Publications
The research staff at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies aims for a high dissemination frequency. Although most of our production is in Norwegian, we also enjoy international reach, with monographs as well as edited anthologies, proceedings, papers and articles. We here present some of the recent international publications by our researchers. We also present an overview of the latest doctoral theses to come out of the Department.
RECENT DISSERTATIONS AT THE DEPARTMENT
Brita Ytre-Arne: Women’s magazines and their readers. Experiences, identity and everyday life
Ytre-Arne's thesis explores women's magazine reading as a media experience, and ask how regular readers of women's magazines experience these publications, and how these experiences can be related to readers’ everyday lives and to their sense of identity. A central ambition of the thesis is to suggest and demonstrate analytical approaches that are new to research on women's magazines. Throughout the thesis, women's magazine reading is conceptualized as a multifaceted media experience that encompasses perceptual, aesthetic, technological, cognitive, emotional, social and cultural dimensions. More here
Helle Sjøvaag: Journalistic Ideology. Professional Strategy, Institutional Authority and Boundary Maintenance in the Digital News Market
Sjøvaag's dissertation examines how journalistic ideology is mobilised when the profession is met by exogenous forces that challenge journalistic authority, primarily by looking at how the Norwegian commercial public service broadcaster TV 2 engages journalistic ideology as part of its news market strategies. Fundamental to journalistic ideology and its mobilisation in these encounters is the concept of a social contract operating as the driving force behind professional strategies. These issues are further contextualised within Anthony Giddens' concept of the duality of structure to illustrate the recursive nature of journalistic ideology for the maintenance of professional boundaries. More here
Heng Wu: Museum and Change: Regional Museums in the People’s Republic of China
Wu's thesis explores the correlation between museum and political and policy changes in the Peoples Republic of China with selected regional museums as the research object. Wu explores what changes have taken place in selected Chinese regional museums with the aim to understand what roles political and policy changes in the country have had on the process. Pertinent issues include diversity and unity, regional identity and national identity, representation of identity, regional development policy and cultural tourism. The research revealed that policy has a strong influence on all the museums studied but there are also differences between regions. More here
Lars Jacob Hove: Drawing visual query images: use, users and usability of query by drawing interfaces for content based image retrieval systems
Hove’s thesis presents an empirical study of Query by Drawing (QBD) as an approach to Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) - systems where users express their image needs by drawing an image representative of the images they wish to retrieve. The role of the user in image retrieval systems is a relatively unexplored area, and little empirical data has been collected on the expectations, needs and behaviour of these users. Even with the current challenges facing these systems, the feedback from the respondents in this study indicates that, given some changes, users may find QBD CBIR systems a very useful tool, particularly when combined with text based queries. More here
Bjørnar Solhaug: Policy Specification Using Sequence Diagrams. Applied to Trust Management
Solhaug's thesis addresses the problem of capturing, specifying and developing policies - rules governing the choices in the behavior of systems, the enforcement of which ensures that the system meets the relevant requirements. Solhaug proposes a language suitable for the specification of policies across domains, at various abstraction levels, and that facilitates human interpretation. The thesis proposes a method for the development of trust management policies that facilitates the modeling and analysis of trust within systems, and the evaluation of the risks and opportunities to which the system is exposed as a consequence of trust-based decisions. More here
Sonja Wilhelmsen: Maximising Organisational Information Sharing and Effective Intelligence Analysis in Critical Data Sets. A case study on the information science needs of the Norwegian criminal intelligence and law enforcement community
This dissertation focuses on the information needs sourced through the critical data sets of law enforcement organisations; specifically the Norwegian criminal intelligence and law enforcement community represented by the National Criminal Investigation Service (Kriminalpolitisentralen (Kripos)). Information sharing is particularly important in these communities due to consequences for alleged perpetrators, victims and witnesses. More here
Jan Fredrik Hovden: Profane and Sacred. A study of the Norwegian Journalistic Field
In this thesis, using the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of social fields as a guide, Hovden analyses the structures of the Norwegian journalistic field and the journalists’ habitus, based on a survey of Norwegian journalists. Hovden argues journalists' increased autonomy from external influences - in particular from political parties and the state - has contributed to the construction of a particular informal social structure, what Bourdieu calls a social field. In this way Hovden's thesis is a study of the strong constraints latent in any prospect of “free and independent” journalism. More here
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Coverscaping: Discovering Album AestheticsSmall images:
Postdoctoral fellow Øyvind Vågnes and professor Asbjørn Grønstad's book Coverscaping: Discovering Album Aesthetics focuses on the semiotics, poetics, and rhetoric of album covers. The book is based on research undertaken wihtin the Nomadikon project, and concerns how record sleeves may represent a visual genre in its own right.
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Literacy practices in late modernitySmall images:
New book on literary practices by Professor Emerita Barbara Gentikow and colleagues. In this book, literacy is understood as a fairly established set of social practices that people draw on in encounters with quite specific challenges and technologies.
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Media Globalization and the Discovery Channel NetworksSmall images:
Post doctoral fellow Ole Johan Mjøs has recently published a book regarding the relationship between media and globalization. The book presents a unique study of the DIscovery Channel - one of the world's leading producer of documentary programming for television and other media.
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Music, Social Media and Global MobilitySmall images:
Associate Professor Ole J. Mjøs’ new book is now out on Routledge. Music, Social Media and Global Mobility investigates the relationship between media, communications and globalisation through a unique study of electronic music practitioners’ use of global social media such as Facebook, Youtube, MySpace and Twitter.
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Screening the UnwatchableSmall images:
Professor Asbjørn Grønstad's book Screening the Unwatchable traces the rise of extreme art cinema across a range of films from Lars von Trier's The Idiots to Michael Haneke's Caché. Screening the Unwatchable is published by Palgrave.
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Transfigurations: Violence, Death and Masculinity in American CinemaSmall images:
Asbjørn Grønstad's new publication Transfigurations: Violence, Death and Masculinity in American Cinema explores our cultural obsession with film violence and brings it into a renewed dialogue with contemporary theory. The book alters both our methodology of reading violence in films and the meanings we assign to them.
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We Love to Hate Each OtherSmall images:
Peter Dahlén contributes in this volume with the article "An Exemplary Model: The Religious Significance of the Brann 2007 Norwegian Football Championship as Told by the Media". The article is published in "We Love to Hate Each Other. Mediated Football Fan Culture".
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Grounded TheorySmall images:
Grounded Theory: The Philosophy, Method, and Work of Barney Glaser. Postdoctoral fellow Astrid Gynnild is the editor (with Vivian B. Martin) of a new book on grounded theory. This anthology provides a unique collection of articles on classic grounded theory, as developed by sociologist Dr. Barney G. Glaser.
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Media, Markets & Public SpheresSmall images:
Media, Markets & Public Spheres presents an overview of changes in the European public spheres over the last fifty years as well as in-depth analyses of structural changes in press and broadcasting, changing relations between media, changes in media policies and media history as record of cultural change.
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Sound Media. From Live Journalism to Music RecordingSmall images:
Sound Media: From Live Journalism to Music Recording considers how music recording, radio broadcasting and muzak influence people's daily lives and introduces the many and varied creative techniques that have developed in music and journalism throughout the twentieth century.
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The Digital Public Sphere: Challenges for Media PolicySmall images:
Editors Jostein Gripsrud and Hallvard Moe have recently published a new book with Nordicom. The book The Digital Public Sphere: Challenges for Media Policy, builds on the Digicult project and explores how media policy is changing in a digital public sphere.
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Down There and Up HereSmall images:
Down There and Up Here: Orientalism and Othering in Feature Stories is a new book by professor Elizabeth Eide. This book is dedicated to the exploration of a specific subfield of journalism - reporting on the Other across real and perceived borders.
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Relocating TelevisionSmall images:
Jostein Gripsrud is editor of Relocating Television: Television in the Digital Context. Relocating Television offers readers an insight into studying television alongside the internet, participatory media and other technocultural phenomena such as DVDs, user-generated content and everyday digital media production. The book is the result of Gripsrud's Digicult project.
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Media in MotionSmall images:
Professor Elisabeth Eide and postdoktorl fellow Kaarina Nikunen from the University of Tampere, Finland, are the editors of Media in Motion. The book draws together the latest research from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden to look at different aspects of the relationship between media and migration in the Nordic region.
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Changes in Museum PracticeSmall images:
Changes in Museum Practice: New Media, Refugees and Participation - Edited by Hanne-Lovise Skartveit and Katherine Goodnow. The book explores how museums can establish a dialogue both within and across communities and cultural boundaries by examining the ways in which museums can involve refugees and asylum seekers.
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Kristeva in Focus: From Theory to Film AnalysisSmall images:
Katherine Goodnow's new book is entitled Kristeva in Focus: From Theory to Film Analysis. It deals with some of the major themes in film narratives, including how narratives have changed over time, and considers the sources of our variable reactions to themes and representations of horror, strangers, and love.
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Film MusicSmall images:
In Film Music Peter Larsen traces the history of music in film and discusses central theoretical questions concerning its narrative and psychological functions. The book serves as an important text for students of film, music and cultural disciplines, as well as the general reader with an interest in film and popular music.
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Scandinavian Museums and Cultural DiversitySmall images:
Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity is a book edited by Katherine Goodnow and Haci Akman. The book explores how museums across the world are facing the task of capturing, reflecting and representing the notion of complex identities; personal, religious and ethnic.