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How newspapers became a political tool

With the constitution came freedom of the press, and with freedom of the press came a steady stream of new newspapers.

The Newspaper Angels: Party agitation was regarded as a political malpractice throughout much of the 19th century. The aversion to party-affiliated press and agitation in the press is reflected in this caricature from the satirical magazine Söndags-Nisse from 1872.

(Image: Used with permission from the Royal Library)

Atle Christiansen Atle Christiansen Communications adviser

Presented by: Presented by: University of Agder

Published 5 July 2026 - 00:01

There was a flood of new newspapers, a newspaper reported in the early 1800s.

The fact that they described this growth as a ‘flood’ emphasised that there was something uncertain about these new publications.

What did they actually want?

“They wanted power. The social role of the press was, at that time, highly unclear. The newspapers were working to find their role and define their mission. But there's no doubt that the editors of these newspapers were seeking political influence,” says Niri Ragnvald Johnsen.

Portrait photo — Niri Ragnvald Johnsen shows how the press in Sweden and Norway gained political power in the early 19th century.

They wrote almost exclusively about the press

Johnsen has researched how political groups in Sweden and Norway worked in the first half of the 19th century to influence social development.

An issue of a newspaper at that time might be only four pages long. It was often filled from beginning to end with philosophical reflections on the mission of the press, he explains.

"To put it rather pointedly, you could say that as a journalist in the early 1800s, you wrote almost exclusively about the press,” says Johnsen.

What we today call newspapers were often referred to back then as ‘blads’ or ‘periodical publications.’

The constitution and freedom of the press

The main reason for the growth of new newspapers was the introduction of the constitutions in Sweden in 1809 and Norway in 1814.

"With the constitutions came new laws on freedom of the press in both countries. Freedom of the press paved the way for the emergence of a new public sphere, with newspapers that could discuss politics and society," says Johnsen.

He has mainly studied two press circles: the bourgeois opposition newspapers of the 1810s and 1820s, and the radical labour newspapers of around 1848.

These circles existed in both Sweden and Norway.

Photo of newspaper clipping — The Trumpet: Trompeten was one of several political newspapers edited by the Swedish pressman Carl August Grevesmöhlen. In 1816, he was convicted of defamatory statements and exiled.

Journalists defined society

Nowadays, political advisers and other communications professionals know how important it is to frame public debate using words and phrases that allow their perspective on an issue to prevail.

Journalists in the 19th century understood this as well.

Johnsen points out, for example, how controversial terms such as ‘opposition’ and ‘party press’ were redefined and gradually took on new meanings.

Over time, they were transformed into neutral, and eventually positively charged, concepts. This occurred as opposition and party organisation became more widely accepted as political practices.

“Through language, various circumstances were defined, and in this way, politics and society were shaped by these linguistic formulations. At the same time, these linguistic formulations were shaped by the social conditions of the time,” says Johnsen.

New words for a new era

In his research, he demonstrates how concepts such as ‘public opinion,’ ‘the will of the people,’ ‘opposition,’ and ‘the fourth estate’ came into widespread use and became linked to the social role of the press during the period 1809–1848.

At the same time, he demonstrates how ideas and concepts relating to the press were imported and exchanged between countries in Europe and Scandinavia.

The history of the press has traditionally been very narrowly defined in national terms, but Johnsen has deliberately sought out contacts and influences across national borders.

New ideas came just as often from France as from Great Britain. This is a new finding in Johnsen's study.

“Overall, the study provides insight into the origins of our contemporary notions of the political role of the press,” says Johnsen.

Newspaper clipping — Around 1848, a radical workers’ press emerged that sought to represent the people. A caricature of the workers’ newspaper Söndagsbladet and its readers, as depicted in the contemporary magazine Synglaset in 1849.

A period of transition

In the period following the adoption of the constitutions, the idea of the nation was strong. But as the 19th century progressed, there was a growing recognition that different groups in society had different interests.

The early 1800s were characterised by the ideal that political debate should be unified, objective, and rational.

"But gradually, people had to come to terms with the fact that politics had become, and perhaps had always been, a struggle of interests between different groups such as farmers, workers, and civil servants,” says Johnsen.

As a result, the 1880s saw the emergence of the first political parties in Sweden and Norway, and with them a dedicated party press.

This would have been almost entirely unthinkable just fifty years earlier.

Timeless questions about the role of the press

The debates about the social mission of the press at the time also raised questions that still resonate today.

How should people navigate an ever-growing multitude of publications and voices? Can the media be trusted? Do they contribute to social enlightenment, or do they undermine society?

Johnsen points out that there are still countless newspapers and periodicals from the early 1800s that have barely been studied by historians.

Whilst working on the study, he himself discovered several previously unknown and little-researched newspapers, periodicals, and letters.

“Key concepts in our political vocabulary remain understudied. This applies to key terms such as ‘democracy,’ ‘the people,’ and not least ‘politics’,” says Johnsen, who is now a researcher at the University of Southern Denmark.

Reference:

Johnsen, N.R. Meningsbærerne. Pressemakt og politisk innflytelse i Sverige og Norge, ca 1809-1848 (Opinion makers. Press power and political influence in Sweden and Norway, c. 1809-1848), Doctoral thesis at the University of Agder, 2026

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Read the Norwegian version of this article at forskning.no