by Atle Christiansen

‘There was a flood of new newspapers,’ a newspaper reported in the early 1800s.

The fact that they described this growth as a ‘flood’ emphasised that there was something uncertain about these new newspapers. What did they actually want?

"They wanted power. The social role of the press was, at that time, highly unclear. The newspapers were working to find their role and define their mission, but there is no doubt that the editors of these newspapers were seeking political influence", says Niri Ragnvald Johnsen.

He has just defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Agder. The thesis examines how political groups in Sweden and Norway in the first half of the 19th century worked to influence social development.

"A newspaper edition at that time could be four pages long, and was often filled from cover to cover with philosophical reflections on the press’s social mission. To put it rather pointedly, you could say that as a journalist in the early 1800s, you wrote almost exclusively about the press," says Johnsen.

What we today call newspapers were often referred to back then as ‘blads’ or ‘periodical publications’.

The Constitution and freedom of the press

The main reason for the growth of new newspapers was the introduction of the constitutions in Sweden in 1809 and Norway in 1814.

‘With the constitutions came new laws on freedom of the press in both countries. Freedom of the press paved the way for the emergence of a new public sphere, with newspapers that could discuss politics and society,’ says Johnsen.

He has mainly studied two press circles: the bourgeois opposition newspapers of the 1810s and 1820s and the radical labour newspapers of the period around 1848. These circles existed in both Sweden and Norway.

Nowadays, political advisers and other communications professionals know how important it is to frame the debate using words and phrases that ensure their perspective on the issue prevails. Journalists in the 19th century understood this too.

Johnsen points out, for example, how controversial terms such as ‘opposition’ and ‘party press’ were redefined and gradually took on new meanings. They were gradually transformed into neutral and, in time, positively connoted terms. This occurred as opposition and party organisation became more widely accepted as political practices.

"Through language, various circumstances were defined, and in this way, politics and society were shaped by these linguistic formulations. At the same time, these linguistic formulations were shaped by the social conditions of the time", says Johnsen.

New words for a new era

In his thesis, he demonstrates how concepts such as ‘public opinion’, ‘the will of the people’, ‘opposition’ and ‘the fourth estate’ came into widespread use and became linked to the social role of the press during the period 1809–1848.

At the same time, the thesis demonstrates how ideas and concepts relating to the press were imported and exchanged between countries in Europe and Scandinavia.

The history of the press has traditionally been very narrowly defined in national terms, but Johnsen has deliberately sought out contacts and influences across national borders. New impulses came just as readily from France as from Great Britain; this is a new finding in Johnsen’s study.

“Overall, the study provides insight into the origins of our contemporary notions of the political role of the press,” says Johnsen.

In the period following the adoption of the constitutions, the idea of the nation was strong. But as the 19th century progressed, there was a growing recognition that different groups in society had different interests.

"The early 1800s were characterised by the ideal that political debate should be unified, objective and rational. But gradually, people had to come to terms with the fact that politics had become, and perhaps had always been, a struggle of interests between different groups such as farmers, workers and civil servants", says Johnsen.

Consequently, the 1880s saw the emergence of the first political parties in Sweden and Norway, and with them a dedicated party press. This would have been almost entirely unthinkable just fifty years earlier.

In the debates of that time concerning the press’s social mission, we also find questions that resonate today: How should one find one’s bearings in a growing multitude of publications and voices? Can one trust the media? Do they contribute to social enlightenment, or do they undermine society?

Johnsen points out that there are still countless newspapers and periodicals from the early 1800s that have scarcely been studied by historians. Whilst working on his thesis, he himself discovered several unknown and little-researched newspapers, periodicals and letters.

“Key concepts in our political vocabulary remain understudied. This applies to key terms such as ‘democracy’, ‘the people’ and, not least, ‘politics’,” says Johnsen, who is now a researcher at the University of Southern Denmark.