Typographic Man : Medielandskap i förändring - Studier i provinsens tryckkultur

Sammanfattning: The aim of the present thesis is to study how the media landscape of northern Sweden was shaped and transformed in the final years of the 18th century and first half of the nineteenth. This slowly-emerging new landscape brought with it new thoughts and new voices. Which individuals and institutions were involved in this process?Proceeding from a number of hypotheses and a variety of perspectives, the intention has been to study the type of printed matter being physically disseminated,how it came to be used and in what context by what people. The questions are in many ways interwoven and can be followed from chapter to chapter.The title of the dissertation underlines the fact that the media landscape under investigation is in fact populated. Through gradual changes in the media landscape, the people of the province became ”typographic”, i.e. dependent onprinted matter.The interdisciplinary nature of this dissertation, embracing media history,book history, ethnology, communications and cultural history, leaves ample room for aspects and inspiration culled from a broad variety of sources. By embarking from concepts including mediascape, province, print culture, networks,voluntary associations and various manifestations of reading culture, it has been possible to sketch the outlines of the development and dynamism of the media landscape during the period under investigation.A region long considered to be a remote outpost was in fact at the begin-ning of the nineteenth century well on its way to making its voice heard more clearly in the national conversation. Contacts and connection within the province also changed character as new forms of conversation emerged. Those which previously had been conducted in church, at the barbershop, in the market square or in the reading societies were now being conducted in locally-produced newspapers and pamphlets. The means of communication had changed. A new age needed to be dealt with and discussed, and that discussion could now take place in print.