Meeting the Good Other: Proper Distance and the Representation of José Mujica in Swedish Feature Journalism

Ernesto Abalo

doi:10.16993/iberoamericana.473

Abstract

This paper examines the representation of the then president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, in a long-read feature story published in the Saturday supplement of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. This ...

Highlights

How does Swedish journalism construct distance and proximity to ‘the other’ in the reporting on a South American political leader? How do such constructions connect a Swedish audience to politicalOn one level, the feature story about Mujica, an ex-guerrilla who became president and who is known forAbalo: Meeting the Good Other his unorthodox presidential style, is a case of what Orgad (2011), in a metaphorical reference to Kholstomer, calls Tolstoy’s horse: a view and interpretation of an object from the outside
Given the role that Sweden played in the 1970s and 1980s in offering asylum to Latin American political refugees fleeing from military dictatorships in their home countries—which has resulted in a community of almost 5,000 people living in Sweden who were either born in Uruguay or have at least one Uruguayan parent (SCB 2018)—the mediation of the other is here interrelated with discourses of national history and national identity
One can say that the analyzed feature story generally shows enthusiasm towards Mujica, which is manifested in discourses that construct proximity and sympathy for him, which should be seen as part of the ethics of care (Chouliaraki and Orgad 2011: 342) that guides the representation

Summary

Introduction

How does Swedish journalism construct distance and proximity to ‘the other’ in the reporting on a South American political leader? How do such constructions connect a Swedish audience to (or disconnect it from) politicalOn one level, the feature story about Mujica, an ex-guerrilla who became president and who is known forAbalo: Meeting the Good Other his unorthodox presidential style, is a case of what Orgad (2011), in a metaphorical reference to Kholstomer, calls Tolstoy’s horse: a view and interpretation of an object from the outside. How does Swedish journalism construct distance and proximity to ‘the other’ in the reporting on a South American political leader? Swedish journalism plays the role of the fictional horse Kholstomer as it attempts to make sense of a stranger and a distant reality. On another level, the feature story serves as a case study for understanding how news media constructs what the late media and communication theorist Roger Silverstone (2007) called proper distance. Understanding how the media constructs the other and simultaneously constructs distance and proximity to it is important for grasping how media representations serve to (dis)connect distant subjects in a globalized world (see Appadurai 1990; Berglez 2013). Given the role that Sweden played in the 1970s and 1980s in offering asylum to Latin American political refugees fleeing from military dictatorships in their home countries—which has resulted in a community of almost 5,000 people living in Sweden who were either born in Uruguay or have at least one Uruguayan parent (SCB 2018)—the mediation of the other is here interrelated with discourses of national history and national identity

Objectives

Results

Conclusion