The Swedish population is concentrated in the southern part of the country, while only one of its ten million people live in the much more sparsely populated northern part. However, the supply of news media is satisfactory wherever people live. Newspapers are distributed all over the country, broadcast media reach all regions, and most households have access to broadband and smartphones for digital news consumption.
During the last few decades, the Swedish media landscape has become highly digitalised and undergone considerable changes, with commercial radio and television channels, free tabloid newspapers, hyperlocal media, and various social media platforms being introduced (Weibull & Wadbring, 2020). The digital media landscape can be described as more competitive and crowded, and the supply of diverse media channels has increased significantly. But at the same time, media ownership became more concentrated, and the number of journalists and newsrooms decreased (Truedson, 2019). The free tabloid Metro is no longer operating in Sweden, and the commercial television channel TV4 has closed its local news departments.
As was the case a decade ago (see von Krogh & Nord, 2011), Swedish daily newspapers are still available for subscription all over the country, and evening tabloids are sold everywhere. Traditionally, local and regional newspapers have relatively strong market positions and cover all parts of Sweden. In 2015, 164 dailies existed in Sweden and 70 of them were published five days a week or more (Harrie, 2018). The newspaper market is rather stable in terms of the number of titles (see Table 2). One explanation for this is the state press subsidy system that has existed in Sweden since 1971. The system supports newspapers with a weak market position in order to keep them in the market, and in 2019, it was supplemented by new platform-neutral subsidies to media companies operating in areas without previous local journalism.
[supsystic-tables id=41]
The latest decade has also seen continued increased competition between broadcast media. In 2019, there were 30 public service radio stations (4 national and 26 local), 38 commercial radio stations (3 national and 35 local), and 139 community radio stations. The same year, there were 5 public service television channels and 36 Swedish private television channels available to the audience (Facht & Ohlsson, 2019). Since the introduction of the Internet, the boundaries of both radio and television have become increasingly unclear.
The movement from traditional to digital media is happening at a rapid pace. In 2019, 92 per cent of Swedes had a smartphone and 70 per cent had a tablet (Internetstiftelsen, 2019). Internet infrastructure is well developed, and broadband connections are now available for the majority of Swedish households. All national news media and all leading regional media offer online and mobile news services, as do international news media and global platform companies.
