MUNlClPAL POLITICS IN THE SWEDISH PRESS
Authors: Birgersson Bengt‐Ove 
Published: April 2008

The aim of this study has been to illuminate somewhat the factors that determine the extent of information the citizens can obtain via the press about communal and local political activity in their home communes. These factors have been assumed to be related partly to attibutes of the respective commune, news production and the newspaper situation within the commune, and partly to the choice of newspaper or access to a newspaper (the newspapers were classified in different types of newspapers with respect to publication frequency, the competitive situation at the place of publication and the size of the area of circulation).

After an introductory discussion of these three factors in which the newspapers were primarily viewed as commercial enterprises as regards the present hard economic conditions, the three explanatory factors have been successively introduced into the exposition. The unit of investigation has consistently been composed of the contents in a given paper from a given commune, i. e., the contents the readers of one newspaper have access to from one commune. This unit of analysis has been described with a special term “control commune” in order to avoid an ambiguous use of language.

When the control communes, distributed according to size classes, were studied, a high correlation with communal size appeared. However, upon a control of differences in news production by studying the col. cms. values per 100 inhabitants, large and small communes received similar values. Therefore, the correlation with communal size was interpreted as a result of dissimilarities in news production ‐the number of communal civil servants (upon use of the second operationalisation of news production) received instead a falling trend with rising communal size: a fact that was interpreted as a reflection by the number of civil servants of the qualitative dimension to an altogether too small extent.

The contents from the larger control communes were to a greater extent placed in a leading place in the newspaper, consisted to a greater extent of news articles and were to a greater extent classified as negative. This indicated that the larger communes were devoted more interest on the part of the newspapers than the smaller ones. However, a large part of these differences proved upon a comparison between control communes from places of publication and other localities to be connected with the attribute of being a place of publication.

The differences between places of publication, both qualitatively and quantitatively, were so extensive that the places of publication were from that point on left outside of the calculations (they composed only 4 % of all units of analysis.

When several qualities of the newspapers were introduced into the analysis a strong correlation with the size of the areas of circulation was noticed. Control communes from newspapers with limited areas of circulation consistently obtained higher values than control communes from newspaper with large areas of circulation. On the other hand, no correlation could be stated between publication frequency and communal contents. During our three month period the non‐daily newspapers contained, by and large, as many col. cms. from the individual communes as did the six‐ and seven days per week newspaper. The non‐daily newspapers gave communal contents a more prominent placement at the same time as a smaller part of it was classified as routine surveillance.

When the newspapers were classified in different types with consideration being taken also to the competitive situation at the places of publication, the assumed ties between the extent of competition and the extent of surveillance could not be pointed out with certitude. The value of the results on this point are, however, dubious since the places of publication themselves were not included in the calculations. However, the small number of observations made it impossible to perform an analysis of these. The existence of so‐called branch editions proved, on the other hand, to be accompanied by a more extensive material from the individual communes within the areas of circulation of these branch editions. The citizens in the suburban communes were nearly completely referred to other information channels during the period embraced by the investigation.

Another way to study the importance of competition for the extent of local content is to compare control communes with different market situations. When the control communes were class‐distributed as regards the papers share of the market of them it could be stated that both high and low shares of the market appeared to lead to less extensive surveillance than the middle group where the competition is strongest. However, the possibilities for making these comparisons were limited by the fact that there were an insufficient number of observations for many newspaper type/size classes and market‐share classes.

By way of summary, we can state that we have, by and large, found the correlation between ‘the extent of the surveillance and the “explanatory factors” that we have assumed in the conceptual framework. The information about his own commune that a member of a commune can obtain via the press is dependent partly upon the production of news — surveillance of the commune shows a strong correlation with communal size — and partly upon the qualities of the paper read, primarily the size of the area of circulation ‐ newspapers with limited areas of circulation devote greater space to the individual communes than newspapers with extended areas of circulation. The surveillance of individual communes proved also to be dependent upon the competitive situation on the newspaper market. The newspaper devoted most space to the communes where the competition between different newspapers was strongest. However, it is impossible to declare with such simple methods anything certain about the reciprocal “importance” of the different factors for variations in the extent of the surveillance or about how large a part of the total variation in the dependent variable can be traced to the undependent variables studied.4 3

An attempt to investigate more thoroughly with the help of regression analysis “the addition to the explanation” of the variance in the surveillance of these and other operationalizations is now being conducted. The result of this work will be reported on in the Communal Research Group's dissertation series.