Ytringsfrihet_Hovedrapport_DIG

Summary
4
Chapters 5 and 6 target two professions that play important roles in exercising
and enabling the freedom of expression in a society: journalists and
professional artists. In Chapter 5 Anna Grøndahl Larsen and Karoline Andrea
Ihlebæk ask how Norwegian news media conceive of and strategically handle
ongoing structural change within the sector, with an emphasis on the impact
of digitalization. The chapter is based on qualitative interviews with 15 editorsin-chief
and digital strategists in major Norwegian media houses and a survey
of Norwegian journalists. The results show that both editors and journalists
take an ambiguous attitude towards digitalization and its concomitant change
processes. On the one hand digitalization triggers innovation, new ways of
researching news stories and communicating with the public, as well as new
ways of targeting content. On the other hand, digitalization challenges quality
journalism by eroding established business models, and by introducing new,
more quantitative measures of quality. The authors underscore that there is a
variety of viewpoints among the interviewees, not the least depending on their
strategic position.
In Chapter 6 Tore Slaatta delves into how fiction writers and visual artists
experience the conditions for freedom of speech in Norway. Based on a survey of
members of the Norwegian Association of Authors (Norsk Forfatterforening) and
the Norwegian Association of Visual Artists (Norske Billedkunstneres forening)
the author asks whether these two groups of artists experience their freedom
of expression as sufficiently protected, whether they see the conditions for
free speech as stable or changing, and which are the particular challenges to
exercising free speech as seen from their profession. Overall, the participants
in the survey feel that their freedom of expression as artists is well protected
legally. But some artists have experienced forms of critical reception of their art
in the public sphere that they conceive as potentially limiting, for example when
writers are confronted with the impact of their work on the privacy of individuals.
Public financing is seen as an important guarantee of the freedom expression
within art.
Chapters 7 and 8 place their focus on how digitalization influences participation
in and the quality of public debate. In Chapter 7 Karoline Andrea Ihlebæk examines
how chief editors and debate editors reflect on their editorial responsibility
and the administration of the public debate. Based on interviews with 12 chief
editors and 12 debate editors in Norwegian newspapers, the Director-General, the
News Editor and two debate editors in the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation,
Ihlebæk demonstrates that the facilitation of public debate has become an area of
great strategic importance in the digital age, and that the use of internet and social
media has become imperative for spreading content and finding new voices. She
also discusses the dilemmas that editors face when deciding upon the appropriate
level of editorial control. Ihlebæk points out that the digital transformation has
Status for ytringsfriheten i Norge – Fritt Ords monitorprosjekt