Folkbibliotekarier och nya medier
en diskursanalys av folkbibliotekariers inställning till nya medier
The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine librarians opinions about media. Four questions are asked: What kind of different attitudes to new media has librarians had? How is new media discussed in relationship to each other in the debate? What mechanisms and underlying causes control the discourse for new media in public libraries? Does the discourse change over time, in that case, how? The theoretical background is theory about moral- and media panic and popular adult education. The media panic theory includes the idea that the same reaction occurs every time a new media is introduced. The theory about popular adult education is that the public need to be cultivated. The public libraries in general were an attempt to cultivate the public. The analysis is based on discourse analysis, which means that texts are analysed to find out whether there are valuating expressions in the texts, then these expressions are analysed. We have used Norman Faircloughs theories about discourse analysis for inspiration. We have selected and analysed articles from an internal library journal, Biblioteksbladet, to study the new media discourse among public librarians. The results show that there are mechanisms that affects and in some ways controls librarians opinions about media. We have been able to see that the librarians in many ways react like in the description of the media panic cycle. The expressions, the protection of the youth and the sensitivity argumentation are the same among librarians when they express their opinions about media. One of the most important ideological mechanisms that affect the librarians is the general education discourse, with its purpose to educate and foster the general public.