In this project, we study the development of photojournalism and its importance in society based on three aspects: new image development, image selection and the audience's interpretation.
News image position in the daily press has both strengthened and weakened in the last two decades. The image has strengthened as it has become increasingly prominent in the Swedish daily press; during a long period of time the tabloids had a highly visual appearance of good-sized pictures, while the texts dominated in the morning papers.
At the same time as news images has increased its importance there are signs, however, that its position at the same time has weakened. Multi Journalism places new demands on journalistic versatility and even print journalists are now often commissioned to take photos.
The aim of the project is to study photojournalism development and importance in society based on three aspects: the development of the news pictures, what the process of image selection and the work in the newsroom with a focus on standards and procedures look like, and how audiences perceive and interpret the images. The study's focus is analog and digital pictures published in the traditional newspaper publishers between 1995 and 2013, and the images that been rewarded in the contest Picture of the Year during the same period.
In addition to project managers Maria Nilsson included Professor John Kimmich and research assistant Terje Lindblom in the project.