Studying Religion in Nordic Newspapers

This article introduces the topic of this special issue: religion in Nordicnewspapers. It provides a general framework for the following fourarticles based on a longitudinal study of religion in Danish, Finnish,Norwegian, and Swedish newspapers by clarifying what characterizesselected ‘Nordic’ countries, their media spheres, and their religiouslandscapes. Furthermore, this article suggests that despite significantchanges in the media sphere, including factual media production andconsumption, there are good reasons to study religion-related mediacontent produced by the dominant and conventional media outlets,including newspapers. However, this should not be done by isolatingnewspapers from society and the rest of the media. This introductionand the following articles therefore propose that the selected keyconcepts and debates among sociologists of religion are particularlyuseful in thinking about religion-related newspaper content.