of the high-art auteur, not in the least through his own myth-making.

This study explores the use of rough-set methods for marketing decision support systems in the retail business. A tutorial presentation of Rough Set Data Analysis (RSDA) in the context of knowledge discovery from time series databases is given. We show how an RSDA model can be used to develop a marketing decision support system which can capture the complex relationships between marketing factors, such as advertising and promotion, and the total impact on sales levels in order to find influential advertising strategies. This information is used by the business manager to make faster and better strategy decisions for the business to survive in the rapidly changing and competitive environments. The data set used for RSDA application example contains weekly investments in different media categories: TV, radio, cinema, morning press, evening press, popular press, special interest press, and outdoor posters; for seven makes of cars in the Swedish market.

Through a case study analysis, this article suggests that women’s screenwriting in Sweden in the 1940s elucidates important aspects of cinematic authorship in relation to cultural hierarchies and gender. The analysis consists of a contextualized reading of the 1942 film Fallet Ingegerd Bremssen (‘The Ingegerd Bremssen case’), based on Dagmar Edqvist’s psychological novel about a rape and its after-effects, with a screenplay written by the author herself. A textual adaptation analysis – focusing on the screenwriting style and how the woman’s perspective and experience in the novel is transformed in the adaptation – is contextualized against the historical backdrop of the changes in screenwriting practices during this period as well as of the critical reception of the film.

Resumen: El presente estudio tiene como objetivo trazar una estrategia didáctica para potenciar la lectura de los grandes clásicos de la Literatura Universal en el aula de enseñanza obligatoria. La propuesta se concretiza en la aproximación a la novelista sueca Selma Lagerlöff –la primera mujer Premio Nobel de Literatura– a través de la película La leyenda de Gösta Berling (Gösta Berlings Saga, 1924), dirigida por Mauritz Stiller y considerada una de las obras maestras del cine silente nórdico. Mediante esta guía de lectura-visionado, los alumnos pueden analizar un aspecto tan inédito como es el reflejo de la palabra en el cine mudo. Desde esta perspectiva, la relación interdisciplinar Literatura/Cine se percibe como una herramienta pedagógica polivalente, al menos en un doble sentido: por una parte, proporcionar a los adolescentes unos conocimientos literarios que el currículo no contempla; de otro, iniciarlos en la praxis de un análisis audiovisual cada vez más omnipresente y demandado. Palabras clave: material didáctico; literatura escandinava; leyenda; historia del cine; actividad fuera del programa. Abstract: The present study aims to draw a teaching strategy to enhance the reading of the great classics of World Literature in the classroom of compulsory education. Our specific proposal is the approach to the Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöff –the first woman Nobel Prize for Literature– through the movie Gösta Berlings Saga (1924), directed by Mauritz Stiller and considered one of the masterpieces of Nordic silent film. By this reader-viewing guide, students can analyze an unknown aspect such as the reflection of the word in silent cinema. From this perspective, interdisciplinary relationship between Literature / Film is perceived as a versatile educational tool, at least in two ways: firstly, to provide adolescents with a literary knowledge that the curriculum does not provide; otherwise, to introduce them to the practice of an audiovisual analysis which is greater and greater. Keywords: teaching materials; Scandinavian literature; legends; history of cinema; extracurricular activities.

„Narracja” – pojęcie mające swoje korzenie w literaturoznawstwie, od lat 60. XX wieku stała się przedmiotem zainteresowania wielu innych dyscyplin, a – jak stwierdził Martin Kreiswith – humanistykę ogarnęła nawet „obsesja opowieści”. Mity, podania, legendy czy baśnie oraz inne formy narracji obecne w codziennym doświadczeniu większości uczestników kultury przyczyniają się do kompetencji odbioru opowieści w różnych formach. Być może to jest jednym z czynników wpływających na niezwykłą popularność i sukces storytellingu w reklamie. Zasady tworzenia dobrej, efektywnej, atrakcyjnej opowieści wywodzą się bowiem z dawnych form narracji i są dzisiaj powszechnie w niej stosowane. W artykule zostanie przedstawiona propozycja szwedzkiego badacza komunikacji wizualnej – Bo Bergströma, który różnicuje narrację na dramatyczną i niedramatyczną, a schematy obydwu opiera na regułach obecnych odpowiednio w kinie gatunków oraz kinie autorskim. Autor nazywa ten wymiar reklamy systemem formalnym, obok którego równie istotny jest system stylistyczny, czyli środki artystycznego wyrazu zastosowane w przekazie. W artykule zostanie przeprowadzona analiza obydwu systemów w reklamie świątecznej marki Allegro z 2021 roku w kontekście założeń storytellingu. “What is most important … in storytelling” – Analysis of the Allegro Brand Christmas Spot in the Light of Bo Bergström’s Narrative Theory “Narration” – a concept rooted in literary studies, has attracted the attention of many other disciplines since the 1960s, and as Martin Kreiswith stated, the humanities were even “obsessed with stories”. Myths, legends, fairy-tales and other forms of narrative are omnipresent in the everyday experience of most participants in culture and thus they contribute to their competence of receiving stories in various forms. Perhaps this is one of the factors leading to the extraordinary popularity and success of storytelling in advertising. The principles of creating a good, effective, and attractive story derive from the old forms of narration and they are today commonly used in many narrative media. The article presents the proposal of the Swedish researcher of visual communication – Bo Bergström, who differentiates the narrative into dramatic and non-dramatic. He seesthe patterns of both kinds as as based on the rules present in genre cinema and author’s Aleksandra Żukowska 152 cinema, respectively. The author calls this dimension of advertising a formal system, next to which the stylistic system, i.e. the means of artistic expression used in the message, is equally important. The article will analyse both systems in the Allegro brand Christmas advertisement from 2021 in the context of the storytelling assumptions.

The relevance of this study is due to the fact that modern democratic values, entrenched in Western countries, including at the legislative level, are widely discussed in Russian society today: how much the freedoms and restrictions introduced in the 21st century correspond to the needs of the average citizen, that is, in this case, the average European. The material for studying this issue was the works of the world-famous Swedish writer Frederik Backman — the novels A Man Called Ove (2012) and Things My Son Needs to Know About the World (2012), as well as the film adaptations of the first novel (Swedish in 2015 and American in 2022). The aim of the study is to determine the ideological attitudes conveyed by the artistic worlds of the works under study. To achieve this goal, the theoretical and methodological frameworks were analyzed, opening up the possibility of studying values through the prism of cultural research of fiction and cinematography. Other tasks included: identifying the key features of the literary and film versions of the novel A Man Called Ove, to establish the specifics of their value framework, and describing the key moments of the novel Things My Son Needs to Know About the World so as to determine the values conveyed by this work. Based on the axiological and anthropological prisms within the framework of the cultural studies approach, intertextual, intermedial and narrative analysis of the texts of each of the books and the two film adaptations of A Man Called Ove is applied. The biographical method and the method of reconstructing the views of the hero of the work of art were also used. As a result of the undertaken reconstruction, a cultural model of analysis of European values of the common man was created thanks to their reflection in literature and cinema. The possibilities and limits of using the cultural method in the analysis of complex and multi-level artistic material were determined. The contradictions that permeate various versions of the film adaptation of the novel A Man Called Ove were highlighted and the characteristic discrepancies between the two novels by F. Backman are described. If the first describes the path of gaining tolerance for everything new by a person of the old school, then the second develops the theme of the absurdity of the modern world, its lack of rootedness in traditions, and discusses the helplessness and defenselessness of man in new realities, such as when, alongside the maximum of democratic freedoms, there arises a paradoxical maximum of unfreedom for the individual. It is also indicative in the axiological context that the directors were only interested in the first book, which was more convenient not only in terms of the script, but also in terms of the ideology, as a locomotive of loyalty to representatives of minorities, and therefore offering more chances to receive international awards.

This article, written in a form of an essay, reviews the theoretical work of the Latvian philosopher Pēteris Laķis, in particular the essay devoted to the understanding of time; it also analyses the parallels with the creative work of the Swedish cinema and theatre director Ingmar Bergman. Ingmar Bergman’s films that were shown in the Soviet Union, especially his film “Wild Strawberries” (1957) had an immense effect upon thinking of the new genera- tion by expanding perceptions about the borders of both reality and art.

Cinema is particularly suited for illuminating the kinaesthetic aspects of cultural subjugation. In Sameblod (Sami Blood) (2016), writer–director Amanda Kernell portrays the self-assimilatory journey of an indigenous 14-year-old girl as a result of forced and voluntary exposure to novel bodily experiences. Using as its conceptual point of departure the term ‘kinaesthesia’ – the body’s sensations of movement and spatiality – this article analyses the filmic techniques Kernell uses to offer audiences a vicarious experience of assimilation, and later, cultural revitalization. A century after majority-population Swedes subjected Kernell’s family and other Sámi to social Darwinian racism, the director’s third-eye film turns the camera back at those who portrayed them as inferior. Sami Blood exemplifies how important sensory and affective experiences are for our politics, histories and perception of cultural texts. The film is part of the past decades’ Sámi revitalization, an artistic movement in which screen media have played an important role.

In a region that is traditionally considered to be transnational, Nordic cinema has often posed as the prime case for a transnational cinema. The paper contests this notion of Nordic transnationality by analysing two films that depict two Russian women travelling to Sweden. Interdevochka/Intergirl (Todorovski, 1989, USSR) and Lilya-4-ever (Moodysson, 2004, Sweden) challenge the inclusiveness of the region and make explicit the fact that Russian identities are not part of the homogenous mixture of the region. Instead, Russian identities of cross-border prostitution are cinematically subjected to rejection and victimisation. This paper examines how Lilya-4-ever adheres to a European anxiety narrative by performing a Russian return narrative and how Interdevochka/Intergirl portrays ‘the fallen soviet woman’ by travelling to Sweden. These cinematic representations of the female Russian identity travelling to Sweden differ from each national context, but by probing into a comparative analysis the paper will reveal that both films need the Other to narrate these stories of transnational labour migration.

Lukas Moodysson is one of the leading directors in contemporary Swedih cinema. He shot his first feature film in 1998 and his last film in 2013. Totally he has eight films. He is also scriptwriter in his all films and sometimes also the pruucer. He made films which influences from his own society, thmes he experienced and themes he cared. Minimalist style, natural acting are seen in the films of the director. He has created a unique style that frequently includes child actors, focuses on human relations in his own society, and deals with growing pains and social problems. Director’s most important film is Lilya 4-ever(2002). The importance of this film is because of its harsh criticism about both Swedish society and Europe in general about human trafficking and forcing young girls into prostitution. In this study, the film will examine the appearance of the welfare society and the effect of the film on society with the sociological analysis method. As a result, the social criticism of the film led the Swedish authorities to take action within the framework of the problem, and showed the power of cinema on society.

The aim of this article is to convey the history, practices and central discourses of film education in Sweden. The first part takes the pioneering efforts, dating back to 1908, as a starting point for describing the development of nationwide school cinema, financed by public funding and coordinated by the Swedish Film Institute. As I will argue, film education in Sweden is primarily used as a tool for fostering democratic citizens. The second part of the article discusses the main discourses of this film education model – that is, what constitutes this democratic citizen – and how these are conveyed. An analysis of film study guides produced by the Swedish Film Institute between 1988 and 2018 demonstrates that the main aim of what could be referred to as the Swedish model is to foster the basic principles of human rights as defined by the United Nations, and that this is achieved in a very convincing manner.

The article discusses Priit Pärn’s book “Tagurpidi” (first edition: Tallinn: Kunst, 1980; a possible translation of the title would be “Topsy-turvy”), a popular work of Estonian children’s literature in which the verbal component is playfully intertwined with multi-layered and exciting visuals by making use of the medium-specific toolkit of comics. “Tagurpidi” has been translated into Finnish, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian (all published in 1989) as well as Spanish (2017). While the book has been available as a reissue in Estonia since 2005, and has prompted quite a bit of nostalgia-tinged discourse from its now-grown-up readers over the years, the article is the first attempt of academic analysis specifically dedicated to it. The initial subchapter gives an overview of how the book came to be, considering its original historical and sociopolitical context. Particular attention is paid to “Tagurpidi’s” links to its author’s activity in the field of drawn animation: while Pärn had a number of creative outlets, there is a tendency to regard animation as the most important one. Thus the discourse surrounding “Tagurpidi” has often presented the book as a reworking of a supposedly banned animation script from the late 1970s into something that could be released in the less controlled, marginal field of children’s literature. Upon closer inspection, this understanding appears to exaggerate matters, as the rough script drafts in question were never greenlighted by the Tallinnfilm studio’s drawn animation department Joonisfilm, and thus never made it out of the studio to the Soviet State Cinema Committee in Moscow, which held the actual power of censoring or banning films. On the other hand, it is important to assert that the book does have a fairly obvious connection with one of Pärn’s animated films, namely “Harjutusi iseseisvaks eluks” (“Some Exercises in Preparation for an Independent Life”, 1980): the book and the film have some overlapping themes and design similarities. It is also important to emphasize that at the time, illustrating children’s picture books was a valid, attractive and well paid creative outlet in itself. The next subchapter discusses the contents of the book. The plot follows the main character, a little boy named Ants who dislikes conforming to common sense and practices, and tries to do the opposite at every opportunity. His concerned parents would like Ants to grow out of this phase and thus send him to visit his uncle in a fictional location named Tagurpidiantsla (approximately: Topsyturvyville), a fantasy environment where the only certainty is that conventional norms and rules do not apply. The book depicts the narrative environment in a considered, purposefully didactic, yet entertaining way, presenting the audience with a series of picture puzzles page after page, playing on the inconsistencies that emerge between the image and the textual component. The third subchapter is dedicated to the book’s illustrations, analysing the artistic choices and layers of meaning observed in particular images but also those emerging in the broader picture. There is a clear visual influence of pop art in the use of bright colours and collage, but the book also appears to have a certain psychedelic dimension. Surrealism, a phenomenon that was both highly popular yet officially still rather frowned upon in 1970s Estonia, is another strong influence. The book shows a particular fondness of Réne Magritte, with multiple references to his works, i.e. the character design of Ants’s uncle is linked to Magritte’s anonymous men in dark suits and bowler hats. Yet the overall nature of “Tagurpidi” also appears open to interpretation as a postmodernist work due to the characteristics of the narrative. The fourth subchapter of the article takes a look at the existing discourse about “Tagurpidi” in Estonia, shaped by cultural figures and literati who read the book as children, and influenced by nostalgic feelings as well as the so-called resistance discourse evident in much of the analysis of Estonia’s late-Soviet culture. The issue of whether these influences have led to a somewhat exaggerated reading of the book’s relatively faint ideological dimension emerges as a particular point to consider. Keywords: Estonian comics, Estonian children’s literature, Priit Pärn, surrealism, postmodernism, pop art, late Soviet culture

This variable describes what kind of concept of culture underlies the cultural coverage at a certain point of time or across time. The variable dissects the concept of culture into cultural forms that are being journalistically covered. It presupposes that each article predominantly focuses on one cultural genre or discipline, such as literature, music, or film, which is the case in most articles in the cultural beat that are written according to cultural journalists’ areas of specialization. By identifying the cultural forms covered, the variable delivers an answer to the question of what kind of culture has been covered, or what kind of culture has been represented. Forms of culture are sometimes also called artistic or cultural disciplines (Jaakkola, 2015) or cultural genres (Purhonen et al., 2019), and cultural classification (Janssen et al., 2011) or cultural hierarchy (Schmutz, 2009). The level of detail varies from study to study, according to the need of knowledge, with some scholars tracing forms of subculture (Schmutz et al., 2010), while others just identify the overall development of major cultural forms (Purhonen et al., 2019; Jaakkola, 2015a). The concepts of culture can roughly be defined as being dominated by high cultural, popular cultural, or everyday cultural forms (Kristensen, 2019). While most culture sections in newspapers are dominated by high culture, and the question is rather about which disciplines, in the operationalization it is not always easy to draw lines between high and popular forms in the postmodern cultural landscape where boundaries are being blurred. Nevertheless, the major forms of culture in the journalistic operationalization of culture are literature, classical music, theatre, and fine arts. As certain forms of culture – such as classical music and opera – are focused on classical high culture, and other forms – such as popular music and comics – represent popular forms, distribution of coverage according to cultural forms may indicate changes in the cultural concept. Field of application/theoretical foundation The question of the concept of culture is a standard question in content analyses on arts and cultural journalism in daily newspapers and cultural magazines, posed by a number of studies conducted in different geographical areas and often with a comparative intent (e.g., Szántó et al., 2004; Janssen, 1999; Reus & Harden, 2005; Janssen et al., 2008; Larsen, 2008; Kõnno et al., 2012; Jaakkola, 2015a, 2015b; Verboord & Janssen, 2015; Purhonen et al., 2019; Widholm et al., 2019). The essence of culture has been theorized in cultural studies, predominantly by Raymond Williams (e.g., 2011), and sociologists of art (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952). In studying journalistic coverage of arts and culture, the concept of culture reveals the anatomy of coverage and whether the content is targeting a broader audience (inclusive concept of culture) or a narrow audience (exclusive or elitist concept of culture). A prevalent motivation to study the ontological dimension of cultural coverage is also to trace cultural change, which means that the concept of culture is longitudinally studied (Purhonen et al., 2019). References/combination with other methods of data collection Concept of culture often occurs as a variable to trace cultural change. The variable is typically coupled with other variables, mainly with representational means, i.e., the journalistic genre (Jaakkola, 2015), event type (Stegert, 1998), or author gender (Schmutz, 2009; Jaakkola, 2015b). Quantitative content analyses may also be complemented with qualitative analyses (Purhonen et al., 2019). Sample operationalization Cultural forms are separated according to the production structure (journalists and reviewers specializing in one cultural form typically indicate an increase of coverage for that cultural form). At a general level, the concept of culture can be divided into the following cultural forms: literature, music – which is, according to the newsroom specialization typically roughly categorized into classical and popular music – visual arts, theatre, dance, film, design, architecture and built environment, media, comics, cultural politics, cultural history, arts education, and other. Subcategories can be separated according to the interest and level of knowledge. The variable needs to be sensitive towards local features in journalism and culture. Example study Jaakkola (2015b) Information about Jaakkola, 2015 Author: Maarit Jaakkola Research question/research interest: Examination of the cultural concept across time in culture sections of daily newspapers Object of analysis: Articles/text items on culture pages of five major daily newspapers in Finland 1978–2008 (Aamulehti, Helsingin Sanomat, Kaleva, Savon Sanomat, Turun Sanomat) Timeframe of analysis: 1978–2008, consecutive sample of weeks 7 and 42 in five year intervals (1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008) Info about variable Variable name/definition: Concept of culture Unit of analysis: Article/text item Values: Cultural form Description 1. Fiction literature Fiction books: fictional genres such as poetry, literary novels, thrillers, detective novels, children’s literature, etc. 2. Non-fiction literature Non-fiction books: non-fictional genres such as textbooks, memoirs, encyclopedias, etc. 3. Classical music Music of more high-cultural character, such as symphonic music, chamber music, opera, etc. 4. Popular music Music of more popular character, such as pop, rock, hip-hop, folk music, etc. 5. Visual arts Fine arts: painting, drawing, graphical art, sculpture, media art, photography, etc. 6. Theatre Scene art, including musicals (if not treated as music, i.e. in coverage of concerts and albums) 7. Dance Scene art, including ballet (if not treated as music, .e. in coverage of concerts and albums) 8. Film Cinema: fiction, documentary, experimental film, etc. 9. Design Design of artefacts, jewelry, fashion, interiors, graphics, etc. 10. Architecture Design, aesthetics, and planning of built environment 11. Media Television, journalism, Internet, games, etc. 12. Comics Illustrated periodicals 13. Cultural politics Policies, politics, and administration concerning arts and culture in general 14. Cultural history Historical issues and phenomena 15. Education Educational issues concerning different cultural disciplines 16. Other Miscellaneous minor categories, e.g., lifestyle issues (celebrity, gossip, everyday cultural issues), and larger categories developed from within the material can be separated into values of their own Scale: nominal Intercoder reliability: Cohen's kappa > 0.76 (two coders) References Jaakkola, M. (2015a). The contested autonomy of arts and journalism: Change and continuity in the dual professionalism of cultural journalism. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Jaakkola, M. (2015b). Outsourcing views, developing news: Changes of art criticism in Finnish dailies, 1978–2008. Journalism Studies, 16(3), 383–402. Janssen, S. (1999). Art journalism and cultural change: The coverage of the arts in Dutch newspapers 1965–1990. Poetics 26(5–6), 329–348. Janssen, S., Kuipers, G., & Verboord, M. (2008). Cultural globalization and arts journalism: The international orientation of arts and culture coverage in Dutch, French, German, and U.S. newspapers, 1955 to 2005. American Sociological Review, 73(5), 719–740. Janssen, S., Verboord, M., & Kuipers, G. (2011). Comparing cultural classification: High and popular arts in European and U.S. elite newspapers. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 63(51), 139–168. Kõnno, A., Aljas, A., Lõhmus, M., & Kõuts, R. (2012). The centrality of culture in the 20th century Estonian press: A longitudinal study in comparison with Finland and Russia. Nordicom Review, 33(2), 103–117. Kristensen, N. N. (2019). Arts, culture and entertainment coverage. In T. P. Vos & F. Hanusch (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of journalism studies. Wiley-Blackwell. Kroeber, A. L., & Kluckhohn, C. (1952). Culture: A critical review of concepts and definitions. Meridian Books. Larsen, L. O. (2008). Forskyvninger. Kulturdekningen i norske dagsaviser 1964–2005 [Displacements: Cultural coverage in Norwegian dailies 1964–2005]. In K. Knapskog & L.O. Larsen (Eds.), Kulturjournalistikk: pressen og den kulturelle offentligheten (pp. 283–329). Scandinavian Academic Press. Purhonen, S., Heikkilä, R., Karademir Hazir, I., Lauronen, T., Rodríguez, C. F., & Gronow, J. (2019). Enter culture, exit arts? The transformation of cultural hierarchies in European newspaper culture sections, 1960–2010. Routledge. Reus, G., & Harden, L. (2005). Politische ”Kultur”: Eine Längsschnittanalyse des Zeitungsfeuilletons von 1983 bis 2003 [Political ‘culture’: A longitudinal analysis of culture pages, 1983–2003]. Publizistik, 50(2), 153–172. Schmutz, V. (2009). Social and symbolic boundaries in newspaper coverage of music, 1955–2005: Gender and genre in the US, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Poetics, 37(4), 298–314. Schmutz, V., van Venrooij, A., Janssen, S., & Verboord, M. (2010). Change and continuity in newspaper coverage of popular music since 1955: Evidence from the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Popular Music and Society, 33(4), 505–515. Stegert, G. (1998). Feuilleton für alle: Strategien im Kulturjournalismus der Presse [Feuilleton for all: Strategies in cultural journalism of the daily press]. Max Niemeyer Verlag. Szántó, A., Levy, D. S., & Tyndall, A. (Eds.). (2004). Reporting the arts II: News coverage of arts and culture in America. National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP). Verboord, M., & Janssen, J. (2015). Arts journalism and its packaging in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, 1955–2005. Journalism Practice, 9(6), 829–852. Widholm, A., Riegert, K., & Roosvall, A. (2019). Abundance or crisis? Transformations in the media ecology of Swedish cultural journalism over four decades. Journalism. Advance online publication August, 6. Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884919866077 Williams, R. (2011). 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Introduction The aim of this paper is to examine whether recent catastrophic tsunamis have driven a cultural shift in the awareness of Australians to the danger associated with this natural hazard and whether the media have contributed to the emergence of “tsunami” as a new Australian catastrophe. Prior to the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster (2004 IOT), tsunamis as a type of hazard capable of generating widespread catastrophe were not well known by the general public and had barely registered within the wider scientific community. As a university based lecturer who specialises in natural disasters, I always started my public talks or student lectures with an attempt at a detailed description of what a tsunami is. With little high quality visual and media imagery to use, this was not easy. The Australian geologist Ted Bryant was right when he named his 2001 book Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. That changed on 26 December 2004 when the third largest earthquake ever recorded occurred northwest of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggering the most catastrophic tsunami ever experienced. The 2004 IOT claimed at least 220,000 lives—probably more—injured tens of thousands, destroyed widespread coastal infrastructure and left millions homeless. Beyond the catastrophic impacts, this tsunami was conspicuous because, for the first time, such a devastating tsunami was widely captured on video and other forms of moving and still imagery. This occurred for two reasons. Firstly, the tsunami took place during daylight hours in good weather conditions—factors conducive to capturing high quality visual images. Secondly, many people—both local residents and westerners who were on beachside holidays and at the coast at multiple locations impacted by the tsunami—were able to capture images of the tsunami on their cameras, videos, and smart phones. The extensive media coverage—including horrifying television, video, and still imagery that raced around the globe in the hours and days after the tsunami, filling our television screens, homes, and lives regardless of where we lived—had a dramatic effect. This single event drove a quantum shift in the wider cultural awareness of this type of catastrophe and acted as a catalyst for improved individual and societal understanding of the nature and effects of disaster landscapes. Since this event, there have been several notable tsunamis, including the March 2011 Japan catastrophe. Once again, this event occurred during daylight hours and was widely captured by multiple forms of media. These events have resulted in a cascade of media coverage across television, radio, movie, and documentary channels, in the print media, online, and in the popular press and on social media—very little of which was available prior to 2004. Much of this has been documentary and informative in style, but there have also been numerous television dramas and movies. For example, an episode of the popular American television series CSI Miami entitled Crime Wave (Season 3, Episode 7) featured a tsunami, triggered by a volcanic eruption in the Atlantic and impacting Miami, as the backdrop to a standard crime-filled episode ("CSI," IMDb; Wikipedia). In 2010, Warner Bros Studios released the supernatural drama fantasy film Hereafter directed by Clint Eastwood. In the movie, a television journalist survives a near-death experience during the 2004 IOT in what might be the most dramatic, and probably accurate, cinematic portrayal of a tsunami ("Hereafter," IMDb; Wikipedia). Thus, these creative and entertaining forms of media, influenced by the catastrophic nature of tsunamis, are impetuses for creativity that also contribute to a transformation of cultural knowledge of catastrophe. The transformative potential of creative media, together with national and intergovernmental disaster risk reduction activity such as community education, awareness campaigns, community evacuation planning and drills, may be indirectly inferred from rapid and positive community behavioural responses. By this I mean many people in coastal communities who experience strong earthquakes are starting a process of self-evacuation, even if regional tsunami warning centres have not issued an alert or warning. For example, when people in coastal locations in Samoa felt a large earthquake on 29 September 2009, many self-evacuated to higher ground or sought information and instruction from relevant authorities because they expected a tsunami to occur. When interviewed, survivors stated that the memory of television and media coverage of the 2004 IOT acted as a catalyst for their affirmative behavioural response (Dominey-Howes and Thaman 1). Thus, individual and community cultural understandings of the nature and effects of tsunami catastrophes are incredibly important for shaping resilience and reducing vulnerability. However, this cultural shift is not playing out evenly.Are Australia and Its People at Risk from Tsunamis?Prior to the 2004 IOT, there was little discussion about, research in to, or awareness about tsunamis and Australia. Ted Bryant from the University of Wollongong had controversially proposed that Australia had been affected by tsunamis much bigger than the 2004 IOT six to eight times during the last 10,000 years and that it was only a matter of when, not if, such an event repeated itself (Bryant, "Second Edition"). Whilst his claims had received some media attention, his ideas did not achieve widespread scientific, cultural, or community acceptance. Not-with-standing this, Australia has been affected by more than 60 small tsunamis since European colonisation (Dominey-Howes 239). Indeed, the 2004 IOT and 2006 Java tsunami caused significant flooding of parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia (Prendergast and Brown 69). However, the affected areas were sparsely populated and experienced very little in the way of damage or loss. Thus they did not cross any sort of critical threshold of “catastrophe” and failed to achieve meaningful community consciousness—they were not agents of cultural transformation.Regardless of the risk faced by Australia’s coastline, Australians travel to, and holiday in, places that experience tsunamis. In fact, 26 Australians were killed during the 2004 IOT (DFAT) and five were killed by the September 2009 South Pacific tsunami (Caldwell et al. 26). What Role Do the Media Play in Preparing for and Responding to Catastrophe?Regardless of the type of hazard/disaster/catastrophe, the key functions the media play include (but are not limited to): pre-event community education, awareness raising, and planning and preparations; during-event preparation and action, including status updates, evacuation warnings and notices, and recommendations for affirmative behaviours; and post-event responses and recovery actions to follow, including where to gain aid and support. Further, the media also play a role in providing a forum for debate and post-event analysis and reflection, as a mechanism to hold decision makers to account. From time to time, the media also provide a platform for examining who, if anyone, might be to blame for losses sustained during catastrophes and can act as a powerful conduit for driving socio-cultural, behavioural, and policy change. Many of these functions are elegantly described and a series of best practices outlined by The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency in a tsunami specific publication freely available online (CDEMA 1). What Has Been the Media Coverage in Australia about Tsunamis and Their Effects on Australians?A manifest contents analysis of media material covering tsunamis over the last decade using the framework of Cox et al. reveals that coverage falls into distinctive and repetitive forms or themes. After tsunamis, I have collected articles (more than 130 to date) published in key Australian national broadsheets (e.g., The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald) and tabloid (e.g., The Telegraph) newspapers and have watched on television and monitored on social media, such as YouTube and Facebook, the types of coverage given to tsunamis either affecting Australia, or Australians domestically and overseas. In all cases, I continued to monitor and collect these stories and accounts for a fixed period of four weeks after each event, commencing on the day of the tsunami. The themes raised in the coverage include: the nature of the event. For example, where, when, why did it occur, how big was it, and what were the effects; what emergency response and recovery actions are being undertaken by the emergency services and how these are being provided; exploration of how the event was made worse or better by poor/good planning and prior knowledge, action or inaction, confusion and misunderstanding; the attribution of blame and responsibility; the good news story—often the discovery and rescue of an “iconic victim/survivor”—usually a child days to weeks later; and follow-up reporting weeks to months later and on anniversaries. This coverage generally focuses on how things are improving and is often juxtaposed with the ongoing suffering of victims. I select the word “victims” purposefully for the media frequently prefer this over the more affirmative “survivor.”The media seldom carry reports of “behind the scenes” disaster preparatory work such as community education programs, the development and installation of warning and monitoring systems, and ongoing training and policy work by response agencies and governments since such stories tend to be less glamorous in terms of the disaster gore factor and less newsworthy (Cox et al. 469; Miles and Morse 365; Ploughman 308).With regard to Australians specifically, the manifest contents analysis reveals that coverage can be described as follows. First, it focuses on those Australians killed and injured. Such coverage provides elements of a biography of the victims, telling their stories, personalising these individuals so we build empathy for their suffering and the suffering of their families. The Australian victims are not unknown strangers—they are named and pictures of their smiling faces are printed or broadcast. Second, the media describe and catalogue the loss and ongoing suffering of the victims (survivors). Third, the media use phrases to describe Australians such as “innocent victims in the wrong place at the wrong time.” This narrative establishes the sense that these “innocents” have been somehow wronged and transgressed and that suffering should not be experienced by them. The fourth theme addresses the difficulties Australians have in accessing Consular support and in acquiring replacement passports in order to return home. It usually goes on to describe how they have difficulty in gaining access to accommodation, clothing, food, and water and any necessary medicines and the challenges associated with booking travel home and the complexities of communicating with family and friends. The last theme focuses on how Australians were often (usually?) not given relevant safety information by “responsible people” or “those in the know” in the place where they were at the time of the tsunami. This establishes a sense that Australians were left out and not considered by the relevant authorities. This narrative pays little attention to the wide scale impact upon and suffering of resident local populations who lack the capacity to escape the landscape of catastrophe.How Does Australian Media Coverage of (Tsunami) Catastrophe Compare with Elsewhere?A review of the available literature suggests media coverage of catastrophes involving domestic citizens is similar globally. For example, Olofsson (557) in an analysis of newspaper articles in Sweden about the 2004 IOT showed that the tsunami was framed as a Swedish disaster heavily focused on Sweden, Swedish victims, and Thailand, and that there was a division between “us” (Swedes) and “them” (others or non-Swedes). Olofsson (557) described two types of “us” and “them.” At the international level Sweden, i.e. “us,” was glorified and contrasted with “inferior” countries such as Thailand, “them.” Olofsson (557) concluded that mediated frames of catastrophe are influenced by stereotypes and nationalistic values.Such nationalistic approaches preface one type of suffering in catastrophe over others and delegitimises the experiences of some survivors. Thus, catastrophes are not evenly experienced. Importantly, Olofsson although not explicitly using the term, explains that the underlying reason for this construction of “them” and “us” is a form of imperialism and colonialism. Sharp refers to “historically rooted power hierarchies between countries and regions of the world” (304)—this is especially so of western news media reporting on catastrophes within and affecting “other” (non-western) countries. Sharp goes much further in relation to western representations and imaginations of the “war on terror” (arguably a global catastrophe) by explicitly noting the near universal western-centric dominance of this representation and the construction of the “west” as good and all “non-west” as not (299). Like it or not, the western media, including elements of the mainstream Australian media, adhere to this imperialistic representation. Studies of tsunami and other catastrophes drawing upon different types of media (still images, video, film, camera, and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and the like) and from different national settings have explored the multiple functions of media. These functions include: providing information, questioning the authorities, and offering a chance for transformative learning. Further, they alleviate pain and suffering, providing new virtual communities of shared experience and hearing that facilitate resilience and recovery from catastrophe. Lastly, they contribute to a cultural transformation of catastrophe—both positive and negative (Hjorth and Kyoung-hwa "The Mourning"; "Good Grief"; McCargo and Hyon-Suk 236; Brown and Minty 9; Lau et al. 675; Morgan and de Goyet 33; Piotrowski and Armstrong 341; Sood et al. 27).Has Extensive Media Coverage Resulted in an Improved Awareness of the Catastrophic Potential of Tsunami for Australians?In playing devil’s advocate, my simple response is NO! This because I have been interviewing Australians about their perceptions and knowledge of tsunamis as a catastrophe, after events have occurred. These events have triggered alerts and warnings by the Australian Tsunami Warning System (ATWS) for selected coastal regions of Australia. Consequently, I have visited coastal suburbs and interviewed people about tsunamis generally and those events specifically. Formal interviews (surveys) and informal conversations have revolved around what people perceived about the hazard, the likely consequences, what they knew about the warning, where they got their information from, how they behaved and why, and so forth. I have undertaken this work after the 2007 Solomon Islands, 2009 New Zealand, 2009 South Pacific, the February 2010 Chile, and March 2011 Japan tsunamis. I have now spoken to more than 800 people. Detailed research results will be presented elsewhere, but of relevance here, I have discovered that, to begin with, Australians have a reasonable and shared cultural knowledge of the potential catastrophic effects that tsunamis can have. They use terms such as “devastating; death; damage; loss; frightening; economic impact; societal loss; horrific; overwhelming and catastrophic.” Secondly, when I ask Australians about their sources of information about tsunamis, they describe the television (80%); Internet (85%); radio (25%); newspaper (35%); and social media including YouTube (65%). This tells me that the media are critical to underpinning knowledge of catastrophe and are a powerful transformative medium for the acquisition of knowledge. Thirdly, when asked about where people get information about live warning messages and alerts, Australians stated the “television (95%); Internet (70%); family and friends (65%).” Fourthly and significantly, when individuals were asked what they thought being caught in a tsunami would be like, responses included “fun (50%); awesome (75%); like in a movie (40%).” Fifthly, when people were asked about what they would do (i.e., their “stated behaviour”) during a real tsunami arriving at the coast, responses included “go down to the beach to swim/surf the tsunami (40%); go to the sea to watch (85%); video the tsunami and sell to the news media people (40%).”An independent and powerful representation of the disjunct between Australians’ knowledge of the catastrophic potential of tsunamis and their “negative” behavioral response can be found in viewing live television news coverage broadcast from Sydney beaches on the morning of Sunday 28 February 2010. The Chilean tsunami had taken more than 14 hours to travel from Chile to the eastern seaboard of Australia and the ATWS had issued an accurate warning and had correctly forecast the arrival time of the tsunami (approximately 08.30 am). The television and radio media had dutifully broadcast the warning issued by the State Emergency Services. The message was simple: “Stay out of the water, evacuate the beaches and move to higher ground.” As the tsunami arrived, those news broadcasts showed volunteer State Emergency Service personnel and Surf Life Saving Australia lifeguards “begging” with literally hundreds (probably thousands up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia) of members of the public to stop swimming in the incoming tsunami and to evacuate the beaches. On that occasion, Australians were lucky and the tsunami was inconsequential. What do these responses mean? Clearly Australians recognise and can describe the consequences of a tsunami. However, they are not associating the catastrophic nature of tsunami with their own lives or experience. They are avoiding or disallowing the reality; they normalise and dramaticise the event. Thus in Australia, to date, a cultural transformation about the catastrophic nature of tsunami has not occurred for reasons that are not entirely clear but are the subject of ongoing study.The Emergence of Tsunami as a “New Australian Catastrophe”?As a natural disaster expert with nearly two decades experience, in my mind tsunami has emerged as a “new Australian catastrophe.” I believe this has occurred for a number of reasons. Firstly, the 2004 IOT was devastating and did impact northwestern Australia, raising the flag on this hitherto, unknown threat. Australia is now known to be vulnerable to the tsunami catastrophe. The media have played a critical role here. Secondly, in the 2004 IOT and other tsunamis since, Australians have died and their deaths have been widely reported in the Australian media. Thirdly, the emergence of various forms of social media has facilitated an explosion in information and material that can be consumed, digested, reimagined, and normalised by Australians hungry for the gore of catastrophe—it feeds our desire for catastrophic death and destruction. Fourthly, catastrophe has been creatively imagined and retold for a story-hungry viewing public. Whether through regular television shows easily consumed from a comfy chair at home, or whilst eating popcorn at a cinema, tsunami catastrophe is being fed to us in a way that reaffirms its naturalness. Juxtaposed against this idea though is that, despite all the graphic imagery of tsunami catastrophe, especially images of dead children in other countries, Australian media do not and culturally cannot, display images of dead Australian children. Such images are widely considered too gruesome but are well known to drive changes in cultural behaviour because of the iconic significance of the child within our society. As such, a cultural shift has not yet occurred and so the potential of catastrophe remains waiting to strike. Fifthly and significantly, given the fact that large numbers of Australians have not died during recent tsunamis means that again, the catastrophic potential of tsunamis is not yet realised and has not resulted in cultural changes to more affirmative behaviour. Lastly, Australians are probably more aware of “regular or common” catastrophes such as floods and bush fires that are normal to the Australian climate system and which are endlessly experienced individually and culturally and covered by the media in all forms. The Australian summer of 2012–13 has again been dominated by floods and fires. If this idea is accepted, the media construct a uniquely Australian imaginary of catastrophe and cultural discourse of disaster. The familiarity with these common climate catastrophes makes us “culturally blind” to the catastrophe that is tsunami.The consequences of a major tsunami affecting Australia some point in the future are likely to be of a scale not yet comprehensible. References Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). "ABC Net Splash." 20 Mar. 2013 ‹http://splash.abc.net.au/media?id=31077›. Brown, Philip, and Jessica Minty. “Media Coverage and Charitable Giving after the 2004 Tsunami.” Southern Economic Journal 75 (2008): 9–25. Bryant, Edward. Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. First Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. ———. Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. Second Edition, Sydney: Springer-Praxis, 2008. 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