Att skapa en konsument : Råd & Rön och den statliga konsumentupplysningen

Författare

Sophie Elsässer

Summary, in English

The Swedish consumer magazine Råd & Rön (”Advice and Results”) has been available to Swedish consumers since 1958. For a major part of this time the Swedish state, represented by Konsumentverket (the Swedish Consumer Agency) and its predecessor, Konsumentinstitutet (the National Institute for Consumer Information), was the owner of the magazine. In 2006 Råd & Rön was sold to the independent organisation, Sveriges konsumenter (the Swedish Consumers’ Association).

The aim of this thesis is to describe the development of the magazine Råd & Rön, and why it has taken on the appearance it has. For almost 50 years the magazine was an official publication and functioned, to a great extent, as a vehicle for the ideas of the authorities. An important component of this work is to clarify the relationship between the magazine, the authorities, the state and the reader in different periods and to demonstrate which factors have influenced this relationship. In order to be able to do this it is necessary to describe and analyse the social and cultural contexts; that is, to not only discuss what has been published in Råd & Rön, bur also why. A part of this work is to study, and relate to, the development that has taken place in consumer policy.

The point of departure for the work has been the collected publications of Råd & Rön from 1958 to approximately mid-year 2012. In order to develop the picture of the consumer area and consumer policy other material has also been used: archive material from the authorities, parliamentary publications, government reports, documents that regulate the activity of the authorities, interviews and literature. In this

process a couple of specific approaches to the material have emerged.

One of these is the discourse on needs and here I show how it have been

taken up by organisations, authorities, the state and the magazine. Another approach concerns the development of journalism, where I show how the relationship to society and the public as well as the view of news ideals and professional ideals have changed. It is possible to see how the consumer material has been transformed from mere content for relatively passive consumer guidance to more active consumer journalism.

Avdelning/ar