The Transformation of ‘the Political’ in Post-War Sweden

• Published in: Digitised Newspapers - a New Eldorado for Historians? Vol. 3; p. 411
• Main Authors: Norén, Fredrik, Jarlbrink, Johan, Borg, Alexandra, Edoff, Erik, Magnusson, Måns
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Walter de Gruyter GmbH 2022
• Series: Studies in Digital History and Hermeneutics
• ISBN: 3110729717; 9783110729719; 3110729210; 9783110729214
• DOI: 10.1515/9783110729214-019

This paper explores what was explicitly defined as ‘political’ duringthe post-war era, from 1945 to 1989, in two Swedish newspapers. Based on allextracted text blocks containing the term ‘political’, two research questions areexamined: How has the use of the term “political” evolved over time? In whichcontexts was the concept inscribed, and how did these change over time? In-spired by conceptual history, the analysis is divided into three parts: an examina-tion of ‘political’ through bigram extractions, contextual explorations using topicmodeling, and a close reading of one particular topic over time, the topic labeled‘women’. The result shows an increased use of the term ‘political’ from the1960s, with more things that were labeled as ‘political’. The analysis reveals thatthe concept was broadened, but not entirely redefined.