My dissertation in Media and Communication Studies, published in 2014, analyzed the self-images of Swedish local newspapers between 1920 and 2010. It contributed to the study of the media history of the press by analyzing how local newspapers have articulated what they are, what they do, how, why and for whom from the time of the modernization of the press after the First World War to the changing media landscape of today.
Currently I am involved in a project on the role of the aerial perspective in climate communication, with a particular focus on representations of Nordic landscapes. My colleague Jonas Harvard from Mid Sweden University and I are studying the interaction between the aspects of distance and presence in aerial photography. On the one hand aerial views can provide a sense of larger context and understanding of environmental issues. On the other, there is a risk that aerial views contribute to a sense of remoteness, due to the distance from the subject and the often abstract nature of the shots. The prevalence of Nordic/arctic imagery in climate reporting can also reinforce the impression that climate change is happening “elsewhere”. The increasing use of satellite imagery and maps by the media in climate reporting, as well as the development of camera-equipped drones, which has made the aerial perspective more easily accessible to photographers, provide important backgrounds for this project. The study builds on our previous work on the subject of aerial views in communication. In 2019, we organized an international conference on the role of media technology and the use of drones in journalism: “Journalism from Above: Drones and the Media in Critical Perspective”. The conference was funded by a grant from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. After the conference a special issue of the journal Media & Communication was published in 2020, on the topic of drones in journalism.
In November 2020, Maria Karlsson (EV) and I received a grant from The Swedish Research Council for the project “True Crime on the Air. The Representation of Crime, the Law, and the Justice System in Swedish Public Service Radio’s P3 Documentary”. The research project will start in September 2021 and run to 2023. The question “How does true crime, aimed at a young audience, depict crime, the law and the justice system?” is the starting point for the project, which will analyze approximately 180 crime documentaries, aired between 2005–2020.
Another area of interest is rural public spheres in a shifting media environment in a globalizing world. From the outside urban viewpoint life in “the rural” is often characterized as vulnerable (e.g. lacking infrastructure, culture, jobs and opportunities) while from the inside it is sometimes understood as autonomous. One central question in this project concerns the tensions and differences between internal first person views (of e.g. local newspaper reporters and readers) and external third person views (of e.g. politicians and researchers) on “the local” and “the rural”.
Contact information: mats.hyvonen@antro.uu.se
Publications
Monograph
| 2014 |  | Lokalpressens självbilder 1920-2010: Exemplet Gävleborg. Mittuniversitetet, Diss. Sundsvall: Mittuniversitetet. |
Special Issue
| 2020 |  | Journalism from Above: Drones, the Media, and the Transformation of Journalistic Practice. Media and Communication 8(3), eds. Jonas Harvard, Mats Hyvönen & Ingela Wadbring. |
Anthologies
Articles, book chapters and reviews
| 2023 | Gateway Visuals: Strategies of Climate Photographers in the Digital Age (with J. Harvard), Visual Communication Quarterly, vol. 30, July–September. |
| 2023 | Fake News (with Sharon Rider), Handbook of the Anthropocene: Humans between Heritage and Future, eds. N. Wallenhorst & C. Wulf. Cham: Springer. |
| 2023 | Northern landscapes with a story. The affordances of the aerial view in environmental photography (with J. Harvard) Disturbed Ecologies. Photography, Geopolitics, and the Northern Landscape in the Era of Environmental Crisis, eds. White, D., Peck, J. & Goldie, C. Bielefeld: Transkript Verlag. |
| 2022 | (A)sociala medier på det (o)kollegiala universitetets allmänningar. In Skör demokrati: Det öppna samhällets motkrafter i svensk offentlig debatt, kultur och forskning, eds. S. Widmalm & T. Persson. Lidingö: Fri tanke. |
| 2021 | Review of Alison MacKenzie, Jennifer Rose, and Ibrar Bhatt (Eds.). (2021). The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era: Dupery by Design. Cham: Springer. In Postdigital Science and Education. |
| 2020 | World Class at all Costs. In World Class Universities: A Contested Concept, eds. S. Rider. M. A. Peters, M. Hyvönen & T. Besley. Puchong, Selangor D.E.: Springer. |
| 2020 | Welcome to the World Class University: Introduction (with S. Rider, M. A. Peters & T. Besley). In World Class Universities: A Contested Concept, eds. S. Rider. M. A. Peters, M. Hyvönen & T. Besley. Puchong, Selangor D.E.: Springer. |
| 2020 | Journalism from Above: Drones and the Media in Critical Perspective (with J. Harvard & I. Wadbring). In Media and Communication 8(3). |
| 2020 | Periferin i centrum. Om behovet av nya perspektiv på landsbygden (with Michael Gustavsson). In Utsatt eller insatt. Plats, kunskap & kultur, eds. M. Gustavsson & M. Hyvönen. Engaging Vulnerability & Kulturreservatets Folkhögskola. |
| 2020 | Mobilizing Vulnerability in Scandinavian Art and Culture (with Adriana Margareta Dancus and Maria Karlsson). In Vulnerability in Scandinavian Art and Culture, eds. Adriana Margareta Dancus, M. Hyvönen & Maria Karlsson. London: Palgrave Macmillan. |
| 2020 | The Politics of True Crime: Vulnerability and Documentaries on Murder in Swedish Public Service Radio’s P3 Documentary (with Maria Karlsson and Madeleine Eriksson). In Vulnerability in Scandinavian Art and Culture, eds. Adriana Margareta Dancus, M. Hyvönen & Maria Karlsson. London: Palgrave Macmillan. |
| 2020 | Mats Hyvönen. Granskning av digitala krigshärdar [Review of P. Pomerantsev, Det här är inte propaganda – Kriget om sanningen]. Tidskriften Respons, 6/2020. |
| 2020 | Mats Hyvönen. Lättare att reformera publiken än journalistiken [Review of S. Dopping & S-B Ljunggren, Inte lögn, inte sant – Medierna och verkligheten]. Tidskriften Respons, 3/2020. |
| 2018 | Review of Derek R. Ford's (2018) Politics and Pedagogy in the “Post-Truth” Era: Insurgent Philosophy and Praxis (London: Bloomsbury Academic). In Postdigital Science and Education. |
| 2018 | As a Matter of Fact: Journalism and Scholarship in the Post-truth Era. In Post-Truth, Fake News: Viral Modernity & Higher Education, eds. M. A. Peters, S. Rider, M. Hyvönen & T. Besley. Singapore: Springer. |
| 2017 | Rankningar och medialiseringen av universitetet. In Kunskap, motstånd, möjlighet, eds. Ulrika Serrander and Peder Thalén. Farsta: Molin & Sorgenfrei. |
| 2017 | Periferin i centrum (with Michael Gustavsson) . In Ikaros, 2017:2. Read article |
| 2017 | The Formation of Swedish Media Studies, 1960–1980 (with Pelle Snickars and Per Vesterlund). In Media History, 2017 Read article |
| 2016 | Marknaden kan inte längre finansiera seriös journalistik. In Respons, 2016:6 Read article |
| 2016 | Rankings and Mediatization of University. In Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory, ed. Michael A. Peters. Singapore: Springer, 2016. |
| 2016 | Tillväxthögskolan: ett ideologiskt projekt. In Ikaros, 2016:1. Read article |
| 2015 | Mediekritik i pocketformat: Massmedieproblem i debattböcker 1965 till 1975. In Massmedieproblem: Medistudiets formering, eds. Mats Hyvönen, Pelle Snickars and Per Vesterlund. Lund: Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2015. Read article |
| 2015 | Mediestudiets formering: En introduktion (with Snickars, P. and Vesterlund, P.). In Massmedieproblem: Medistudiets formering, eds. Mats Hyvönen, Pelle Snickars and Per Vesterlund. Lund: Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2015. Read article |
| 2015 | Efterord (with Snickars, P. and Vesterlund, P.). In Massmedieproblem: Medistudiets formering, eds. Mats Hyvönen, Pelle Snickars and Per Vesterlund. Lund: Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2015. Read article |
| 2014 | Det vakande världsögat: Global överblick genom lokala dagstidningar 1935 till 1970. In Återkopplingar, eds. Marie Cronqvist, Patrik Lundell and Pelle Snickars. Lund: Mediehistoriskt arkiv. Read article |
| 2013 | The Foundations of Knowledge According to the Knowledge Foundation. In Transformations in Research, Higher Education and the Academic Market: The Breakdown of Scientific Thought. eds. Sharon Rider, Alexandra Waluszewski and Ylva Hasselberg. Dordrecht: Springer Verlag. Read article |
| 2009 | Idrott mellan nationalkänsla och lokalpatriotism (with Eva Åsén Ekstrand). In Fram träder Bergslagen: Nytt ljus över gammal region, ed. Maths Isacson. Västerås: Penta Plus. |
| 2007 | Bilder av det ’goda’ arbetet. In Medier & politik: Om arbetarrörelsens mediestrategier under 1900-talet, eds. Mats Jönsson and Pelle Snickars. Stockholm: Statens ljud- och bildarkiv. Read article |
