Successful combination strengthens democracy

The report summarizes the project Local democracy in a digital world, a project in which local news media and libraries in three cities collaborated to investigate whether, via activities and new forms of collaboration, they can strengthen knowledge and news dissemination, opinion and opinion formation as well as media and information literacy - not least before the election last autumn.

The project has been studied by media researchers Malin Picha Edwardsson and Maria Zuiderveld at Södertörn University. Through interviews with the participants, they have analyzed the work based on questions such as what similarities and differences exist between the local newspapers and the libraries, how work forms and processes change when they collaborate and how the collaboration changes the approach to their positions in the local democracy.

The results show great potential in collaborations between libraries and newsrooms - but not without challenges.

"The biggest effect of the project was probably that the involved librarians and journalists were inspired by each other and saw the potential in the joint democratic work going forward" - the researchers write in the report.