This chapter introduces rurality-TV as a genre, and we discuss how public service media, through this genre, contributes to symbolically resolving tensions between the rural and the urban, and we address processes of mobility and urbanisation in the Nordics. Three popular reality-TV programmes depicting rural life are analysed: Bonderøven [loosely translated as The Hillbilly], later known as Frank & Kastaniegaarden (DR), Hjälp vi har köpt en bondgård! [Help we have bought a farm!] (SVT), and Oppfinneren [The Inventor] (NRK). These are approached through three questions: What constitutes public service rurality-TV as a genre in terms of form and content? What values are negotiated in the programmes? How can we understand rurality-TV in the context of public service broadcasting in the media welfare state?

PURPOSE: The aim of this study is to, in the Swedish media debate, explore the discursive constructions of challenges in human rights and freedoms following the national spatial strategy for health and survival during the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS: The study, inspired by a critical discourse analytic approach, focused particularly on the issues addressed, subject positions, relations and rhetoric. Seventeen opinion articles published in Swedish national newspapers December 2019 - February 2022 were analysed.

RESULTS: The main contents were threats to democracy, threats to the freedom and rights of specific groups, and threats to the debate itself. Contents were expressed through three discourse dichotomies: contribution vs interjection, documented vs alarmistic, and active on the stage vs commenting from the balcony.

CONCLUSIONS: Striking about the results is the absence of dialogue, the one-way communication, and the absent politicians. It seems that the analysed debate on the challenges of the Swedish COVID-19 pandemic strategy, based on its impact on overall freedoms and rights, has not been the focus of decision-makers during the pandemic. They have neither addressed the threats highlighted in the articles, nor contributed to the discourse. This is worrying for the long-term maintenance and development of a healthy democracy. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Aphasia is a language impairment caused by acquired brain injury such as stroke. Public awareness about aphasia is low in Sweden as well as internationally. The media is an important source of information on aphasia, but research on how people with aphasia are portrayed in the media is scarce. Therefore, this study aimed to increase the knowledge about media representations of people living with aphasia, by studying Swedish journalistic newspaper articles. It focused on stories in which people with aphasia were included in the discussion rather than merely being the subject of the discussion. Drawing on framing theory and Frank’s typology of narrative types, a qualitative ethnographic content analysis was conducted. Swedish print media material published between 2007 and 2018 was collected and 84 articles were identified for inclusion in the analysis. The overall finding was that, within Swedish journalistic newspaper articles, living with aphasia is framed as a success story. Themes and sub-themes were identified within each narrative type, and we suggest expanding Frank’s typology with humour narratives and necessity narratives. Although several narrative types were identified in the studied articles, the overarching success story frame was predominant. Copyright (c) 2021 Helena Taubner, Malin Hallén

Background: Self-identity construction through “stories of self” is highly relevant for people with aphasia, not only because the onset entails a “biographical disruption” but also since their ability to keep their “stories of self” going is reduced. Three dilemmas (constancy/change, sameness/difference and agency/dependency) are known to be central to identity. In a digitalised society like Sweden, self-identity construction, including the navigation of these dilemmas, takes place both online and offline. Nevertheless, research combining aphasia, identity and online issues is scarce.

Aim: This qualitative study aims, in terms identity dilemmas, to investigate self-identity construction in working-age persons living with post-stroke aphasia in a digitalised society (i.e. Sweden). Are the dilemmas relevant to the participants, and if so, how do they navigate them online and offline?

Methods and Procedures: Nine individuals (three men and six women, aged 24–54 at onset) with mild or moderate post-stroke aphasia participated. The data comprises nine individual audio-recorded interviews and 1,581 screenshots from online observations. Qualitative analyses were performed (vertically and horizontally), combining inductive and deductive approaches.

Outcomes and Results: All three dilemmas are relevant to the participants. They construct their self-identity as both the same as they were pre-stroke and changed. They are both the same and different in relation to other stroke survivors (with or without aphasia), i.e. both “disabled” and “normal”. They display both dependency and agency. Thus, they navigate the dilemmas by constantly negotiating what to include in their stories of self. In addition, telling one story of self offline does not imply telling the same story online.

Conclusion: The dilemmas are intertwined and highly relevant to the participants. Offline and online settings evoke different ways for them to navigate the dilemmas. Increased awareness of the possible struggle with self-identity dilemmas in people with aphasia, and the possible difference between their online and offline self-identities, should be of value to family members, clinicians and researchers. Further research based on a larger sample is suggested. © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

We are our stories of self. The stories we tell about ourselves is the interface between us and others, as we keep our “narratives going”. What happens, then, if we lose our language due to a brain injury? In this chapter, stories of people with post-stroke aphasia are related and analysed. They have lost their linguistic abilities overnight, entailing a need of identity re-negotiation. However, their key to this re-negotiation, i.e. language, has been reduced “when most needed”. In a highly digitalized society like Sweden, identity is “always online” and online literacy practices are central to everyday communication. Thus, the stories of self told by people living in Sweden – including people with aphasia – include online aspects. The aim of this chapter is, therefore, to explore stories of self of nine Swedish individuals (6 women and 3 men, aged 24–56 at onset) with aphasia, and to analyse the role played by multimodal online literacy practices when telling these stories. The participants were interviewed and observed online. The interviews were based on the PCI methodology which aims to generate storytelling and emphasises the participant’s right to be understood. The online observations were inspired by netnography and included the social media platforms in which the participants were active. Findings show that the participants recurrently negotiated what to include in their stories of self, and that they constantly navigated identity dilemmas. They constructed self-identities as both the same as they were pre-stroke and changed. They were both the same and different in relation to others, i.e. both “disabled” and “normal”. They displayed both dependency and agency. Because of the multimodality, the online literacy practices provided an opportunity for the participants to express their stories of self in a more elaborate way than in offline settings. Thus, online multimodality increased the participants’ control of their identity re-negotiation.

News reporting about mental illness lack perspectives of the mentally ill themselves and it is almost exclusively psychiatrists who are accessed when healthcare staff is consulted. The perspective of mental health nurses might contribute to the public understanding of mental illness. The purpose of this study was to describe mental health nurses’ experiences of how mental illness is portrayed in media. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with qualified mental health nurses. A qualitative content analysis resulted in three categories: Negative portrayals of mental illness, Inconclusive images of mental illness and Biased dissemination of different perspectives. The conclusion of this study is that mental health nurses experience media portrayals of mental illness as negative and misleading with too much emphasis on the medical perspective while a holistic mental health nursing perspective is heavily obscured. Mental health nurses need to take a more prominent role in public reporting on mental health to resolve the current lack of relevant facts regarding mental illness. Further research is needed regarding portrayals of mental illness in social media and how the current lack of perspectives affects public perceptions of mental illness. In addition, further studies regarding the viewpoints of journalists reporting on mental illness are required. © 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This study aimed to investigate online strategies for re-negotiating identity, in terms of stigma management, developed by working-age Swedish Internet users with post-stroke aphasia, i.e., acquired language impairment caused by brain injury. Interviews were conducted with nine individuals (aged 26-61, three men and six women) with post-stroke aphasia. In addition, a total of 1,581 screenshots of online posts (e.g., photos, videos, text, emoticons) created by the same participants were collected. Drawing on social semiotics (specifically the three dimensions of online communication mentioned by Kress (2003), i.e., composition, content and context) and Goffman’s theory of stigma (1963, specifically the concepts of stigma management and passing), qualitative thematic analysis was performed. Regarding composition, three themes emerged: Relying on others or technology, Beyond speaking and writing, and Controlling speed and timing. The participants rarely posted content about aphasia, but some of them used the Internet to raise awareness. Different online contexts had different meaning to the participants in terms of identity. Being open about the aphasia in one forum did not imply the same behaviour in another forum (e.g., dating sites). For the participants to pass (Goffman, 1963), should they want to, they needed to control all three dimensions. If the context or the composition revealed the stigma, controlling the content was not enough to pass. The multimodality of the Internet enabled the participants to manage their stigma in a variety of ways and to choose whether to be perceived as persons with aphasia or not. © 2017, Masaryk University. All rights reserved.

The news media are one of the most important public sources of information on psychiatric disorders. However, research on news media content has established that journalistic coverage of mental illness is largely characterized by inaccuracies, exaggerations, and misinformation. Studies consistently show that both entertainment and news media provide overwhelmingly dramatic and distorted images of mental illness that emphasize dangerousness, criminality and unpredictability. According to previous research, newspapers might even contribute to mental illness stigma through negative news content. For example, insufficient stories on recovery may promote the belief that mental illness cannot be treated effectively. Also, news media can contribute to the maintaining of mental illness stigma by negative portrayals of individuals with these illnesses, making them vulnerable to social rejection and discrimination. Research on journalistic coverage of mental illness has also problematized the tendency to use incorrect or inappropriate language, thus devaluing the degree of scientific accuracy (for example, the incorrect or careless use of psychiatric terms). There is also a significant tendency to overestimate the explanatory value of genetics regarding the causes of mental illnesses and methods of treatment. There is a need for more research on how news about mental illness is produced, for example, what resources reporters use in covering stories and how reporters select, frame, and develop stories. Further, little information exists on how journalists overcome barriers to quality health reporting, for example, lack of time, lack of space, and commercialism. This paper analyzes journalistic views and perspectives regarding mental illness and the news media coverage of issues regarding mental illness. In particular, challenges in reporting scientific issues such as causes of mental disorders and their treatments will be focused. This study is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 8 journalists from Swedish metropolitan newspapers. The interview protocol served the function of “wide” questions for the purposes of allowing respondents to generate their own key terms. The journalists were chosen based on a newspaper article database search (focusing mental health issues), and the most frequent journalists in the article sample were contacted by email. The interviews were conducted by phone between February and March 2016 and were audio recorded. The journalists interviewed were initially asked to reflect upon different issues regarding mental illness; possible causes, different diagnosis, chances of recovery etc. Thereafter the interview focused the journalists view on media coverage of mental illness with special focus on news media, eg perspectives/bias in the journalistic representations, absent theories/approaches, choice of sources, strategies for research, journalistic work routines and procedures, most difficult challenges and journalistic responsibilities. Finally, they were asked to reflect upon possible changes in public attitudes and opinions regarding mental illness over the last few decades and the potential role of the news media in such a development.

Background: The mental health-care system in Sweden, as in many other counties, has its main focus on the reduction of psychiatric symptoms and the prevention of relapses. People diagnosed with schizophrenia often have significant health issues and experience reduced well-being in everyday life. The social imaginary of mental illness as an imbalance of the brain has implications concerning general attitudes in society. The news media are an important source of information on psychiatric disorders and have an important role in cultivating public perceptions and stigma. News media can contribute to the mental illness stigma and place individuals with mental illnesses at risk of not receiving adequate care and support.

The aim of this preliminary study was to describe users’ experiences of housing support in everyday life.

Results: The results revealed three themes of housing support, which were needed, but frequently insufficiently fulfilled in the municipality. The three themes were: ‘‘Support to Practice Healthy Routines in Daily Life,’’ ‘‘Support to Shape Meaningful Contents in Everyday Life,’’ and ‘‘Support to Meet Needs of Integrity and Respect.’’

Conclusions: The findings support previous studies arguing that current health care and housing support fails to meet basic needs and may lead to significant and unnecessary health risks. Further investigation is needed regarding the links between attitudes to mental illness in society and political and financial principles for health care and housing support for persons with schizophrenia. Further research is needed regarding the role of the media in policymaking concerning health promotion interventions for people diagnosed with schizophrenia. © 2016 H. Jormfeldt & M. Hallén.