Att gestalta en region : källornas strategier och mediernas föreställningar om Öresund

Sammanfattning: The Öresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden was inaugurated in the year 2000, connecting the city of Malmö and the Danish capital Copenhagen. The bridge was an important move towards the visionary realisation of a transnational Öresund Region. In this dissertation the communicative aspects of the regional process are put in focus. The vision of the Öresund Region that developed during the 1990s is analysed as a mass mediated social construction, influenced by public relations and news management efforts. The aim is to describe,understand and reflect upon Danish and Swedish newspapers’ conceptions of the Öresund Region, focusing on the relationships between professional sources and these conceptions within a late modern social context. The dissertation is founded on a social constructionist epistemology. The empirical analysis is inspired by rhetorical and critical discourse analysis. The study is mainly based on qualitative interviews, quantitative and qualitative analysis of newspaper texts and secondary data (opinion polls). The qualitative interviews are done with journalists and important opinion and marketing actors. The content and text analysis is based on a strategically chosen sample of texts during 1991-2001 in the two major and dominant newspapers in the region, Sydsvenska Dagbladet, Berlingske Tidende and their supplement Öresundsnytt. Some conclusions may be mentioned here. When it comes to news management strategies the study shows that three different strategies have been regularly applied, namely a factual, a journalistic and a publicity strategy. The factual strategy, emphasizing logical arguments and the production of reports, surveys, analysis, books and seminars aimed towards opinion elites, has been most successful. The content analysis shows that the regional newspapers gave a very positive profile of the region – consensus -oriented, male and with growth and profit at its centre. The qualitative analysis also shows that national stereotypes and conceptions are common. The Öresund Region is mainly constructed through Swedish or Danish national perspectives. From a macrodiscourse level the communicated region is dominated by a national growth discourse where regional political-economical elites support local and national growth prior to other values. Other possible discourse formations (for example cosmopolitan, neo-liberal, neo-democratic and cultural historical framings) are seldom used in the analyzed mass media. The media formation of the Öresund Region is dominated by elite actors and has an auto-communicative character.