NL 11 pp. 147–173 Intellect Limited 2013
Northern Lights
Volume 11
© 2013 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/nl.11.147_1
oscar westlund
University of Gothenburg and IT University of Copenhagen
lennart weibull
University of Gothenburg
Generation, life course and
news media use in sweden
1986–2011
abstract
Keywords
It has been posited that different generations are largely influenced by the characteristics of the media landscape they inherit and grow into in their formative years.
However, we also know from empirical studies that individual media use changes
over the life course. At present no empirical study has analysed and compared
the use of several news media among different generations in relation to both life
cycle factors and media development over significant periods of time. Hence, this article explores the topic through its cross-generational comparison of transforming news
media usage. As a point of departure, the generation analyses use the widely recognized classification of the dutifuls (1926–1945), the baby boomers (1946–1964),
generation X (1965–1976) and the dotnets (1977–1995). Five analytically distinct
media system eras, covering 1986 to 2011, are utilized for embedding the empiric
analyses into distinct media system contexts. The findings evidence the generational
hypothesis on formative socialization, especially with regards to the dutifuls and the
baby boomers. Nevertheless, age and life cycle are also identified as critically important factors. The findings show that the elderly persist with legacy news media,
while younger generations predominantly orient towards news platforms that have
emerged in the digital mediascape, even though this traditional classification seems
generations
media generation
life cycle
media usage
legacy media
digital media
Mannheim
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to be too broad for analysis of media development. Consequently, researchers should
ideally acknowledge this double effect of age in future research on media usage, as
well as work further on developing relevant classifications of generation relevant
research for our understanding of transforming media use.
introduction
The sociology of generations suggests that people born at a specific time
and place develop a collective consciousness that binds them together.
Emphasizing a social and cognitive dimension to generations, much developed in their formative period, generations growing up in specific cultural and
geographical contexts are assumed to develop binding characteristics that can
be used for analyses of social stratification (Mannheim 1952). Later generation
research has emphasized that generations develop mutual bonds from experiencing major societal events and processes (e.g. Wyatt 1993; Corsten 1999).
Acknowledging that a generation presumably shares the experience of having
grown up during a historical time in which specific events have taken place,
this article posits that they share many such experiences based on accessing
news from the media (cf. Höijer 1998). Whether they develop mutual frames
of references through news media will clearly depend on the generations’
various ways of accessing the news through different news media. Moreover,
from a generational perspective the formative period is also assumed important to the routines that generations develop when using (news) media.
Nevertheless, the media routines of individuals change throughout the course
of life and depend on changing conditions related to the life cycle, such as a
person having children or going into retirement. People also develop other
interests as well as being exposed to new opportunities by the transforming
media system. These two factors imply that people will change their behaviours over time. Following from this, our point of departure ultimately conveys
generations as developing distinguished news accessing behaviours in their
formative years, being embedded in the media system present at the time. It
also acknowledges changes over the life cycle and transforming mediascapes
as two aggravating circumstances suggesting one must be sensible to potential liquidity in the study of news accessing behaviours.
News obviously marks a different sort of media content than other types
of media, such as gaming or music, for example. Most Swedish studies show
that news usage is less frequent among young people compared to senior citizens (cf. Weibull 1983; Mediebarometern 2011 2012; Shehata and Wadbring
2012), while the opposite applies to gaming (Westlund and Bjur 2013). News
accessing is here hypothesized to provide a middle ground in which both
generational and life cycle effects are assumed to occur. It is also worth noting
that divergent ways of accessing the news through media (platforms) often
results in them being exposed to substantially different news stories.
Media permeate social life in quite another way nowadays as they did at
the time of Karl Mannheim’s original writing in the 1920s, when the written
press dominated and radio was seen as a new medium. Media expansion in the
second half of the twentieth century was parallel with urbanization and increased
globalization. Moreover, social changes have broadened the scope of events
that people care for and that news media report on. Different media systems
have been present during the formative years of different generations, who
have consequently accumulated dissimilar mediated experiences and memories
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(Gumpert and Cathcart 1985; Höijer 1998; Volkmer 2006a). The transformation
of the media landscape has involved changes to media structures, the contents
put on offer by the media, as well as how different generations use the media.
The media that were dominant at the time of individuals growing up has been
conveyed as essential to how generations experience their world.
This article acknowledges benefits with the generational concept, while also
identifying several shortcomings when it comes to media research at present.
Such research has typically focused on the contemporary young growing up
in a digital habitat. Such research has often generated simplified constructs
of the young as a homogenous generation oriented towards digital media,
popularly described with miscellaneous terminology (e.g. McCrindle 2009).
This strand of research is marked by a superfluous use of classifications which
literally refer to more or less the same (age) group of individuals. While utilizing ‘generation’ terminology, in practice many of these studies actually study
‘young’ individuals as a group of a certain age. Here generation often seems to
be more of a heuristic concept and it could be debated whether these studies
really should be defined as studies of generations. Typically there is no longitudinal approach, no cross-generational comparison, no historical reflections
on the relations between media and society, and sociology of generations is
typically absent in their theoretical frameworks. Conversely there has been
substantial criticism directed to these simplified constructs of the ‘young’ as
homogenous (e.g. Buckingham 2008; Herring 2008). Recent empirical findings
in fact evidence that the media lives of ‘young’ is marked by much heterogeneity (Westlund and Bjur forthcoming). Most importantly, with ‘the young
generation’ attracting far more scholarly attention, other generations have
been passed over. Following this, tracing and comparing the media use of
different generations over time must be given precedence. Summing up the
discussion, this article suggests that the generational concept is worthwhile
to explore, especially since there are few studies that have truly applied this
theoretical concept for robust empiric studies.
There are numerous ways of classifying generations into time brackets and
each has shortcomings. This article will build on a classification widely used
within social science in general, political science in particular, and in popularized forums in society. The rationale of these classifications can be found in
the idea of generational identity and characteristics of generations, which are
defined as ranges between decisive birth years. The terminology utilized is
drawn from the influential work of C. Zukin et al. (2006), but has appeared in
similar fashions in the work of other scholars (e.g. Strauss and Howe 1991).
The classification contains four generations: the dutifuls (born before 1945), the
baby boomers (1946–1964), generation X (1965–1976), and the dotnets (born after
1977). Dissimilarities in terminology involve that Zukin’s dutifuls are referred
to as the silent generation by W. Strauss and N. Howe (1991). While both
parties use the baby boomer definition, which was originally coined by Landon
Jones (1980), their definitions of decisive birth years vary some. Likewise they
use different classifications for those born from the 1960s and onwards. Also,
Zukin et al.’s classification may be debated as it makes a classification derived
from American society, in which the two younger generations are smaller
than the other two in terms of span and size, yet there is a seemingly natural transition from one generational age span to the next. Nevertheless, we
found it fruitful to take our departure in an existing and widely used classification because it is an accepted construct to analyse behavioural and altitudinal
change during the post-war period.
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It is important to note that generations also change over the life course.
G. H. Elder (1975) argues one should account for people having a chronological time span in their ageing, with several key events taking place (such as
marriage, having children and retirement), while being embedded into society
during a specific historical location. In this article we posit that generations and
life courses are intertwined. We acknowledge that members of different generations pass through individual life courses, and emphasize that they do so at
different historical locations in relation to both society and its media system. In
relation to this, previous research on generational media use (treated as birth
cohorts) in the United States and Germany, has evidenced that the importance
of growing up with television to one’s later usage may depend on how the
media system as such develops (Peiser 2000). At present the generation born
around the 1930s and 1940s have entered the life course of retirement, while
the generation born around the 1980s and 1990s presumably are students
or have entered into work life. Not only have these generations experienced
substantially different media systems during their formative phase of life, they
also experience different social lives, interests and phases. Conversely, and in
a similar fashion as E. Loos (2012), this article marks significance to the formative phase of media use (emphasized by media generation and socialization
theory), subsequent phases in life (emphasized by life course theory) and the
changing media system. Hence, we theoretically account for the dimensions
which Peiser (2000) and others include in their so-called age-period-cohort
modelling of different cohorts using multiple regression analysis. Our analysis
accounts for generational effects (in terms of inter-generational differences),
age, education, gender and family composition as indicators of life phase, and
differences depending on time periods (five phases in the media system). To
date, media scholars have unfortunately largely overseen the intrinsic complexities relating to what we see as a double articulation of age.
The article confronts the generations formed in older media systems with
the transformations of the latest decades, under the control of changes during
the life cycle. The framework for our analysis is the development of the Swedish
media system between 1986 and 2011. This transformative period has been
analytically divided into five (relatively) distinguished eras. While all periodization can be debated, the five eras have been singled out based on main
changes for news provisioning in the Swedish media system (e.g. Carlsson
and Facht 2010). The first era, called the legacy media era (1986–1990), was
characterized by a strong newspaper culture (especially local and subscribed
newspapers) and a broadcasting system governed through public service
institutions (SVT, SR and UR or their public fore-runners). The commercialization era (1991–1995) signifies a period in which broadcasting was deregulated and a number of commercial media firms established operations that
included national and local news reporting, especially in television and radio
(TV3 and TV4). The digitization era (1996–2001) acknowledges digitization, as
well as the invention and diffusion of the Web and online news sites in the
1990s (such as aftonbladet.se in 1994), but also the rise of free dailies such as
Metro in 1998. The cross-media era (2002–2006) meant that legacy media as
well as commercial broadcasters fuelled a rapid growth of online publishing
initiatives, in parallel to their existing news delivery. During the 2000s news
media experimented with additional solutions for publishing and distribution,
to become accessible anytime and anyplace, and conglomerates of local newspapers started to publish Web-TV. In 2007, a ubiquitous media era took off
(2007–2011) as the first successful touch-screen mobile device was launched
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in Sweden, which was reinforced through the rapid diffusion of laptops and
tablets equipped with mobile broadband (Westlund 2013).
The distinction between eras as well as attributing them certain characteristics express, of course, a great simplification. The names of the periods focus
on ‘new’ media, but it does not mean that ‘old’ media have disappeared; actually international comparisons usually describe today’s Sweden as a country
with a strong press and a strong public service radio and television (Hallin and
Mancini 2004). Therefore, it is important to keep this in mind when analysing
the interplay between the old and the new.
To sum up, our aim is to describe and explain transforming news usage
among dutifuls, baby boomers, generation X and dotnets in five media eras
from 1986 to 2011. In this article dutifuls were defined to include the decisive span of birth years from 1926 to 1945, while dotnets were defined as
those born 1977 to 1995. Conversely all four generations comprise periods of
approximately two decades. The article traces generational changes in usage
over time, for both life cycle and media eras, over the course of an expanding and shifting mediascape. Increasing fragmentation has offered people
more freedom to form individual usage patterns, resulting in both inter- and
intra-generational similarities and differences in news usage. The importance
of the transforming media system is acknowledged by comparing differences
in news usage over time in the context of media change, which for analytical reasons was divided into five (relatively) distinguished media system eras.
Intra-generational heterogeneity is tested through logistical regression analyses for each media era that control life course effects with regard to ten different news media. Generational news accessing patterns are analysed with
important guidance deriving from the theoretical frameworks of displacing and
complementary effects, and the data used for the analysis consist of 26 annual
and postal-based surveys representative to the Swedish population.
socioloGy of Generations
Were it not for the existence of social interaction between human
beings – were there no definable social structure, no history based on
a particular sort of continuity, the generation would not exist as a social
location phenomenon; there would merely be birth, ageing, and death.
(Mannheim 1952: 291)
Sociology of generations suggests that the shaping of generations goes
beyond biological dimensions. German sociologist K. Mannheim has played
a significant role in the establishment of sociology of generations’ research
tradition (e.g. Pilcher 1994). Mannheim problematized generations in the
1920s, although his work was not published until much later (Mannheim
1952). The generation approach can be seen as an alternative, or a compliment, to Marxism for the understanding of social stratification (Eyerman and
Turner 1998). Some scholars have criticized Mannheim’s concept of generation to be very similar to Marx’s concept of class society, which has to do
with both concepts being concerned with the position of individual actors in
society. However, others have underlined that class is primarily distinguished
in terms of group interests and access to resources, while generations, on
the other hand, are constituted based on their relation to social, cultural and
historical time (Corsten 2011).
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Sociology of generations does not limit its emphasis to the commonality of
having people being born the same year, but forms a demarcation from biological perspectives on generations (emphasizing age and kinship groups such
as family). Families and tribes form connections to each other as biological
generations and concrete groups. Socially shaped generations do not constitute concrete groups, that is, groups in which the members are directly known
to each other. Mannheim argued that generations have common experiences
of historical and social processes (as well as of class), which is the important
matter in the context of this article and not the fact that generations share
similar years of birth per se. He emphasized that ‘[…] they are in a position to
experience the same events and data, etc., and especially that these experiences
impinge upon a similarity ‘stratified’ consciousness’ (Mannheim 1952: 297).
He used the term ‘entelechy’ in his discussions of such stratified consciousness
and world perception among generations. In relation to this, I. Volkmer (2006b:
258) discussed that the ‘contemporary consciousness of first impressions of the
world during childhood and youth years’ forms a link between people and
creates generational identity. Moreover, Mannheim acknowledged that there
may be much heterogeneity among the members of a presumed generation,
which calls for treating them as different generation units. Mannheim (1952:
298) wrote that ‘early impressions tend to coalesce into a natural view of the
world’. Personal knowledge, memories and experiences (are assumed to) guide
how people approach and understand social life and social change.
Drawing on the discussion so far, sociology of generations has persistently
suggested that many of the distinct features characterizing generations relate
to the experiences, memories and beliefs they accumulate when growing up,
shaping a common frame of reference. So far media research has typically not
been related to the concept of generation, and the sociology of generations
has not yet placed much emphasis on the role played by media for personal
experiences and memories. However, media have, of course, been treated in
individual studies. For example, F. Colombo and L. Fortunati (2011b) discuss
that media presumably have gained importance for how contemporary young
adults relate to both politics and public life.
Media Generations and the life course
Drawing on Mannheim’s legacy, media researchers depart in the assumption that the character of the media system that generations grow into plays
an important role for the shaping of their (media) memories and media
usage. This assumption actually seems present in the myriad of studies on
young generations’ (digital) media use, albeit these studies seldom include
a discussion on and reference to the works of Mannheim and sociology of
generations.
External events in society are assumed to shape generations (e.g. Colombo
2011). J. Kortti emphasizes the role media play in creating a sort of generational consciousness, but also acknowledges that media present various
images and discourse on specific generations (Kortti 2011; cf. Höijer 1998;
Nilsson 2009). In concert with this argument, M. Corsten (1999) argues that
media forms a sort of discursive resource for different generations: their
shared experiences and practices of media make generations conscious that
they have something in common. It might be the celebration of peace in 1945,
the debate of the Vietnam War of the 1970s, the fall of the Berlin Wall in the
late 1980s, or September 11, 2001. There are reasons to believe that media
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are more important in such social narratives today than some decades ago,
reflecting changes in the media system. C. Corsten discuss that
the members of a generation share a ‘we-sense’ by being able to rediscover the individual experience of biographical time in the ways in which
other members of his/her generation express their biographical time, and
then transform this shared perspective into the time of ‘my generation’.
(Corsten 2011: 43)
While this points to the prevalence of media generations, it is also important
to consider the importance of life course. These two approaches are discussed
in the following.
The media generation approach
Turning to what we have chosen to label the media generation approach,
this emergent research tradition scrutinizes the role media plays for different
generations and how they use media in their lives. Returning to the emphasis
on a formative phase (Mannheim 1952), and in concert with this assumption,
several researchers have stressed early contacts and socialization with media as
important for how an individual’s media usage develops later in life (Gumpert
and Cathcart 1985; Aroldi and Colombo 2007). Age has primarily been seen as
important in the sense that it may guide for understanding membership to a
generation that have grown up in a similar culture and media system (Aroldi
and Colombo 2007). Generations that have grown up in radically different
media landscapes and as a consequence of accumulating specific and shared
experiences (at least in the past) with media and its content, different generations have emerged (Gumpert and Cathcart 1985). For instance, research
suggests that there is great difference between generations that grew up before
or during the expansion of commercial television channels (Nilsson 2006), and
before and after the wider spread of mobile phones (Bolin and Westlund 2009).
Generations can be seen as inexorably connected to the specific media that
were dominant when they grew up, as discussed by P. Aroldi and F. Colombo:
Subjects who during their formative period (childhood, adolescence,
early adulthood) saw the birth of a medium that then became widespread tend to consider this medium – in the nascent form in which
they experienced it – as an integral part of their cultural landscape and
retain a certain inertia in its definition also in the subsequent phases.
(Aroldi and Colombo 2007: 39)
Along the same lines, Corsten (1999) suggested that parts of the media that
generations saw as integral were those that saw their birth and initial success,
when these generations progressed through their formative period. In a similar fashion, Aroldi (2011) argues that media plays different roles in different moments in the social shaping of generational common identity; while
Aroldi and Colombo (2007) add that the rituals and cultural objects transmitted
by media form a kind of generational semantics. Seen in this light, the media
that were dominant when growing up presumably continue to play crucial
roles by influencing how different generations perceive the world. However,
it must be noted that there are yet few empirical research projects that have
scrutinized this assumption. While one generally finds a few cross-generational
studies on media generations with national (e.g. Crnic 2011) or cross-cultural
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approaches (e.g. Tapscott 2008), there are even fewer commanding attention to the assumption of formative phase. Reporting on the findings from an
Italian media generation project, Aroldi and Colombo conclude that various
generations have developed significantly different habits and orientations in
their media consumption. One such finding was that baby boomers devoted
more time and significance to television compared to their children, who
would rather turn to the Web (Aroldi and Colombo 2007). A series of Swedish
cross-sectional studies present similar findings for television programme preferences between generations (Nilsson 2006, 2009). This corresponds with the
conceptualization of media generations.
As discussed earlier, contemporary younger generations have largely been
conceptualized in terms of their orientation towards digital media. This practice is somewhat legitimatized by G. Bocca Artieri (2011: 117): ‘media technologies, due to the high impact they have in everyday life-routine may be
seen as milestones used to label specific time in personal and generational
history’. However, there are a few attempts in conceptualizing other media
generations. In their qualitative study, Volkmer (2006a) and her colleagues
outlined three media generations to which media played dissimilar roles: the
print/radio generation (born 1924–1929), the black-and-white television generation
(born 1954–1959) and the internet generation (born 1979–1984). That study was
a source of inspiration to a quantitative analysis of Swedes mobile phone usage
by G. Bolin and O. Westlund (2009). In their study patterns were analysed and
compared regarding the radio/print generation (born in the 1930s), the TV
generation (born in the 1950s), and the mobile technology generation (born
in the 1980s). The findings witnessed distinguished generational differences
regarding use of sound, text and image for mobile communication.
The life course approach
While the media generation approach posits that formative developments of
media habits are important, it does not explicitly suggest that a generation
necessarily keep their media habits intact throughout different courses in life
when experiencing a transforming media landscape. The diffusion of innovations research tradition, developed in the early 1960s, has generated a tremendous number of studies evidencing that media as well as information and
communication technologies are adopted with varying speeds and degrees
by different members of society (Rogers 2003). In life course research ‘age’
presents us with different roles for stratification analyses of media use related
to family formation, professional career and retirement life that affect the
time and money available for media use. However, age has been approached
in different ways in these analyses, and this article focuses on the dynamic
interplay between generational belonging and life course. This issue has been
subject to some confusion and inconsistencies in previous literature.
Summarizing the findings from several articles, M. Kohli and J. W. Meyer
(1986) conclude that sociological and historical accounts have emphasized
institutionalized life course theory, which has emphasized how society shapes
different life stages and resulted in researchers organizing life stages in terms of
chronological age. People are seen as individually shaping their own life stages,
while being influenced by societal life-world perspectives. A.-L. Närvänen and
E. Näsman (2004), for instance, discuss literature on generations vis-á-vis life
phase in the salient case of childhood research. They argue that one must be
careful in using these concepts as they seem to carry multiple meanings. They
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note that some researchers put life phase to the fore in their analyses, while this
dimension is literally absent in the analysis of others. Ultimately, they stress that
a life course perspective and the notion of the life phase are fruitful for the analysis of humans, such as children. We argue that the life course approach, with
the affiliated concepts of life cycle and life phase, has decisive importance for the
study of transforming media use over time. We see life cycles as comprised by
individuals´ different stages and phases of social life relating to family and peers
as well as education and work, such as adolescence, family life and retirement.
J. W. Dimmick et al. (1979) provided an important review on media use and
the role of life spans. While acknowledging that the data on media use and life
span are problematic, the authors emphasized its value, and propose researchers take a so-called stage theory approach (which will simplify individuals’
progress and spirals over life). They suggest accounting for three dimensions:
(1) life span position, (2) cohort (shared life event) and (3) period (history);
from which they present nine stages in life accounting for biophysical and
psychosocial changes (Dimmick et al. 1979). Clearly, their three dimensions
correspond to the age-period-cohort modelling approach (e.g. Peiser 2000) as
well as the approach we take to analyse data in this article.
Empirical research taking such an approach to generational use is relatively
scarce. Peiser’s (2000) analysis of several cross-sectional studies over time focused
on cohorts (rather than generations). Nevertheless, it showed that American
cohorts born after the 1940s that grew up with television continued watching
television, whereas such patterns could not be found in Germany. Data from
Sweden has shown that television viewing increases with age, whereas listening to music on the radio is decreasing (Mediebarometern 2011 2012; Nilsson
2008; Bjur 2011). Unanimous studies from the last four decades show that young
people follow traditional journalistic news less regularly and read newspapers
less frequently than others (Shehata and Wadbring 2012), while senior citizens
are among the most heavy users of such legacy news media. Moreover, there are
presumably life course effects to be found inside each generation, which are also
influenced by the rise of digital media (cf. Findahl 2012).
It is important to note that the life course is related to changes in society.
There has been a prolonged youth period among Swedes, which relates to the
pursuit of education and securing a position in the job market (Nilsson 2005).
Dimmick et al. (1979) argue that analyses of age should distinguish the role
of life course and the variations when people become parents and enter the
job market. Also, changing lifestyles connected to increasing individualization
and mobility will affect the life course of individuals (cf. A. Giddens 1991).
This affects the role of the media during the life course, especially media use
related to the household. Unfortunately, research on ‘generational’ news
accessing has typically neglected to analyse and preclude on potential life
cycle effects, partly as an effect of its narrow focus on the young.
study rationale
This article aims to describe and explain the patterns of news usage among
dutifuls, baby boomers, generation X, and dotnets. The salient case of news
accessing is used to trace changes in usage over time among generations. Our
point of departure synthesizes the media structure with generation and life
course research. We posit that the media technology an individual embraces
for news accessing in his or her formative youth will remain important through
their adult life, although it can also be influenced by the changing mediascape
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and altered individual needs. The article presents five specific contributions
compared to previous research: (1) it performs cross-generational analysis;
(2) it takes a longer time perspective (1986–2011), which accounts for five
periods of prevalent change in the media system; (3) it includes use of all
major news media platforms rather than just one; (4) it scrutinizes the double
articulation of age by analysing the role played by both generations and life
courses; and (5) it acknowledges intra-generational heterogeneity, especially
in the older and more broadly defined generations.
The question whether people in general, and generations in particular,
keep with ‘old’ media and are sceptical to ‘new’ media touches base with more
general issues on how old and new media interrelate. In the context of newspapers, the rise of ‘new’ digital media has cast light on concerns over whether
such an approach will cause the imminent death of print media (Westlund 2012;
Westlund and Färdigh 2011). Similarly, there has been debate and research on
the effects of radio and television on the ways people access the news, focusing
on whether these ‘new’ media will displace the printed newspaper or complement it. Therefore, transforming news accessing patterns among generations can
be informed by two strands of research. The hypothesis of displacing effects form
a medium-centric approach, emphasizing the functionalities of the media in a
zero-sum game in which emergent and superior media are assumed to exert
a displacing effect on the old media (e.g. McCombs 1972; Dimmick 2003). The
complementary effects hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests accounting for
people’s needs and habits, acknowledging that they may have different complementary uses of media. This strand of research is positioned as critical towards
assumptions of functional equivalence (e.g. Dutta-Bergman 2004; Flavian and
Gurrea 2009). Contemporary research into displacing and complementary effects
have mostly focused on the interrelated roles of printed newspapers and digital
news sites, showing that both sorts of effects are present simultaneously but
with different importance in various age groups (Bergström and Wadbring 2010;
De Waal and Schoenbach 2010) and among different generations (Westlund and
Färdigh 2012). While age is undoubtedly a critical factor, there is limited research
on how it comes to play in the context of generations and the life cycle.
Each of these two hypotheses touch base with the double articulation of
age discussed and analysed in this article. The formative phase, emphasized
by sociology of generations, essentially posits persistence in habits. This can
in turn be translated into assumptions of generations demonstrating incremental change in their news media accessing habits over time, from which it
follows that there should be limited displacing effects. Moreover, this generational persistence may hold such strong power that they are also reluctant to
embrace additional media for news consumption, resulting in limited complementary effects. The life cycle approach, on the contrary, assumes change over
time. Needs and habits are seen to have a transitory existence, acknowledging
that people travel through a different life course and thus command attention
to different news media with varying focus and intensity. Following from this,
the life cycle approach is considered more in harmony with having expectations of displacing and complementary effects. However, it must be noted that
such life cycle effects on news media usage develop through an interaction
with the continuously transforming mediascape.
This article broadens the analysis of news media to include ten different
news media, but does not attempt to trace all the displacing and complementary
effects among these. Instead we see displacement as taking place when a
medium previously dominant to a specific generation becomes contested and
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loses ground. The other side of the coin, when generations maintain their
formative news media habits but also develop habits with new media, is seen
as media having complimentary roles. Therefore, our main hypothesis is that
generational differences will increase over time. We expect that the dutifuls and
baby boomers will distinguish themselves from the generation X and dotnet
generation by increasingly keeping to legacy media when new news media
technology spreads. The effect of the generation is also expected under the
control for age and transitions in life cycles (cf. Nilsson 2005). With the expansion of new media the effects of age may also increase within generations;
therefore, life course may even be considered more important than generation
when explaining news media use. However, other studies show that the introduction of the internet strongly affected general usage patterns (Findahl 2012).
While our operationalization of generational belonging builds on the
research by Zukin et al. (2006), the operationalization of the second meaning
of age relies on a selection of other key independent variables. Reviews on life
course research has suggested to convey life course both over long stretches
of time, and at key transitions such as marriage and having a first child. This
research also puts emphasis on changes in life course taking place on both
an individual and societal level, but it is worth noting that many life course
researchers reject the assumption that the formative direction of life is seemingly unaffected by changes in society and one’s life (Mayer 2009).
In this article, age is seen to present us with an indicator of the importance of
life course. It nurtures the analysis with the effect of how old these generations
were during a specific media era (outlined in Table 1). A few additional variables indicating social establishment, which interact with age, present us with a
richer understanding of potential life course effects. Type of household (single or
with children) is included as an indicator that distinguishes orientation towards
household media or more individualized news media. Furthermore, gender and
educational level correlate strongly with life course and people’s establishment
on the job market and having their first child. Data retrieved from Statistics
Sweden show that in the initial year of our study period (1986), the average
age for giving birth to their first child was 26.07 among women and 28.65
among men. By 2011 the average age had increased by about three years, to
28.93 and 31.45, respectively. Data from the SOM-survey with the Swedish
public from 1986 evidences that 14 per cent then had acquired a university
degree, a figure that had risen to 37 per cent in 2011. In conclusion there has
been a postponement of adulthood, with mixed findings for men and women.
This postponement of a critically important phase in life is intertwined with
other factors, such as time spent in the household, mobility in everyday life,
income level, and the use of different news media.
Note: The annual SOM-surveys 1986–1991 covered only the age group 15–75 and 1992–1999, 15–80. From 2000 the
surveys cover 16–85, which affects the relative size of the generations.
Table 1: Mean age and number of respondents among the four generations for each media era.
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Context, method and material
The Swedish newspaper market is relatively strong by international measures,
and common to the other Nordic countries as well as Switzerland and Japan
(World Association of Newspapers 2011; Hallin and Mancini 2004; Hadenius et al.
2011). However, there have been substantially transforming news usage patterns
from the mid-1980s until present day, highlighting a general decline in both
quality subscribed newspapers and evening tabloids (Bergström and Wadbring
2010; Strömbäck et al. 2012; Westlund and Färdigh 2012; Weibull 2012a). Just as
the other Scandinavian media systems, Sweden has both a private and public
service sector for news media (Hujanen et al. 2013). Sweden has become known
as having an advanced position in digital development. The World Economic
Forum, for instance, compared 142 countries with regard to digital development
in their Networked Readiness Index 2012 (Dutta and Bilbao-Osorio 2012). The
analysis informs on contemporary change in a developed country where legacy
news media are confronted with emergent growth of digital media.
This article uses data nationally representative to Sweden for the period 1986
to 2011, originating from the annually conducted omnibus survey project organized by the SOM-Institute at the University of Gothenburg, as a partnership of
the departments of Political Science and Journalism, Media and Communication.
From 1986, a survey has been carried out annually. It is based on a random sample
of the Swedish population consisting of between 3000 and 9000 people, who
have received a questionnaire focusing questions on Society, Opinion and Media.
The data sample for 1986–1991 was constituted by Swedish citizens aged 15–75
years. From 1992 to 1999, Swedes aged 15–80 were included, from 2000 to 2008 it
was 15–85, and for 2009–2011 those included were aged 16–85. The response rate
is (on average) around 65%, ranging from a low of 58% (2008) to a high of 70%
(1987), and the surveys are methodologically well documented (Vernersdotter
2012). The distribution of responses equals the proportion of the Swedish population when it comes to age, gender, social class, education and so on. By international standards the response rate has exceptional quality. While user-reports
can be criticized for being associated to under- or over-representations of actual
behaviour, this problem is most prevalent for cross-sectional surveys that lack
any benchmark, and less so for repeated survey projects like the one utilized here
(cf. Vernersdotter 2012). Analyses based on the survey data have been published
annually since 1987 as edited books (the latest being Weibull et al. 2012) as well
as articles in various international journals.
The descriptive findings report average percentages of usage for different news media among the four generations, for each of the five media periods. The explanatory analysis has been approached by performing a total of
37 binary/binomial logistic regression analyses for the five different media eras.
This method is particularly well suited for analyses of curve-linear relationships (non-linear) between independent variables and categorical dependent
variables (i.e. dichotomous criterion). Table 3a–3e presents us with relatively
straightforward results for interpretation thanks to the binary nature (either
they are regular users of news media or they are not). We use a goodnessof-fit measure (McFadden’s pseudo R2) for the outlined logistical regression
analyses, which is a conservative estimation measure that does not exaggerate
the explanatory power of the model.
The four generational constructs are used as independent variables with
generation X as reference category for the legacy media era and dotnets as
reference category for the other media eras. Other independent variables
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included in the analysis and used as indicators of people’s changing courses of
life include: age, gender, educational level and household composition. Age has
been used as a continuous variable (varying from 15/16 to 75/85 years, rather
than transformed into a dummy variable with a reference category), enhancing the possibilities for analysis of linear relationships. Moreover, gender is
a dummy variable (1=woman, 0=man), educational level is coded dichotomously (1=high/middle high, 0=middle low/low); whereas personal life situation is analysed with two dummy variables, single households and households
with children, with other households used as a reference category.
Generational news accessinG transforMed 1986–2011
The analysis is presented in two sections. The first section presents a descriptive analysis focused on transforming news usage among the four generations. It
provides a general overview and embeds cross-generational differences and similarities into the five periods of the changing media system. The second section
presents us with logistical regression analyses focused on explaining the value of
generations under control for life course with regard to all five media eras.
Describing changes in generational news accessing
The news accessing behaviours for each of the four generations throughout
the course of the five media eras are scrutinized closely in Table 2. Each media
era presents us with an analysis of how the news platforms available at the
time were being used. The plethora of news platforms increased over time
and reached ten different kinds for the analysis of the ubiquitous media era.
Naturally, dotnets were not analysed for the first media era since they were
not of age to be studied in the surveys. The discussion that follows will first
comment on how each generation have altered their news usage over time,
and then discuss prevalent cross-generational findings.
The dutifuls are characterized by stability. Throughout the 26 years there
are only minor differences with regards to their reading of quality newspapers, watching public service television and listening to public service radio.
Further, they are less active in the use of different new media, especially
online news media and mobile news. Nevertheless, the findings indicate a
declining interest in printed evening tabloids, whereas their use of commercial television increases over time. Also, the baby boomers exhibit comparatively stable patterns of news media consumption. This is true for printed
quality newspapers, public service radio and, to some extent, for both public
service and commercial television. Similarly to the dutifuls, the baby boomers are gradually displacing printed evening tabloids and have increased their
access of news from news sites, especially in the last ubiquitous media era.
Furthermore, the baby boomers picked up free dailies from their start, but are
still less active with regards to accessing news on mobile devices. Generation
X presents us with more liquid news accessing patterns compared to the dutifuls and baby boomers, with the exception of reading quality newspapers and
watching commercial television. Their interest in watching public service television increases throughout the course of the five media eras, whereas they
turn into less frequent listeners to public service radio. There is a prevalent
displacement in their frequent reading of printed evening tabloids, down from
45 to 8 per cent during these media eras. On the contrary, the proportion of
generation X frequently accessing evening tabloid news sites increased from
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Note: Frequent accessing of news varies for these news media depending on what can be seen as frequent. Quality
newspapers (print), Public Service TV, Public Service Radio, Commercial TV and Commercial Radio bear
reference to at least five times per week. Evening Tabloids (print), Free Dailies, Evening Tabloids (online) and
Quality Newspapers (online) refer to at least three times per week. Mobile News refers to at least once a week.
Table 2: Generational news accessing 1986–2011 (per cent).
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7 to 41 per cent in a shorter time period. It is noted that their acceptance to all
online media is higher than it is in the two older generations.
Dotnets has a distinctively lower figure for accessing news from traditional print and public service news media than the other generations. This is
especially prevalent for quality newspapers in print, where a clear downward
tendency can be observed, and is also seen for public service and commercial television. It is worth noting that during the period of ubiquitous media,
dotnets displaced printed news media (except for free dailies), and this goes
for online news and mobile news as well.
Table 2 also presents us with important findings for the individual news
media among the four generations over time. There is a decline in the reading
of print newspapers among all generations, especially the evening tabloids.
Several news media present us with important differences between the four
generations and the five media eras. There is a widening gap between dutifuls and dotnets in reading printed quality newspapers, from 29 (83 respective, 54 per cent) to 46 (81 respective, 35 per cent) percentage units between
1991–1995 and 2008–2011. Concerning evening tabloids, generation X were
the most frequent readers during the legacy media era, but in the ubiquitous
media era they were the least (alongside dotnets).
Moreover, the dutifuls are the most frequent users of both public service radio and television in all eras, while generations X and Z are the least
frequent public service users. The gap between dotnets and the dutifuls was
more than 50 percentage units for radio and 70 percentage units for television
in the ubiquitous media era. Furthermore, there were evidently more dutifuls
and baby boomers watching commercial television in the last two media eras,
while there were declines in the last media era among both generation X and
the dotnets. The accessing of news from free dailies and online media exhibit
a similar pattern. The figures are substantially higher for generation X and the
dotnets when compared to the dutifuls and baby boomers in all media eras.
Nevertheless, online news accessing has clearly gained traction among baby
boomers over time and, in particular, during the ubiquitous media era.
In sum, the dutifuls and baby boomers stick to legacy news media the
most, both in terms of higher frequency of use and in the consistency of using
them. Their media habits seem least influenced by the changing mediascape, having adopted online and mobile news media significantly less than
the others. Generations X and Z largely exhibit reversed patterns, and these
findings are in line with our hypotheses. However, there are observations
that point in other directions. One example regarding the relatively low
figures among generation X accessing news from public service television in
the commercial era, and how their use increased despite this, shows that a
decline could be expected considering that several news media had emerged.
The most reasonable explanation is that in this era, generation X is at a life
phase when traditional news is of less interest; in the next eras there is an
increase likely related to another family-oriented life situation. These observations of generational vis-à-vis life course effects are a matter to be scrutinized
more closely in the following section.
Explaining changes in generational news accessing
The decisive question concerning the importance of a generation in relation to
life cycle factors is scrutinized through numerous logistic regression analyses
for the five different media eras. The findings, presented in Table 3a-e, indicate
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that the formative phase of the dutifuls and baby boomers is important. These
two generations largely persist in accessing news from legacy news media
and when confronted with a changing mediascape. Generations X and Z, in
similar fashion, develop a digital orientation in their news accessing patterns.
However, changes in life course also influence media habits independently of
a generation, where age differences within the generations are clearly visible.
Now follows a discussion on the key findings from the regression analysis for
each media era. The average age for each generation in each era (cf. Table 1) is
continuously inserted to the discussion as a frame of reference for life cycle.
The legacy media era (1986–1990)
The first era was marked by an almost total dominance of the printed press and
public service radio and television. In line with expectations, the findings show
that the dutifuls (mean age in this period was 52) and baby boomers (33) are
slightly above average for all news media except for public service television.
Age holds a distinguishing and dual power with regards to the reading of
quality newspapers and evening tabloids. The reading of evening tabloids
is more age-dependent than quality newspapers. Also, public service television is highly age-dependent with young viewers largely being non-frequent
viewers. Educational level has limited importance in this analysis, although
there are slightly positive numbers for quality print newspapers and negative numbers for evening tabloids. The pattern of media usage in the legacy
era is very much in concert with previous research (Shehata and Wadbring
2012); and is especially true for the dutifuls. Ultimately the legacy media era
reflects an old and stable media system, and dominated (80 per cent) by the
dutifuls and baby boomers generations that were born into (and within) this
era, and had reached establishment in their life course.
Table 3a: Explaining news accessing for five media eras (logistical regression).
The commercialization era (1991–1995)
In this second media era, in which commercial television and radio gained
traction by introducing new national channels, the dutifuls (now 57) and the
baby boomers (38) report significantly higher figures for all legacy news media
than other generations, except for public service television. Their figures for
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the new commercial, terrestrial television (established in 1992) are significantly lower in comparison. On the other hand, generation X, who were
relatively young (23) in this era, generates strong figures for evening tabloids
and public service radio (cf. Table 2). With regards to age, the introduction of
commercial broadcasting presents us with augmented levels of age stratification when compared to the legacy media era, whereas figures for educational
level remain largely unchanged. There are exceptional discrepancies for reading quality newspapers depending on the type of household. The explanation
has to do with single households terminating newspaper subscriptions to a
larger degree than family households. The commercialization era to a large
extent is similar to the legacy media era. One important reason for this is that
the dutifuls and the baby boomers are the dominating generations with about
75 per cent of the population.
Table 3b: Explaining news accessing for five media eras (logistical regression).
The digitization era (1996–2001)
The digitization era signals a technological change in the media system,
marked by rapid diffusion of the Web. Findings indicate that dutifuls (now
with a mean age of 63), baby boomers (44) and generation X (29) do not
significantly differ from the average when it comes to reading quality newspapers and evening tabloids in print; baby boomers being an exception for
evening papers. Both the dutifuls and baby boomers persist to have relatively high figures for public service television and radio, whereas generation X reportedly scores high for commercial television. More generally, the
age factor plays a more pronounced role as expected and based on previous
research presented here. The digitization era broadens the mediascape, and
here the age factor comes into play. For instance, age presents us with high
and positive figures for quality newspapers and public service news media,
but negative figures when it comes to commercial radio and free dailies. This
indicates a possible inertia among the elderly towards adopting the new
media, regardless of generational belonging. The relatively slow changes in
media use seen from Table 2 are explained by the fact that dutifuls and baby
boomers still make up almost 70 per cent of the population, where the latter
generation is somewhat bigger.
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Table 3c: Explaining news accessing for five media eras (logistical regression).
The cross-media era (2002–2006)
During this media era a growing portion of legacy media expanded their omnipresence and created a new type of cross-media news work. At this point the
dutifuls present us with amplified usage patterns, with the majority retired
(mean age 68), and baby boomers (50). Belonging to one of these generations has a stronger effect on the use of legacy news media compared to those
belonging to other generations, while the effects on the contrary are lower
with regards to online news media. Further, these two generations also have
a significantly higher interest in commercial media on traditional platforms,
increasing in relation to the digitization era. Generation X, with an average
age of 34, on the other hand, scores especially high for accessing online news.
However, we can also observe interplay with the age factor, which has gained
significance for all legacy media except evening tabloids, especially increasing for public service television. Men and the educated distinguish those
Table 3d: Explaining news accessing for five media eras (logistical regression).
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individuals inclined to access news with mobile devices. The increasing stratification of media habits according to generation and life course, especially
towards legacy media, can also be observed in the increasing figure for variance explained. In this era the baby boomers represent about one-third of the
population and dutifuls less than 30 per cent.
The ubiquitous media era (2007–2011)
During the ubiquitous media era mobile media gained significance, fuelled
by rapid diffusion of smartphones, which resulted in the introduction of a
new platform for media use. In line with the previous media eras, the dutifuls (mean age 72) and baby boomers (mean age 55), were still representing a
majority of the population, showing the strongest preference for legacy news
media, especially quality newspapers, while less so for radio. They essentially
inhabit the mediascape they once grew into, while there is a more limited
generation effect on the use of digital news platforms compared to those
belonging to other generations.
Generation X (mean age 39) is characterized as having active and
diversified news accessing habits, on par with the figures identified in the
previous media era, but increase in a tendency for quality print papers.
Also the age factor gained significance, scoring highest values among all
independent variables for six out of ten news media platforms. The importance of educational level remains relatively intact, but presents us with an
increase for online quality newspapers. On the contrary, gender has lost
some importance with the exception of quality newspapers online. This
increase is explained in the variance witnessed through the stratification
in news media habits that remains. An empiric analysis (not reported in
the tables) of dotnets’s (mean age 25) news media orientation conforms
to our expectations. It shows that this youngest generation score low with
regards to all legacy news media, especially quality morning newspapers in
print, but that belonging to this generation has a higher effect on the use
of digital news platforms compared to other generations, except for online
evening tabloids.
Table 3e: Explaining news accessing for five media eras (logistical regression).
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concludinG discussion
This article has presented descriptive and explanatory data on the salient case
of news accessing among four generations over five media eras and covering
26 years. The point of departure has been the generation classification proposed
by Zukin et al. (2006). It does not entirely cover all the relevant media generations, but represents an accepted and reasonable approach to the main postwar generations. We have been able to show how the dutifuls, baby boomers,
generation X and, to some extent, dotnets have changed their ways of accessing news in a period when the media system changed dramatically and when
legacy news media became gradually complemented by a strong, although
gradual, growth of commercial and digital new media. Sociology of generations
as well as media generation research has emphasized the assumed importance
of the formative phase. This article posits that the news media embraced in
one’s youth will continue to play an important role in life, although conditioned by changing life phases and the transforming mediascape. The empiric
analysis presents us with two particularly important findings.
The first finding gives general support for the generational hypothesis on
formative socialization. The descriptive and explanatory data show, in line
with our hypothesis, that the dutifuls and baby boomers – socialized in an
era when traditional newspapers and public service media were the sole news
sources – are strongly oriented towards legacy news media throughout the
course of all the five media eras of media change. Their persistence in, and
habits of, reading printed newspapers and accessing news from public service
broadcasters is established in the first media eras we analysed. This gradually
becomes more and more prevalent as they largely refrain from displacement
in their small steps towards embracing emergent news media platforms. These
gain traction over time seemingly in parallel with the evolving mediascape.
Generation X, by comparison, balances between old and new media, becoming increasingly digitally oriented over time. Dotnets, on the other hand, have
exclusively formed their news media patterns throughout the last three media
eras: they exhibit a strong inclination towards digital news media.
The second finding casts light on the ways life course exerts influence on news media behaviour. The logistical regression analyses evidence
of such effects, especially for the last three media eras, and seemingly with
greater effect than generational belonging. The elderly, regardless of generation, education and gender, persist with legacy news media while the young
turn out to be geared towards trying out new news media. There is obviously
more than one meaning of age present. Age may signify life cycle effects with
regards to the elderly predominantly using news media coupled with the
traditional household, since they spend much time in their homes. The young,
on the other hand, typically exhibit lives with augmented levels of mobility,
and hence display preference for portable news media such as mobile devices
or free dailies, using news sites at work or school. Thus, we have observed
that the reading of printed quality papers is less frequent among the youth
than among the elderly in all generations. Moreover, it must be noted that a
comparison of news accessing behaviours among each generation when they
were young (cf. Table 2) witnesses a strong decline in legacy news media. The
media systems were largely different when these generations were in their
early 20s, entering a life phase where they were establishing their own home
and place in adulthood. For instance, quality newspapers played a substantially diminished role for dotnets in their 20s from 1997 onwards, compared
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to generation X and the baby boomers in the early 90s and previous decades.
More precisely, when aged 40–44 the reading of quality newspapers in print
was far more common among dutifuls (88%) than among baby boomers (77%)
and generation X (63%). This generational change means a loss of roughly
ten percentage points in readers per generation.
To put it another way, when a generation has grown old they have already
developed strong media habits, which change slowly, whereas when individuals are young there is greater responsiveness to emergent news media that
has to do with them being in a formative phase in life. During this period they
are more open to trying new media and domesticating these into their lives.
To understand the results it is important to be reminded of the character
of the changes in media structure. The introduction and diffusion of commercial television and radio, and digital media has not (yet) meant that newspapers and public service media have disappeared. In fact, they were (and still
are) the main Swedish news media in terms of reach (cf. Mediebarometern
2011 2012). What happened instead was that it was added as a new layer
of media, offering a complementary alternative to legacy media. As we can
observe, this meant that legacy news media have lost significance for each
media era that has passed by. This indicates a gradual displacement on the
total level. However, this does not necessarily mean that the generations
per se have displaced older legacy news media with new digital media, but
instead that older generations have embraced and added alternative news
media, while younger generations have formed habits with digital media. One
can also acknowledge that other studies have shown senior citizens having
legacy media as their daily point of departure for media use, whereas younger
people typically start with digital media (Hadenius et al. 2011; Weibull 2012b).
Ultimately, this indicates that generations do not entirely persist with their
formative media habits, but instead that there are significant changes occurring. We conclude that changes in generational news accessing (societal level)
are contingent upon transitions in media periods (media system level) as well
as how people travel through life cycles (individual level).
While the data used for analysis is comprehensive, limitations for analysing displacing and complementary effects over time involve the cross-sectional
nature of the data and also the absence of data on how older generations
accessed news when they were young. Despite using robust survey data covering
26 years, it only covers some of the cycles for any of the generations’ life course.
Hence, this constitutes a problem of methodology. The dutifuls are analysed
during the established phase of their life course, whereas the dotnets are covered
in the early non-established phase. It is important to remember these analytical
restrictions when studies of the ‘young generations’ are presented, which should
be conceived as studies of one phase of the life course on a generation.
The interactions between generation and life course, however, are not
finally evidenced by our analysis presented here. It is worth noting that the
generational constructs tested here, drawn from Zukin et al. (2006), have
some important shortcomings. First, it is not based on a theoretical framework where media are significant. Second, it covers a relatively wide span
of decisive birth years. It is been used here because it reflects general social
changes. However, it also means there is much intra-generational heterogeneity, which helps explain why age repeatedly attracts higher scores than
generational belonging in the logistical regression analyses. These effects,
inexorably connected to life course, are most pronounced for baby boomers.
Future research should explore the granularity of generational classifications,
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aiming to conceptualize media generations in ways which restrain substantial
age and life cycle effects by narrowing the age span in sensible ways. As a
small attempt we performed an analysis by collapsing the baby boomers into
two equally sized cohorts based on decisive birth years. The findings confirm
expectations on significant differences in news usage among these two baby
boomer cohorts. As presented, in the digitization era (1996–2001) 77% of baby
boomers were frequent readers of the quality press (cf. Table 1), but usage was
higher among the older cohort (80%) than the younger cohort (72%). Similar
intra-generational findings are found when collapsing generation X into two
cohorts (66 versus 61%). Exemplifying evidence on the interaction between
generation and life course has been presented for the salient case of quality
newspapers in print.
Looking closer at the results, it is clear that the changes in media habits
between generations are not only an effect of changes in the media landscape. On the contrary, societal development can be seen as an important
background factor (Weibull 1983; 2012a), among which individualization
(Giddens 1991; Bjur 2009) and mobility (Elliott and Urry 2010) mark factors
possessing exceptional significance. In our data we find that individualization,
as indicated by the share of one-person-households, has increased from 15 to
20 per cent from 1986 to 2011. Other studies from Sweden show increasing
mobility in terms of moving between places (Andersson 2007), and a more
general increase in spatial mobility through individualized modes of travelling (Frändberg and Vilhelmsson 2011). Living in one-person-households
and/or having a life marked by mobility has always been most commonplace
among young people, but when it comes to generation X and the dotnets
these patterns have however expanded to larger groups of young adults. Since
both individualization and mobility are negatively correlated with traditional
newspaper reading, it is tempting to conclude that changes in social habits
between generations might be as important as media development, or at least
that media changes, to a large extent, reflect social changes.
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suGGested citation
Westlund, O. and Weibull, L. (2013), ‘Generation, life course and news media
use in Sweden 1986–2011’, Northern Lights 11, pp. 147–173, doi: 10.1386/
nl.11.147_1
contributor details
Oscar Westlund holds a joint affiliation as associate professor at the
University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and the IT University of Copenhagen
(Denmark). He serves on the editorial boards of Digital Journalism, Journal of
Media Innovations, and Mobile Media & Communication. He is an interdisciplinary researcher focusing on the transformations and relationships between
old and new media, including topics such as media generations and generations of media. Westlund has published with more than a dozen international peer-reviewed journals, among which recent contributions focusing
media use and age appear in Observatorio and Young.
Contact: University of Gothenburg, Department of Journalism, Media and
Communication, Box 710, 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden.
E-mail: oscar.westlund@jmg.gu.se
Lennart Weibull is Professor of Mass Media Research at the University of
Gothenburg. He is author of numerous books, articles and research reports.
His research interests include among others media structure, audience development, newspaper industry, journalism history and media ethics. He is
172
Generation, life course and news media use in …
one of the founders of the SOM Institute. Among his recent international
publications is the edited volume Media, Markets & Public Spheres: European
Media at the Crossroads (Intellect).
Contact: University of Gothenburg, Department of Journalism, Media and
Communication, Box 710, 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden.
E-mail: lennart.weibull@jmg.gu.se
Oscar Westlund and Lennart Weibull have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of
this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.
173
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