Government public relations,audiovisual communication and the informalisation of Sweden

Abstract

This article addresses the role of television as a ‘new media’ in government public relations. Drawing on sociological theories on informalisation, this study analyses three features of the Swedish public information programme Anslagstavlan during the 1970s and 1980s: first, formal techniques such as editing, pacing and use of animations; second, narrative strategies including the utilisation of celebrity advertising and intertextuality; and last, the rhetoric of public information. The study shows that the engineering of informality was a key communication strategy for government agencies and that televised information contributed to the conversationalisation and personalisation of government agencies’ communication in medium-specific ways.

Introduction

During the 1970s and 1980s, Sweden experienced rapid informalisation in both the public and the private arena. Ethnologist Orvar Löfgren notes that after 1968, which marks a significant cultural shift with social movements and student protests, the stereotypical image of Sweden as a pedantic, cold-hearted and bureaucratic nation began to be challenged by observations of an increasing informality and permissiveness (1988: 11–12). During this time, casual clothing and manners became more and more common in work and social life, and there were explicit attempts to move beyond hierarchies and formal language when addressing one another with the so-called ‘You-Reform’ (‘Du-reformen’). This societal development also influenced how government agencies addressed Swedish citizens through government public relations.

While much international research on public relations tends to focus on commercial and industrial life, particularly in American contexts (Watson, 2015), European scholars have emphasised the importance of other actors, like government agencies and civil society, in the development of the public relations field in welfare states (L’Etang, 2004; Maartens, 2016; Norén and Stjernholm, 2019). In the early 1970s, a time when television emerged as a dominant medium in the media landscape, Swedish public service television started broadcasting the influential public information programme Anslagstavlan (‘The Bulletin Board’). Already from the beginning, the appearance, format and design of Anslagstavlan were questions highly prioritised within the public service broadcaster Sveriges Radio (SR), with deliberations involving stakeholders such as government agencies, PR firms and television bureaucrats. Though often part of larger information campaigns, the televised information stood out in the television schedule with its direct, informal and humorous mode of address, making the programme well-known amongst generations of Swedish audiences.

This study focuses on the narrative and stylistic form of public information on Swedish television and the particular information challenges that shaped government communication in a changing media landscape. The article examines the development of Anslagstavlan between the establishment of the format in 1972 until 1992 when Sveriges Television (SVT) officially lost its monopoly status. Drawing on sociological theories on informalisation as well as media theory, this study places emphasis on three key features of Anslagstavlan: first, television style and formal techniques such as editing, pacing and use of animations; second, narrative strategies and tropes, including the utilisation of celebrity advertising, humour and intertextual references; and last, the rhetoric of public information and the balance between a bureaucratic and an informal mode of address. In doing so, two central research questions are explored: How did the aesthetic, narrative and rhetorical mode of address in televised information develop over time? What was the medium-specific role of the moving image in the communication of government agencies? By addressing the medium-specific role of audiovisual communication in government public relations, this study aims to increase our knowledge about how Swedish government agencies used televised information to communicate with citizens and how the ideals surrounding these efforts changed over time.

Government public relations and the medium of television

The construction and consolidation of the Nordic welfare states were shaped not only by social reforms, economic productivity and effective governance but also by state interventions in the media system and government agencies’ communicative practices (e.g., Jönsson and Snickars, 2007; Norén et al., 2022; Skogerbø et al., 2021; Syvertsen et al., 2014). In the post-war period, for example, utopian visions were regularly accompanied with attempts at persuasion, and communicative activities were used to influence the private life of individuals and families (Hirdman, 1990) and to explain and demonstrate the importance of certain virtues (Noren and Stjernholm, 2019). In this context, the media emerged as a means of soft power, with an ability to influence and affect people’s views.

During the late 1960s, the term ‘samhällsinformation’ (‘public information’) became a buzzword among politicians, policymakers and researchers, a historical parallel to today’s discussions about nudging (Thaler and Sunstein, 2009) and social marketing (Lee and Kotler, 2011). This was an era of big campaigns. A particularly important milestone in the history of government public relations in Sweden took place in 1967, with the massive publicity preceding the implementation of right-hand traffic. Fredrik Norén describes the preparatory work prior to the reform, which included an intricate collaboration between government agencies, the advertising industry and the social sciences, as ‘one of the most comprehensive communication efforts initiated by a Swedish government during the 20th century’ (Norén, 2019: 236). The effect of the massive mobilisation of media in this campaign, using traditional mass media such as newspapers, television and radio as well as other media such as milk cartons and children’s comic books (Norén, 2019: 242–243), was also highlighted in the Swedish government official report Expanded Public Information (1969: 115). Drawing on this example, Expanded Public Information called for a modernised and more active form of public information. During the 1970s and 1980s, meanwhile, economic historian Erik Lakomaa observes that advertising became ‘an integral part of public sector activities, and government agencies and municipalities became major buyers of media and advertising services’ (Lakomaa, 2021: 479). This development was amplified by the establishment of the Board of Public Information (1971–1981) as well as an increase in the number of information offices and public relations departments within government agencies (Larsson, 2005: 77), a tendency which also has been noted internationally (Maartens, 2016).

During the 1970s, the field of advertisement was strongly influenced by the public information trend in Sweden––and vice versa. This stemmed partly from a public debate during the 1950s and 1960s, in which the field of advertisement at large was under scrutiny. As Michael Funke notes, both the labour movement and more radical left-wing intellectuals criticised advertising and claimed that it ‘increased the price of products, lacked relevant consumer information and was used in the creation of costly competition between brands’ (Funke, 2011: 97–98). An influential example is public intellectual Sven Lindqvist’s book Advertising is lethal (Reklamen är livsfarlig, 1957), which sparked controversy and public debate about capitalist ideology and the harm of a materialistic lifestyle. Within the labour movement, Funke writes, there were calls for stronger state control over the consumer market, and the Social Democrats launched ‘an extensive state regulatory regime (…) to handle both producer competition and consumer rights issues’ in 1971 (Funke, 2011: 98). Moreover, between 1966 and 1974, a government-appointed commission, The Advertising Commission, investigated the role and function of advertisement in society and presented five government official reports on the topic (SOU, 1972a:6, 1972b:7, 1973a:10, 1973b:11, 1974:23). The Commission underlined the critics view that consumer information and official public information was of growing importance to balance commercial advertising messages (SOU, 1972b:7: 26–27). Notably, the Commission also praised the self-regulatory initiatives taken by the industry itself: ‘the shortcomings of advertising and marketing from an informational point-of-view has resulted in extensive countermeasures from the business world in an effort to self-regulate’ (SOU, 1972b:7: 110). In this sense, facts, figures and an authoritative tone of voice came to influence the advertisement of consumer goods during the 1970s (Korpus, 2008: 83). At the same time, public information increasingly drew on public relations, advertising and other tools available in the commercial sector in its effort to steer and influence the behaviour of the citizens. In a Swedish context, then, the history of government public relations is intrinsically intertwined with advertising history at large.

Within film and media studies, the past decade has seen a growing interest in the broad spectrum of audiovisual media that were produced with a specific purpose in mind, such as to inform, to educate or to sell (Acland and Wasson, 2011; Vonderau and Hediger, 2009; Vonderau et al., 2016). These useful media constitute what Kit Hughes calls the ‘marginal majority’ in media history (Hughes, 2020: 13) or what Acland and Hoyt (2016: 12) describe as ‘the great unread’ of media studies. However, televised public information spots––what in the United State context is usually labelled public service announcements and in the United Kingdom context public information films––remain an under-explored phenomenon. As television scholar John Ellis notes, trailers, commercials and public service announcements constitute ‘interstitials’, which is ‘a whole class of television output’ that carries messages, builds anticipation and delay, and interlaces with other programs (Ellis, 2011: 95). While some previous research exists on producers of televised public information, focusing on influential organisations and institutions such as non-profit The Advertising Council in the United States (Griffith, 1983) and the Central Office of Information in the United Kingdom (Welch, 2021), less emphasis has been placed on this particular type of state interference in the Scandinavian media system. Moreover, the perceived need for expanded public information was not limited to Sweden, but dedicated programmes with short public information spots also circulated elsewhere in Europe, such as in Denmark (OBS - Oplysning til Borgerne om Samfundet) and the Netherlands (Postbus 51) during the 1970s (Brink Lund, 2009; Van der Noort, 2008).

Following intense negotiations between stakeholders within the public service broadcaster, Sveriges Radio created the public information programme Anslagstavlan and introduced televised public information during the spring of 1972 (Stjernholm, 2022). When Anslagstavlan was first introduced, public service television reached into millions of Swedish living rooms. For example, television set saturation grew rapidly from 800,000 in 1960 to 2.4 million by the end of the decade in a country of eight million (Furhammar, 1995: 45). Politically, the forthcoming decades have been described as a watershed moment where neo-liberal reforms and a market-driven economic restructuring ushered Sweden toward greater individualisation in society (Ryner, 1999: 49). In terms of the media landscape, the public service monopoly was broken with the introduction of commercial broadcasting, first, through the satellite channel TV3 in the autumn of 1986, which broadcast from the United Kingdom and, second, through the introduction of the first commercial terrestrial TV channel TV4 in 1992 (Hadenius, 1998: 290-313; Djerf-Pierre and Ekstrom, 2013: 320). According to Ellis, the 1970s and 1980s was the last period in the era of scarcity, where few channels broadcast television for only part of the day (Ellis, 2002: 39), and this era was subsequently replaced with an era of availability characterised by the growing reach of satellite television and increased commercialisation. This article investigates the informalisation of televised public information during this crucial turning point.

Anslagstavlan and the informalisation of Sweden

Theoretically, the article draws on the sociological concept of informalisation. Coined by Dutch sociologist Cas Wouters, the concept was developed to understand a societal trend of permissiveness that shaped the public sphere in most parts of the Western world during the 20th century. While informalisation can be described as a long-term process with deep historical roots, changes in behavioural patterns have been particularly noticeable during specific periods of time, such as the 1960s and 1970s. For instance, Wouters describes the rise of counterculture, changes in verbal and written language, and a range of broken taboos as an ‘expressive revolution’ (2007: 174–175). Whereas Wouters focuses on behavioural codes and social change, sociologist Norman Fairclough zooms in on language use in order to explain the new and complex social relations in modern society. In his work on discourses and social domains, Fairclough highlights informalisation as a key language change in the public sphere: ‘[t]he engineering of informality, friendship and even intimacy entails a crossing of borders between the public and the private, the commercial and the domestic’ (1996: 7). Fairclough has discussed the strategic function of informality in a variety of contexts, from job advertisements to radio programmes, and in doing so he has highlighted two particular linguistic features: conversationalisation and personalisation. Whereas conversationalisation refers to the adoption of features associated with conversation in the public domain, personalisation designates appeals to a personal relation between producers and receivers. In other words, over time, Fairclough distinguishes a shift from an impersonal and formal public discourse toward a discourse shaped by informalisation. In a Swedish context, scholars have studied informalisation processes in relation to Swedish bureaucracy (Nordin, 1988), language in the public sphere (Svensson, 1993), the rise of critical interviewing of politicians (Esaiasson and Håkansson, 2013), and politicians’ self-representations on social media (Nilsson, 2012). While some research exists on government agencies’ tone in their communication with citizens (Mårtensson, 1988), the phenomenon has mostly been approached from a linguistic angle. The introduction of televised information with a less formal, impersonal form and a more creative, humorous touch can thus be interpreted as a move toward greater informalisation in public information, one which has not been explored in previous research.

Focusing on the aesthetic, narrative and rhetorical strategies invoked, this article contributes a nuanced understanding of the genre conventions of televised information and how this contributed to the informalisation of government agencies’ communication. In previous scholarship, the medium of television has often been contrasted with cinema. Raymond Williams has famously labelled television as an ‘inefficient medium of visual broadcasting’ (1974: 28), whereas Ellis has described television as dialogue-driven and sound-led, appealing primarily to the distracted viewers’ glance (1992: 160). In her book Spectacular Television: Exploring Televisual Pleasure, Helen Wheatley problematises the essentialist divides between television and cinema, highlighting how a range of television genres, from dramas to factual entertainment, attempt to ‘engage and enthrall the viewer’ (2016: 12). When Anslagstavlan was introduced as a means for public information, the medium specificity of television and the affordances of the medium as a means of mass communication was underlined. For example, in the previously mentioned report on Expanded Public Information, the television medium’s high attention value compared to other mass media was highlighted: ‘TV captures the viewers’ attention easily which compensates for its ephemerality. A merry brochure, distributed widely, has a low attention value simply because it is drowned out by other forms of print advertising, which obscures it’ (SOU, 1969: 48). Moreover, the report notes that ‘due to the nature of the television medium’, messages read straight up by a presenter, on matters such as traffic information, the deadline for the declaration of income, or upcoming political elections, have generally been received poorly and are considered dull (1969: 53). For this reason, short spots with public information have been accepted where ‘the message is afforded an appealing form (…) this more attractive form of public information is important from a societal point-of-view’ (1969: 53).

In the forthcoming decades, the television medium offered government agencies a new way of disseminating public information. Meanwhile, informational spots constitute a particular television genre with its own set of conventions. As television scholar Glen Creeber observes, television does not have one essential medium-specific aesthetic style, but rather this style is ‘varied, multifarious and historically situated’ (2013: 3). Many of the narrative and aesthetic features discussed in the analysis, such as humour, informal language, irony and intertextuality, are not specific to the medium of television. However, ideas about television’s medium-specific qualities, particularly its ability to grab attention, paved the way for developing a particular mode of address on Anslagstavlan.

Methodologically, the study relies on close textual analysis. The study focuses on a smaller selection of public information spots from 1972 to 1992. During this period, Anslagstavlan was screened twice per week, with each programme lasting approximately 5 min. Repetition is an important technique in both advertising and government public relations, and for this reason, spots would generally run for a few consecutive weeks. Anslagstavlan has been digitised and is preserved at the National Library of Sweden and was made accessible to the researcher through the cloud repository Box. Notably, the preserved, digitised material has gaps from the period 1972 until 1978, when the legal deposit of audiovisual material to the National Library of Sweden was made mandatory. In total, approximately 180 programmes were viewed, comprising three to five messages from government agencies, that is, approximately 15 h of programming. As Jonathan Bignell argues, a common methodological issue within television studies is the citation of examples from television programmes, since ‘examples are necessarily both representative and also exceptional’ (2006: 31). In this study, a method of selection based on textual characteristics has been chosen, that is, the examples chosen for in-depth analysis were spots with particularly high production value produced in conjunction with prominent and large-scale information campaigns, such as the Energy Conservation Committee’s energy savings campaign during the 1970s, the Swedish Social Insurance Agency’s campaigns on paternal leave during the 1970s and 1980s, and the AIDS Delegation’s campaigns on HIV and AIDS during the 1980s and 1990s. As government agencies invested heavily in media and advertising services during these campaigns, the selected spots can be described as extreme cases and outliers that illustrate the narrative, aesthetic and rhetorical development at the forefront of televised public information. The influential government report Expanded Public Information stressed the importance of giving public information ‘an appealing form’ (1969: 53), and as such, the chosen sample comprises spots with higher production value and greater variation than the average Anslagstavlan spot. A central ambition of this article is to understand how the televised information spots address their spectators. Therefore, the study is chiefly devoted to aesthetic and rhetorical analysis, or what I call the spots’ mode of address.

Objective information as an ideal and a nascent informal tendency

Prior to the establishment of the format Anslagstavlan, SR initiated the Working Committee for Public Information (‘Beredningsgruppen för myndighetsinformation’), a special organisational body dedicated to public information within the public service broadcaster. Strict rules surrounded the programme: only government agencies could commission spots, the information had to be objective and unbiased, and the government agency had to cover all costs involved (Stjernholm, 2022). Meanwhile, most aesthetic and narrative decisions were made in collaboration between the commissioning government agencies and PR-bureaus and advertisement agencies, who were responsible for producing the television spots. Following this, as SR retained power over the final cut, the Working Committee for Public Information had the option to suggest edits or even decide on the exclusion of the spot if it did not adhere to the aforementioned rules. Another important selection criterion was the scope of the campaign, where campaigns of national importance were prioritised.

When surveying the development of Anslagstavlan over the five decades the programme has been broadcast to date, numerous continuities become apparent. First of all, the production of spots for Anslagstavlan has followed a consistent pattern. Government agencies and their information offices or public relations departments act as commissioners of spots, PR-bureaus and freelance film companies handle the actual film production, and television executives and bureaucrats act as gatekeepers and negotiate the content and form. While the Working Committee for Public Information was disbanded in the mid-1990s, a similar production flow remains today. Likewise, from the start to the present day, the format of the programme has been consistent: a colourful cartoon figure and an iconic, simple tune introduce each episode; each spot lasts between 30 s and one minute; and each episode contains between three and five messages from government agencies. Every spot has a clear sender––either a narrator mentions the commissioning government agency or a logo is visible toward the end.

A large majority of the spots on Anslagstavlan are formally simple with low production value, presenting straightforward information in various ways. These types of spots frequently feature voice-of-God-narration or a diegetic narrator presenting scripted, authoritative and factual information coupled with slow pace editing and calm music. A typical example occurs in a segment commissioned by the Energy Conservation Committee (‘Energisparkommittén’) urging Swedish citizens to consume less oil and electricity in the face of the ongoing Oil Crisis (Anslagstavlan TV2, 14 January 1974). A stern narrator provides examples of energy-saving practices such as turning off radiators, using candle lights and rationing the use of home appliances. The moving images serve as illustrations of the spoken message. This stylistic feature is typical of what Bill Nichols labels the expository mode, a supposedly objective mode of address dominating both documentary film and so-called useful cinema during the 1950s and 1960s (1991: 3–4). In Anslagstavlan, segments with this mode of address often revolve around seasonal information: spots on the need to put on winter wheels during the winter; the need to check the quality of the ice during the spring; the importance of wearing life vests when boating in the summer; or the importance of wearing reflective vests during the dark Nordic autumns. Similarly, factual information on upcoming local or national elections, information about taxes, and information about other bureaucratic deadlines tend to have a formal and narrative set-up that is presented by an authoritative voice in a factual, objective manner.

During the first years of Anslagstavlan, the mode of address in audiovisual public information was contested and debated, both internally within SVT and in the public sphere. Seasoned journalists and bureaucrats at the public service broadcaster acted as gatekeepers and were proponents of an objective mode of address, especially voicing their scepticism against public information spots reliant on modern advertising methods and a humorous, exaggerated or emotional tone of voice (Stjernholm, 2022). Meanwhile, government agencies commissioned large and well-established PR-bureaus such as ABC annonsbyrå, Svea annonsbyrå and Gumaelius, as well as freelance filmmakers such as the famous auteur and advertisement filmmaker Roy Andersson (Brodén, 2013), to make audiovisual public information that caught the attention of the citizens and encouraged media engagement. At times, this caused conflict. For example, a spot commissioned by the state-monopoly liquor vendor Systembolaget in 1972, produced by the innovative advertising agency Attlaxera, features two middle-aged men who playfully throw insults at one another about the counterparts’ alcohol consumption habits. The tone of voice in this spot is humorous and light-hearted, sharply contrasting with segments more in line with expository mode. As a consequence, Anslagstavlan turned the spots down, and they were instead distributed in Swedish cinemas (Aftonbladet, 16 April 1972). As noted, spots on Anslagstavlan initially followed a more rigid formula, with appeals to authority through voice-of-God-narration as the prevailing narrative and aesthetic trope.

During the 1950s and 1960s, media pedagogy scholar Kenneth Abrahamsson notes, government agencies’ large-scale campaign efforts centred on steering citizens toward a set goal: improving citizens’ knowledge on certain issues or altering their attitudes or behaviour, often within areas deemed of key importance to society such as traffic information, awareness of social reforms, or information on healthier living (Abrahamsson, 1984: 15). By contrast, the 1970s can be described as a transition period that saw the emergence of a new view on government agencies’ communication. In the public debate, scholars, bureaucrats and public intellectuals criticised one-way public information for being manipulative (Norén, 2020). At the same time, critics called for two-way communication, where increasing activity and problem awareness was the main ambition (as opposed to pre-specified, goal-oriented campaigns of previous years). As Abrahamsson writes: ‘receivers shall react critically, think ahead, seek more information, and discuss the issue with its surrounding’ (1984: 15). This shifting ideal opened up a new style of audiovisual public information with more ambivalent, open-ended campaigns and messages.

Informal language, humour and irony

Previous informalisation research asserts that changes in government agencies’ official language constituted a key informalisation tendency. For example, Eva Mårtensson writes that a complicated authority language, characteristic of the official Swedish used by government and municipal authorities, began to shift around during the 1970s (Mårtensson, 1988: 115). At this time, government agencies increasingly began to address the citizens with the informal ‘You’, as opposed to title and surname, which had been the proper way to address people of equal or higher social status in previous years. In addition, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, archaic and complicated words were phased out of the government agencies’ vocabulary.

While Anslagstavlan featured facts, figures and an authoritative tone of voice also in the late 1970s, spots with a higher production value tended to rely heavily on the attraction of moving images. A particularly noticeable trend is the recurring use of fast-paced animated spots. For example, one animated sequence from the spring of 1978, commissioned by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (‘Försäkringskassan’), swiftly shows a range of work injuries covered by social insurance. The striking visuals are accompanied by sinister-sounding synth music and stern narration, sending a simple, one-note message while encouraging viewers to order a brochure if they require more information (Anslagstavlan, TV1, 1 November 1978). Another example of this trend is an animated spot commissioned by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency in 1979. The spot features a stick figure conducting dramatic music, whereupon a small fly lands on his nose, making him smack himself on the nose with his baton, triggering an angered reaction. Following this, the simple informational message––encapsulated in a short slogan––is delivered by a narrator: ‘Always report changes in income––it is for your own good’ (Anslagstavlan TV1, 21 January 1979). To adapt the style and storytelling of public information to a new medium where facts and figures were less prominent than in text, the messages in these spots were simplified. In general, animations were commonplace in televised public information. Animation scholars have outlined a number of reasons for animation having an important role in commercial advertising in America, such as the animation’s ability to attract and maintain attention and the ease with which it reduces more complex ideas into simple statements (Cook and Thompson, 2019: 8–9). Adding to this, Malcolm Cook and Kirsten Moana Thompson note that ‘The intermediality of animation meant it provided an ideal mechanism for the creation of cross-media advertising campaigns by, for instance, propelling newspaper or poster illustrations into motion’ (2019: 9). The Working Committee for Public Information’s archive at SR holds a wide range of communication plans deposited by PR-firms and government agencies’ information offices in the past five decades, and these plans indicate that the animated figures in Anslagstavlan were also used in other public information material, from brochures to billboards, from keychains to t-shirts.

By refraining from bureaucratic language and instead relying on a lighter tone, Anslagstavlan, as the official voice of the government agencies on air, further contributed to the informalisation trend. The Swedish Social Insurance Agency’s campaign for progressive parental policy from 1978 is an example of public information with informal language. This iconic campaign, featuring the muscular weightlifter Lennart ‘Hoa-Hoa’ Dahlgren on posters around the country carrying a young baby on his arm, served to persuade fathers to take out more paternity leave and be more engaged in family life. Besides print material, a spot was made for Anslagstavlan showing Dahlgren walking with a smile on his face to a day-care centre to pick up his son, whereupon fast-cut scenes show him embarking on an intense wrestling match with a group of overjoyed kids (Anslagstavlan TV2, 26 November 1978). ‘He thinks paternal leave is tough, but also inspiring and fun. He says that a friend today, is a friend tomorrow’. In a close-up, Dahlgren makes funny faces, which the smiling kids go on to imitate. Here, the narrator does not provide any information, but the happiness of both Dahlgren and the kids constitutes the main message. ‘It is cool to split the parental leave’ (‘Det är schysst att dela på föräldraledigheten’), the narration concludes in a casual tone of voice. The choice of wording, using the informal phrase ‘It is cool to’, adds to the impression of a modern, relaxed way of communicating to a younger generation of new parents. Indeed, internal correspondence within the Working Committee for Public Information indicates a weariness toward the informality of this particular phrasing, which the head of the committee, Erik Bagerstam, described as a ‘value judgement’ (SR CK PS/PRS 8 December 1977). Nevertheless, Bagerstam, who had a well-established working relationship with the producer Anders Wickman, approved the segment. Featuring the weightlifter Dahlgren as the poster child of the campaign further served to underline the message that taking care of children was not necessarily a femininely coded activity. Notably, this celebrity advertising campaign was influential, and the spot re-emerged on Anslagstavlan also during the 1980s, albeit with a slightly different narration (Anslagstavlan TV2, 13 April 1985). Moreover, the spot’s reliance on colloquial speech and short sentences contrasts heavily with other official messages packed with written and verbal information, figures and facts.

In combination with informal language, humour becomes a noticeable informalisation strategy in the 1980s. For example, in an animated spot from the summer of 1986, commissioned by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (‘Naturvårdsverket’), a man is seen going to get gas for his car (Anslagstavlan TV2, 16 June 1986). The famous actor, film director, and comedian Hans Alfredson argues wittily for the benefits of unleaded petrol, directly addressing the spectator, starting each sentence with the word You (‘du’). Speaking in Scanian (Skåne) dialect, as opposed to Standard Swedish, Alfredson even uses Scanian jargon (‘fy bläddan’) when describing the levels of led transmission in regular gasoline. In a tongue-in-cheek manner, Alfredson concludes ‘And You (…) It’s also cheaper per litre, you cheap-skate!’ This type of direct address to the spectator, coupled with a humorous mode-of-address, would have been unsuitable in government agencies’ official communication during the 1950s and 1960s, something which Mårtensson hypothesises has to do with ‘the unquestioned position of the state in today’s society’ and ‘that it no longer needs to mark its authority with a language of power’ (1988: 109). Meanwhile, the move toward greater informalisation can also be seen as a class issue. In fact, the strive toward greater informalisation was deeply rooted in Swedish Social Democracy and the ideal of the People’s Home (‘folkhemmet’). Common people should understand rules and regulations and their rights and responsibilities; policy changes such as the You-reform and the introduction of plain talk guidelines for government agencies contributed toward this development.

As pointed out in previous scholarship, informalisation processes tend to have a cyclical character with ‘phases of informalization and reformalization’ (Wouters, 2007: 167). While the long-term trend toward informalisation is evident, Wouters writes, new forms can also be integrated into old traditions (2007: 172). In other words, the informal breaking of norms can also reinforce new standards. If television bureaucrats initially considered some segments relying on modern advertising techniques problematic, which the suppressed information campaign for Systembolaget in 1972 indicates, the programme was an established part of the Swedish popular culture in the 1980s - and informal phrasings such as ‘it is cool to split the parental leave’ were considered less controversial.

Anslagstavlan was now associated with the plethora of official messages delivered over the past 15 years, often enjoying wide circulation when programmed in connection to popular comedies such as Cheers (1982), The Cosby Show (1984) and the daily sports programme Sportspegeln (1961), reaching as many as 1.8 million viewers at its peak and around 350,000 to 700,000 people on average (SVT NO4 TV1 PLAN 13 May 1982). Systematic audience research at the time confirmed the reach of televised information. Beginning in 1974, the Energy Conservation Committee launched one of the largest advertisement campaigns in Swedish history to encourage Swedes to save on electricity. In 1982, the organisation published its final report, in which it summarised the reach of the wide range of public information that it had produced during the duration of the energy-saving campaign (The Energy Conservation Committee, 1982). In total, 55% of all interviewees claimed to have heard about the campaign through the media. Meanwhile, 39% said to have taken part in the campaign through televised information, which is more than any other media. By comparison, 27% of interviewees had taken part in the campaign through newspaper advertisements, 27% through brochures, 17% through posters, 14% via radio, and 5% through exhibitions. In other words, the television spots on Anslagstavlan stood out in comparison to other types of public information.

Televised information during the late 1980s and early 1990s

A keen awareness of stylistic tropes in Anslagstavlan and genre expectations becomes a characteristic feature of televised public information in the mid and late 1980s. Intertextuality has been described as the trademark of postmodernity (Allen, 2011: 176). All sorts of texts, broadly speaking, absorb and transform other texts. Beyond informal language and humour, as discussed above, intertextuality and ironic references to previous Anslagstavlan segments formed a new way to break with established patterns in televised public information. A series of spots co-commissioned by the Swedish Sea Safety Council (‘Sjösäkerhetsrådet’) and Systembolaget, which aired in 1988–1989, highlight this dynamic. In the leading role, the spots feature the famous Swedish actor Lasse Åberg, who created and starred in the films Sällskapsresan (The Package Tour, Lasse Åberg and Peter Hald, 1980) and Sällskapsresan II – Snowroller (The Package Tour 2, Lasse Åberg, 1985), two of the most popular Swedish films of all time (Marklund, 2010: 92). In the spot, Åberg’s style is that of a greaser (‘raggare’), a subculture dominated by young people interested in American cars and music, with characteristic greased-back hair and denim vest (Anslagstavlan TV2, 11 June 1988). A medium shot shows the greaser sitting relaxed in front of his television set when the iconic Anslagstavlan tune suddenly appears. The greaser stands up on his couch and starts to imitate a public information message on the perils of drinking at sea, whereupon Åberg, in a show of physical comedy, falls on the floor, with an accompanying splash sound from the television set. A narrator concludes that seven out of ten drownings at sea occur in calm waters, and six out of ten are under the influence of alcohol. This spot both satirises the established narrative and stylistic formula of Anslagstavlan––relying on a paternalistic voice-of-God-narrator––and replicates it by ending with authoritative facts and figures.

Another spot in the same series takes place in a futuristic setting, where Åberg, wearing a space-inspired costume, takes part in an experiment where a mechanic boat simulates waves at sea, supervised by numerous men in white coats (Anslagstavlan TV2, 30 May 1989). Åberg’s cool apparel contrasts heavily with his public persona and stage personality in the The Package Tour film series, adding a humorous twist to the official message. According to media scholar Einar Korpus, audiences in the late 1980s were living in a society saturated by advertising in different forms, which resulted in PR firms relying more heavily on irony, self-referentiality and wordplay (2008: 49). As Mårtensson has argued, the informalisation tendencies in print public information of the time, such as brochures or newspaper ads, primarily consisted of an increasingly informal language and tone (1988: 115). A conclusion to be drawn from the observations on the Swedish Sea Safety Council and Systembolaget’s campaign, then, is that audiovisual media seems better suited than print media for an ironic and humorous style of government public relations. The spots make use of several signs, such as costume, setting, music, and physical appearance, all to indicate an ironic self-awareness. At the same time, spots such as these with an ironic twist appeared alongside formally simple spots presenting straightforward information, and in that way, they were sure to stand out among the official messages on Anslagstavlan as well as among government agencies’ communication in general.

Humour was not the only strategy that the commissioning government agencies and the producing PR firms utilised to break with the genre conventions of Anslagstavlan. An alternative approach was to use the style and narrative structure of a conventional, low-production value spot while addressing the spectator directly in a personal rather than authoritative fashion. One particularly famous example is a spot made on behalf of the government-initiated AIDS Delegation (‘Aidsdelegationen’), which ran an intense information campaign on the topic between 1985 and 1992, featuring the fashion designer Sighsten Herrgård. In 1987, a year before the spot was shown, Herrgård became the first person in Sweden to publicly announce that he suffered from AIDS (Svenska Dagbladet, 1987). Framed in a medium shot, Herrgård appears as a conventional television announcer (Anslagstavlan TV2, 16 October 1988). However, the delivery of the message contrasts sharply with more straightforward presentations, adding a dramatic twist. Appearing well-dressed in a pin-striped three-piece suit, Herrgård fixates his gaze into the camera and explicitly references the insulting jokes being made about him in schoolyards around the country, so-called ‘Sighsten jokes’. He notes: ‘Have you heard this one, for instance? Do you know why Sighsten always wears such fancy clothes? Well, it is because he is going away soon’, a word-play for passing away in Swedish. ‘We joke about the things we are afraid of’, Herrgård notes, and instead urges the viewer to contact the AIDS hotline for real facts and information. Appearing in the same Anslagstavlan programme was a humorous cartoon on a campaign to get Swedes to stop smoking and a simple informational segment on benefits for people with disabilities. Breaking with the norms of televised information, this bold and dark segment with Herrgård was sure to stand out. As Peter Baldwin notes on the Swedish information campaign on AIDS, ‘educational efforts were heavily targeted at the average person outside the main risk groups’, as opposed to gays, prostitutes and drug addicts, who were mostly affected by the disease (2005: 154). This also holds true for the spots in Anslagstavlan on this topic. Speaking directly to mainstream audiences was a strategy commonly used in the information campaigns not only against HIV/AIDS but also against drug abuse during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Notably, during the beginning of the 1990s, the Swedish welfare state underwent key changes as the country was faced with the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s (Palme, 2002: 329). While the welfare system had expanded substantially during the post-war era, the 1990s became a breaking point when the state began to cut down. This also affected the public sector and the government agencies communication efforts, where rationalisation, expenditure cutting, and outsourcing became common (Larsson, 2005: 114). Meanwhile, commercial television saw a breakthrough in Sweden, ushering the television landscape from an era of scarcity to one of availability. Due to declining viewership rates, the role of public service broadcasting in society became an emerging topic of debate, with critics accusing SVT of commercialisation (Christensen, 2001: 6). While during the 1970s and 1980s, Anslagstavlan was scheduled to maximise the exposure of public information, the growing competition now meant that government agencies had less control over the information flow, leading to shifts in when and where government agencies provided televised information. For example, as the advertising market on commercial television increased, advertisers were solicited from both the private and the public sectors. This development, moreover, had an impact on the form and content of televised information. The advertisement spots aired on the new commercial channels TV3 and TV4, commissioned by government agencies such as The Swedish Social Insurance Agency and The Swedish Tax Agency, were significantly shorter than the spots on Anslagstavlan (usually 20–30 s as opposed to 60 s) and centred on short slogans like the Swedish Social Insurance Agency’s ‘Everyone is insured with us’ and the Swedish Tax Agency’s ‘Relocation notification is free’. In this sense, they were highly inspired by contemporary television advertisement aesthetics.

Conclusions

Public service broadcasters around the world have emerged as the voice of the nation in various ways throughout media history. In the Nordic region, public service broadcasters early on placed great emphasis on information, education and refinement of public taste (Syvertsen et al., 2014: 82–83). Meanwhile, how the state and government agencies address citizens shape the ethos of the Welfare state. This article investigates how public service television and the programme Anslagstavlan contributed to a trend of informalisation in Swedish society. In the advertisement agency Gumaelius’ magazine with the same name, Anders Bauer, a prominent ‘information expert’ who was consulted in Expanded Public Information, argued that public information needed to embrace the methods of modern advertising:

Those who aid people with toothpaste, soft drinks, cigarettes and holidays in Mallorca have adapted to the preconditions of a mass communication society. Through the spoken word, images and other technical media, they get the message across – better than those messages deserve (…) Public information should, like toothpaste, be sold through the methods of the mass communication society (Bauer, 1970).

In this context, television was conceived of as a particularly valuable ‘new media’ that could aid the dissemination of modern public information. At the intersection of television, public information and the advertising industry, Anslagstavlan thus emerged as a catalyst for change in how government agencies addressed citizens, providing fertile ground for stylistic and narrative experimentation with regard to tone and mode of address.

Government agencies’ ambitions to inform the public in new ways often spark controversy. Contemporary debates tend to focus on government agencies’ communication in social media, including recent controversial examples such as governments reaching out to influencers during the Covid-19 pandemic and the self-representation of the Swedish police on Instagram. Historical distance allows us to assess how government agencies once embraced a ‘new media’ - television - and how ideals of style and narrative were negotiated over a longer period of time. This article shows that informalisation increasingly became a key communication strategy for government agencies between the 1970s and the 1990s. Whereas previous research into government agencies’ communication and informalisation processes has primarily focused on language, particularly in print media, little emphasis has been placed on audiovisual media. Meanwhile, this study demonstrates that by embracing formal and narrative strategies from the world of public relations and advertising, televised information contributed to the informalisation of government agencies’ communication in various ways. First of all, televised information relied on simplified messages with fewer facts and figures than in other media, for example, in fast-paced animated spots featuring simple slogans, similar to how commercial businesses use catchy phrases to establish their brands. Moreover, in contrast to official brochures and posters, postmodern humorous features such as irony and intertextuality became an important part of televised information, in a self-referential comment on the conventions of the genre. During the last years in the era of scarcity, as suggested by Ellis, government agencies and the producing PR firms adopted other strategies to break with genre conventions, for example, through a direct mode-of-address in AIDS information campaigns. During the early 1990s, when commercial television was having a major breakthrough, Sweden was undergoing an economic crisis, which also affected the communication budgets of government agencies. Meanwhile, government agencies began advertising on commercial television in shorter, more fast-paced advertising spots, something which indicates that the time when government agencies could steer the information flow to large public service broadcasting audiences had come to an end. In this sense, government agencies continuously reinvent their communication in light of shifting political and media-related conditions – a process that is perhaps even more salient today in the light of political polarisation and a segmented media landscape.

Government agencies’ output on Anslagstavlan, a programme with a broad viewership with great longevity, represents an insight into their communicative strategies. This study invites further research on the role and function of informality in the global history of public information television. Although the history of useful media has received increased attention in the past decade, including useful television, a majority of its vast and rich history awaits further exploration.