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Historisk tidskrift 133:2 • 2013

Innehåll (Contents) 2013:2

Uppsatser (Articles)

 

Historia på frukostbordet. Historiebruk i två nordiska dagstidningar 1987 och 2012

Harald Gustafsson

Fulltext (pdf)

Summary

History at the breakfast table

How frequently and in what ways does history figure in daily news media? This study revisits an investigation of history in two leading Scandinavian newspapers, the Danish Politiken and the Swedish Dagens Nyheter, which was undertaken in 1987. Twenty-five years later, the results of this study are compared to an investigation of historical content in the same two newspapers in 2012.

The frequency of historical material has not changed over this time period. Something the reader is likely to identify as history turns up around eight or nine times a day. These figures include history as political argument, historical backgrounds in news articles, reviews of books or exhibitions on history, articles on museums and historical (or often rather archaeological) findings, history as entertainment on the “light” pages of the papers, and history in advertisements. Politiken had a more traditional concept of history and national history as a frame of reference was more frequent than in Dagens Nyheter. Both newspapers focused on contemporary history, with a noticeable interest in the Second World War and the post-war period, but the few articles going further back than the twentieth century occurred almost exclusively in Politiken.

These findings are discussed in terms of the different needs that history fulfils in modern society and culture. History is often used to provide orientation in contemporary affairs. But often, we use history to visit a foreign world, be it for leisure and entertainment or for a more existential need to mirror ourselves in other people’s lives and other situations. This last usage seems to be diminishing, in newspapers as well as among historians and in society at large.

Keywords

Sweden, Denmark, history usage, history didactics, popular history, history in newspapers, contemporary history

The article has been reviewed by two external reviewers under a double-blind peer review process.