Entering national ideological horizons through Swedish media

The proposed paper examines how various Swedish media like television, teletext, radio and newspapers were used among migrants as a means to be informed about the Swedish society as well as a means to actually learn the Swedish language. Central concepts are national ideological horizons related to issues concerning citizenship and participation. The discussion is based on data collected in a project, in which in-depth interviews with migrant families (children and their parents) from countries in South Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia were carried out. A major finding was that the families when they were newly arrived relied heavily on mediated experiences. The media played a role of conveying knowledge about the new society and to learn the Swedish language through for example children’s programs. In families where the parents had limited knowledge of Swedish the children even sometimes got the role of translating news for their parents. Also the importance of personal networks was mentioned as a way of being informed about national as well as local matters. The chapter will frame this type of findings into a discussion on the relation between national ideological horizons of e.g. “Swedishness” and issues of identity, citizenship and participation.Artikel abstract har genomgått reviewprocessMedia Practices in the New Countr