Danish Newspaper Research Articles

The Offensive Depictions of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in Western Media and its Consequences

The controversies and provocations generated by the West and its media over depictions of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) are not only related to recent caricatures or cartoons but are also about the display of historical artwork. Recently, many Western organisations, newspapers, magazines, social networks and even websites organised seminars and events like the cartoon Everybody Draw Mohammed Day! to hurt and provoke the Muslim world. Muslims believe that visual depictions of all the Prophets should be prohibited and are particularly averse to visual representations of Prophet Muhammad (SAW). The key concern is that the use of images can encourage idolatry. Islam does not allow the depictions of Prophet Muhammad (SAW); to do so goes against the faith of the Muslims and hurts their emotions. This article will focus on providing an analysis of the distorted images, fabricated views, and overgeneralizations which typically characterize Western representation of the Prophet (SAW) of Islam with reference to some particular incidents, chiefly the Charlie Hebdo controversy, Danish newspaper, controversial movie Innocence of Muslims, animated films and social networks. This analysis comprises of works by both Western and Muslim thinkers; it also includes biased and moderate/ fair views depicted in the Western media.

BETWEEN BLASPHEMY AND CRITIQUE: FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH

On Valentine's Day, 1989, novelist Salman Rushdie was driven into hiding in England by a fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran decrying his 1988 novel,The Satanic Verses, as “blasphemy against Islam” and demanding Rushdie's execution. Twenty years later, Yale University Press refused to publish cartoon representations of the Prophet Muhammad in political scientist Jytte Klausen's book,The Cartoons That Shook the World.That book analyzed the controversy spawned by a Danish newspaper's publication of the cartoons in 2005 and the republication of the cartoons in several European newspapers in 2008, which led to protests by Muslims around the world. In 2010, Terry Jones, a Christian pastor in Florida, announced plans to publicly burn a Qur'an on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Under protest, he cancelled his book-burning plans for the 9/11 anniversary, but he made good on his promise six months later in March 2011, in an incident whose online video dissemination around the world is said to have motivated riots in Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of twelve people. Throughout this period, with the regularity of a drumbeat, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) (formerly the Organization of the Islamic Conference), a coalition of majority Muslim nations at the United Nations, introduced resolutions each year—first in the Human Rights Council (HRC) from 1999 forward and then in the General Assembly from 2005 forward—on “combating defamation of religions” at the UN and in wider global discourse.

Journal of Diabetes NEWS

Journal of Diabetes NEWS

The Freedom to Offend? How the "Mohammad Cartoon Controversy" Has Influenced Public Debate on Canada's Hate Speech Regulation

The Mohammad cartoon controversy began in Denmark in 2006 when a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, published twelve cartoons, the majority of which depicted the Islamic Prophet Mohammad. Denmark had already been engaged with questions about Islam's compatibility with Danish culture, and the murder of Theo Van Gogh made international headlines in 2004. Writer Kare Bluitgen's failed attempt to find an illustrator for his children's book about Mohammad prompted public debate.1 This debate revolved around self-censorship, and the publication of twelve cartoons of Mohammad was the response of the editorial department of Jyllands-Posten. The initial reaction was local, limited to discussion and a few protests, the largest of which included 5,000 peaceful protesters.2 It wasn't until a delegation of Danish imams went on a tour of the Middle East with a dossier including the cartoons that it sparked many protests, some peaceful, some violent, and subsequently became a global story. An interesting element of the controversy is how it started as a consideration of reactions to the images of Mohammad, yet it spawned a variety of other controversies, such as the acceptability of republishing the images at the center of the main story to accurately address the major controversy. In Canada, controversy surrounding the republishing of the Mohammad cartoons led to a national discussion on the purpose, legitimacy, and usefulness of Section 13, the hate speech regulation, of Canada's Human Rights Act and its implementation by the Canadian Human Rights Commissions. This discussion subsequently resulted in the Parliament of Canada's vote to repeal the controversial hate speech law in June 2012.

The institutional logic of images of the poor and welfare recipients: A comparative study of British, Swedish and Danish newspapers

The article investigates how the poor and welfare recipients are depicted in British, Danish and Swedish newspapers. The study was inspired by American media studies that have documented a negative stereotypic way of portraying the poor and welfare recipients, especially when they are African Americans. The article argues that there is an institutional welfare regime logic behind the way the poor and welfare recipients are depicted in the mass media. It is not only a matter of race. This argument is substantiated by showing that the poor and welfare recipients are (1) also depicted negatively in a liberal welfare regime, the UK, where most of the poor and welfare recipients are perceived to be white, and (2) depicted positively in two social-democratic welfare regimes, Sweden and Denmark, where the poor and welfare recipients have increasingly come to be perceived as non-white, especially in Denmark. The empirical analyses are based on a sample of 1750 British, 1750 Danish and 1750 Swedish newspapers covering the period from 2004 to 2009.

Disturbing Femininity

When Helle Thorning-Schmidt in 2011 became the first female Prime Minister in Denmark, this “victory for the women” was praised in highly celebratory tones in Danish newspapers. The celebration involved a paradoxical representation of gender as simultaneously irrelevant to politics and – when it comes to femininity – in need of management. Based on an analysis of the newspaper coverage of the election, I argue that highlighting gender (in)equality as either an important political issue or as something that conditions the possibilities of taking up a position as politician was evaluated as a performative speech act, i.e. an act that creates the trouble it names. Ruling out gender equality as relevant was, however, continually interrupted by comments on how Thorning-Schmidt and other female politicians perform gender in ways that fit or do not fit with “doing politician”. These com-ments tended to concern the styling of bodies and behaviour and followed well known – or sticky – gendered scripts.

Out-standing! Om Dansk Tennis Club og tennisspilleren Leif Rovsing

Out-standing! Danish Tennis Club and the Tennis Player Leif RovsingOn April 13, 1917 the Danish newspaper B.T. published an article about the nationally renowned Danish tennis player, Leif Rovsing, who was planning to build a magnificent tennis hall. Personally funding the project, he referred to the tennis hall as a ‘World-Sports-Establishment’ to be built on land he had found close to Copenhagen. On May 5, 1917 the Danish Football Association (DBU) excluded Rovsing from all clubs under their auspices and banned him from participating in all Danish tournaments due to “presumed homosexuality”. This was the starting point for Rovsing to realise the dream he had described in B.T. In cooperation with architect Henry Madsen he built the out-standing tennis hall, Dansk Tennis Club. From an architectural point of view, the 43,5 m long and 23,5 m wide tennis hall is an original piece of sports architecture worldwide, with its smallmuntined windows, providing the hall with an intake of daylight, which sheds a soft parallel light over the courts without blinding the players. The hall also came into being with a gentleman’s study, plush sofas, china over the doors, and wall decorations from Egypt and Bali. It is these unexpected juxtapositions that made Dansk Tennis Club so unusual at the time – and to this day.

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL — UNDERSTANDING THE FRONT-END AND BACK-END OF BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION

Business model innovation is becoming a central research topic in management. However, a lack of a common understanding of the nature of the business model leads to disregarding its multifaceted structure when analyzing the business model innovation process. This article proposes a more detailed understanding of the business model innovation process by drawing on existing knowledge from new product development literature and examining the front-end and the back-end of business model innovation of three leading Danish newspapers. We studied how changes introduced during the development of digital news production and delivery have affected key components of these business models, namely value creation, proposition, delivery and capture in the period 2002–2011. Our findings suggest the need to distinguish between front-end and back-end business model innovation processes, and to recognize the importance of organizational learning when incumbents are faced with disruptive technologies.

Poul Henningsen: Cubism and the Conscience of Modernism

Det uopnaaelige Maal for Kritiken er ikke at have Ret, at blive lost, at skrive godt. Kunsten er: ikke at blive misforstaaet. (Henningsen 1927, 31) (The unobtainable goal for the critic is not to be right, to be read, to write well. The art is: not to be misunderstood.) IN HIS ESSAY Kunst og politik, for og efter krigen (Art and Politics, Before and After the War), Sven Moller Kristensen, discussing the emphasis on political tendencies in the arts in Denmark in the period between the two world wars, does his best to delineate artistic views among that time's prominentvenstrefloj (1970, 84) [left wing]. Mentioning the works of Strindberg, Martin Andersen Nexo, Goethe, and Moliere, Kristensen uses the thoughts of Danish philosopher Herbert Iversen as a springboard to illustrate that kunst forst og fremmest er kunst, og at kunsten indirekte har en ideologisk-politisk betydning. Det er netop den opfattelse der skal blive typisk for den radikale retning i mellemkrigstiden (86) [art first and foremost is art, and that art indirectly has an ideological-political meaning. It is precisely that perception that proves to be typical for the radical direction in the time between the wars]. Kristensen proceeds to discuss the efforts of prominent Danish journals at this time including Klingen, Clarte Monde, and naturally Kritisk Revy. He adds that 'alting haenger sammen' var en saetning man ofte horte [a sentence you often heard was 'Everything hangs together']. Ultimately, Kristensen sees hovedrepraesentanten (90) [the main representative] for the far-reaching cultural criticism of the 1920s and 1930S in the architect, designer, journalist, and songwriter Poul Henningsen. Kristensen notes that the polemical Henningsen, the leading voice of Denmark's avant-garde between the two world wars, focused his highly critical eye on myriad aspects of culture and brought them together in a unifying context. He defines Henningsen's approach as a social and political orientation within aesthetics--though not with the purpose of political agitation. This article will illustrate that Henningsen's arguments rested on his desire to establish a normative position that would make him immune from the very criticisms be could then direct at both traditional and modernist approaches. His writings and responses to developments in design and architecture, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, disclose his efforts to construct a theoretical haven based on his essentialist interpretation of cubist thought. In Henningsen's rhetoric, he believed his position would be socially beneficial without functioning solely in a political manner and would result in aesthetic improvement without forcing specific aesthetics on design developments. Through hundreds of articles in a number of publications, Henningsen, known simply as PH, maintained parallel careers as both a broad social commentator and the designer of lamps, some of which have remained in production for more than eighty years. Many years of scientific study on the directional diffusion of light led to his world-renowned series of hanging, wall, and table lamps. Henningsen employed a threeshade system of curves based on the shapes of plates, saucers, and cups. (1) In 1925, one of his lamp designs--the first in his enduring PH-series--won a gold medal at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. Trained as an architect, though he left the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Architecture School after only two semesters, Henningsen began writing for the Danish newspaper Politiken in 1921 and soon became the paper's first architecture critic. His earliest articles reveal a firm commitment that aesthetics should not trump societal concerns, his voice becoming one of conscience for the cultural radicals of his time. One senses in many of his essays that he was searching for a visual language that would address both issues and merge them into an all-encompassing perspective. …

The STEP (Science and Technology in the European Periphery) Initiative: Attempting to Historicize the Notion of European Science

This article recapitulates the various historiographical discussions which have been taking place within STEP (Science and Technology in the European Periphery) since its foundation in 1999. The main aim of these discussions has been to historisize the notion of ‘European science’ and bring to the surface the heterogeneity of the sciences within the region historically called Europe. By emphasizing the notion of appropriation of ideas and practices by the various localities, the STEP discussions have strongly criticized the diffusionist model and have pointed out the limits of its applicability. Furthermore, the essay discusses the new themes and approaches articulated in the articles of two special issues of Nuncius (Nations, Science, Identities: Historiography of science in the European periphery) and Centaurus (Making the Paper: Science and Technology in Spanish, Greek and Danish Newspapers around 1900).

HOW NEWSPAPERS BEGAN TO BLOG

In this article, I examine how ‘old’ media organizations develop ‘new’ media technologies by analyzing processes of technological innovation in two Danish newspaper companies that integrated blogs into their websites in very different ways in 2007. Drawing on concepts from science and technology studies and sociology and building on previous research on blogging by news media organizations, I analyze how the three different communities involved in the development process – journalists and managers, but also the often-overlooked community of technologists – articulated different versions of what blogging ought to be in each organization and tried to shape the technology and pull the development work in different directions. On the basis of interviews with key participants, I show how the two newspaper organizations (equally ‘old’ media) came to develop nominally the same ‘new’ medium (blogs) for nominally the same purpose (journalism) in quite different ways through tension-filled and often contentious collaborative processes. I argue that researchers interested in understanding technological innovation in the media industry need to consider the important and active role played by the community of technologists (project managers, computer programers, information architects, etc.) that are increasingly integral to how legacy media organizations operate in a new and ever more convergent media environment under circumstances of great economic uncertainty, and discuss the wider implications for how we understand processes of technological development in the news media and the realization of the democratic potentials of new media technologies.

Business Model Innovation: The Danish Newspaper Industry’s Response to the Decline in Traditional Markets

In this paper, we look at how the major Danish newspapers are responding to the challenges posed by the decreasing sales of the printed newspapers and advertising space, through growing online advertising and various technological innovations. We approach the theme from the business model perspective and discuss how the move to online and mobile news delivery channels forces newspapers to revise and adjust their existing business models. Our data sources include industry reports, professional literature, academic research and a dozen in-depth interviews with executives of the two leading Danish media holdings - JP/Politikens Hus and Berlingske Media.

Two Types of Self-Censorship: Public and Private

We develop and defend a distinction between two types of self-censorship: public and private. First, we suggest that public self-censorship refers to a range of individual reactions to a public censorship regime. Second, private self-censorship is the suppression by an agent of his or her own attitudes where a public censor is either absent or irrelevant. The distinction is derived from a descriptive approach to self-censorship that asks: who is the censor, who is the censee, and how do they interact? We label situations in which censor and censee are different agents as public self-censorship, and situations in which they are the same agents as private self-censorship. We demonstrate the salience of this distinction by analysing the case of publication of Mohammed cartoons by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Our analysis reveals the presence and interaction of a number of different instances of private and public self-censorship. While our article is primarily concerned with establishing this novel descriptive distinction between public and private self-censorship, our analysis has important evaluative implications. We explain for instance how Jyllands-Posten was laudable as a public self-censor but not so as a private self-censor. In general, our analysis reveals that the agents and processes involved in public and private self-censorship are substantively different, as are the agents to whom normative principles regarding censorship should be applied. In particular, principles of free speech do not apply to the case of private self-censorship, because while an instance of censorship, the absence of an external censor makes the censorship non-coercive.

Metacoverage taking the place of coverage: wikiLeaks as a source for the production of news in the digital age

While recent studies have engaged critically with the publication of news on multiple platforms, and the competition to mainstream media from non-traditional online news platforms, scholars have devoted less attention to the changes brought about to the production of news by the host of online sources becoming available for journalism. This article investigates the way in which the availability and competition from digital sources place the production of news from war zones in transition. Theoretically, metacoverage is introduced as one prevailing strategy applied by mainstream news media, when following up on stories launched by non-traditional, online media actors. The empirical point of departure for this article is the coverage of WikiLeaks’ publication in 2010 of the gun camera video Collateral Murder in three US, three UK and three Danish newspapers, which focused on the changing conditions for news production.

Journalistik om et bebudet historisk øjeblik. Danske avisers blik på præsident Obamas indsættelse.

<p>Journalism about an Announced Historical Moment - Danish Newspapers’ Coverage of the Inauguration of President Obama</p><p><br />“We are just now witnessing an historical moment”; so exclaim the media from time to time. A statement which contains the expectation that we pause for a while and pay extra attention to the event, from which the historical moment arises. But what are these moments that claim the interest of their contemporaries as ‘historical’, how does journalism deal with these functions, and what may be the use of the invocation of history? The inauguration of President Obama as the 44th President of the United States in January 2009 was if anything heralded as an historical moment. When the journalistic practice surrounding this media event is analysed, it becomes clear that the invocation of the presence of history serves to underpin and legitimize the position of journalism as well as the tradition and authority of the social order, in which the historical moment is claimed to be played out.</p>

The media and the irony of politically serious situations: consequences of the Muhammed cartoons in Finland

This article discusses the connections between political conflicts and situational irony and their relationship to the media. The focus is on a continuum of ironic events that started from the crisis following the publication of the Muhammed cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which led to a satirical comic strip being published on the web pages of Kaltio, a small cultural journal produced in Oulu, Northern Finland, and ended in the dismissal of the journal’s editor. The empirical discussion concentrates on how the newspaper Kaleva, representing the media, functioned as an active participant in the process of making the incidents surrounding the Kaltio comic strip episode appear ironic, even though the matter was in fact politically highly sensitive. The purpose is to illustrate how and with what intentions political discourses and various textual strategies such as explicit and implicit verbal irony are used. The main argument is that making politically sensitive situations appear ironic is a matter of positioning values, in this case raising the value of freedom of speech above religious norms.

News as a Service

This article presents a longitudinal study of the utilization of Social Web features by the thirteen main Danish online newspapers from 2008-2010. The current shift from mass media and print products to social media and web-services forms the background for the study. The aim of the study is to produce a baseline of information for media professionals and scholars engaged in identifying the added value of Social Web features in online newspapers. The research approach is mainly exploratory and descriptive. The analysis of the empirical material, which consists of content analysis of the websites, is supported by two recently developed theoretical frameworks for studying interactivity (Chung, 2008) and user participation (Domingo et al., 2008) in online newspapers. The empirical data reveal increasing utilization of the Social Web. The analysis indicates that newspaper organizations are primarily interpreting the emerging “media-as-a-service” paradigm as a way to engage news users in the distribution and interpretation of news. The production of news remains controlled by the media. However, recent developments (e.g., Facebook tools, Google ads, mash-ups and mobile apps) indicate that major new changes are indeed on the way.

The Terms on Which Jews and Muslims Join Western Civilization

The Terms on Which Jews and Muslims Join Western Civilization

Strindberg and Radicalism—Strindberg and the Avant-garde: A Hundred-Year Legacy

Strindberg and Radicalism—Strindberg and the Avant-gardeA Hundred-Year Legacy Anna Westerståhl Stenport and Eszter Szalczer Jag är socialist, nihilist, republikan allt som kan vara konträrt mot de reaktionära! Detta på känsel, ty jag är Jean Jacques’ intime när det gäller återgång till Naturen: Jag skulle vilja vara med och vända upp och ner på allt, för att få se hvad som ligger i botten; jag tror att vi äro så intrasslade, så förfärligt mycket regerade att det inte kan utredas utan måste brännas upp, sprängas, och så börja ett nytt! (Strindberg, August Strindbergs brev 166) I’m a socialist, a nihilist, a republican, anything that is opposed to the reactionaries! And from instinct, for I’m Jean-Jacques’ intime where a return to Nature is concerned: I’d like to join in turning everything upside down in order to see what lies at the bottom; I believe we are now in such a state, so dreadfully regulated, that things can’t be straightened out, it must all be burned down and blown up, so we can start afresh! (Strindberg, Strindberg’s Letters 77) This Is How the Thirty-One-Year-Old August Strindberg (1849–1912) presented himself to Edvard Brandes in response to the latter’s invitation to contribute to the Danish newspaper Morgenbladet in 1880 (Strindberg, Strindberg’s Letters 75). The two writers had never met before, and the offer from Brandes followed close upon his reading of Strindberg’s breakthrough novel Röda rummet (1879; The Red Room), an inflammatory piece, which quickly made his name known in Sweden—or, as Brandes’s invitation indicates, throughout Scandinavia. But did this youthful declaration of revolutionary stance come true over a lifetime of work? Or, rather, how did the author’s voluminous contributions to literature and the arts contribute to further [End Page 235] questioning of the fundamentals of what “ligger i botten” (Strindberg, August Strindbergs brev 166) [“lies at the bottom” (77)], as he expressed in the letter? Is it possible, even desirable, to chart the ebb and flow of Strindberg’s radicalism throughout the immense body of texts he produced? And was this radicalism progressive or conservative in its direction? Forward-looking or reactionary in its outlook? Indeed, did the author’s work end up challenging customary definitions of the concepts so often used to historicize, canonize, and rationalize literary representation? Within the framework of their respective subjects, each author in this special issue on Strindberg and Radicalism—Strindberg and the Avant-Garde grapples with such questions. For the first time in the history of Strindberg studies, we are, through this volume, offering a comprehensive, varied, and innovative examination of them. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, something or someone “radical” is “characterized by independence of or departure from what is usual or traditional; progressive, unorthodox, or innovative in outlook, conception, design, etc.” Another meaning of the term, especially when speaking of change or action, is described as “going to the root or origin [the term comes from the Latin radix, i.e. root]; touching upon or affecting what is essential and fundamental; thorough, far-reaching.” Thus radicalism can be associated, often simultaneously, with the forward-looking, innovative stance of the avant-garde and with a revisionist reassessment of the past in defiance of the present. In his letter to Brandes, for example, we see Strindberg evoking Rousseau’s call for a return to nature, so that the present, “så förfärligt mycket regerade” (August Strindbergs brev 166) [“so dreadfully regulated” (77)], can be uprooted and given a fresh start, all in one gesture. Thus, radicalism is by no means a theoretically unequivocal concept; it wasn’t for Strindberg, either. The author’s response to Brandes, articulating his calling as the writer of Röda rummet, namely, to go back to the roots and “vända upp och ner på allt” [“(turn) everything upside down”] echoes the complexity of the term. As Alastair Bonnett argues in Left in the Past: Radicalism and the Politics of Nostalgia, “the modern era is characterized by change and a far more intense and...

Changing media representations of youth in the news – a content analysis of Danish newspapers 1953–2003

Media plays an important role in shaping public perceptions of youth. Previous studies have shown consistently negative images of youth in news media through a heavy focus on crime, accidents, and moral decay. Most research in this area has only collected data over short timeframes, which makes it difficult to register possible changes in modes of representation. The present study has sought to overcome this short come by emphasizing long-term data collection, by focusing on how newspapers have portrayed youth in the period 1953–2003. On the basis of quantitative content analyses of Danish newspapers, we find a strong emphasis on crime and accidents; however, culture takes up almost as much space. Furthermore, we cannot confirm a tendency toward increasingly negative media representations regarding young people. Our data show more neutral portrayals and an increase in news items quoting young people.