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This article analyses developments in Norwegian magazine journalism in the last decade, focusing on the broad and varied spectrum of magazines targeting women. The analysis is based on multiple methods and data sources, aiming to connect the production and reception of magazine journalism to the texts of magazines. This article will identify and discuss five key trends: fragmentation, digitalization, Nordic inspiration, redefinition of the political and beautification. The trends are discussed in light of public sphere theory and selected orientations in Nordic journalism research.

This article identifies gaps between normative ideals and realistic accounts of news use in democracy today. Starting from the widespread but unrealistic ideal of the informed citizen, and its more realistic development through notions of the monitorial citizen, we analyze comprehensive qualitative data on news users’ experiences. We describe these news users as approximately informed, occasionally monitorial. This description emphasizes the limited, shifting, and partial figurations of societal information that citizens are able to obtain through their use of journalistic and social media, and thereby challenges normative ideals. How do monitorial ideals function when the citizens are only occasionally on guard? By zooming in on three key gaps between even a less demanding ideal and actual practices in news use, we underline the need to further reconceptualize our expectations of citizens’ news use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses developments in Norwegian magazine journalism in the last decade, focusing on the broad and varied spectrum of magazines targeting women. The analysis is based on multiple methods and data sources, aiming to connect the production and reception of magazine journalism to the texts of magazines. This article will identify and discuss five key trends: fragmentation, digitalization, Nordic inspiration, redefinition of the political and beautification. The trends are discussed in light of public sphere theory and selected orientations in Nordic journalism research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between women’s magazines and the public sphere, arguing that women’s magazines can be positioned as having a marginal or an important role in the public domain — depending on how the functions of popular media in democracy are understood. Women’s magazines are generally not associated with the forms of journalism which bring citizens information of crucial democratic importance. Nevertheless, research on women’s magazines emphasizes their political relevance as purveyors of ideology about class, family structures and women’s role in society. In addition to this implicit political dimension, women’s magazines also include journalism which deals explicitly with political issues. Because of this, women’s magazines constitute an interesting case for fundamental debates about the categories of private and public. Drawing on feminist contributions to public sphere theory and using Norway as an empirical case, this article offers a broad exploration of the role of women’s magazines in the public sphere. The empirical data include interviews with readers and editors as well as analysis of texts and media policy debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]