Emerging with the Second World War, and taking its modern form in the 1970s with Olof Palme, the government press conference has today become an almost daily event in Sweden with frequent informal and impromptu meetings between the assembled press and the prime minister. The history of this phenomenon reveals a development from respectful off-the-record sessions to direct webcasted conferences with PR-minded, policy-selling politicians as well as, at least sometimes, journalists eager to inquire into problematic issues. The initial stage, during the war, was very intense, as Stockholm became a gathering point for international war correspondents. This study, grounded in multidisciplinary relational conceptualizations and using a multidimensional methodology, aims to tell the story of the development of governmental press conferences in Sweden.
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