Conflictual Diversity and Contested Cultural Heritage: Newspaper Coverage of Religion in Norway 1938–2018

Abstract

The visibility and diversity of religion in selected Norwegian newspapers published in the capital of Oslo is studied in a quantitativeanalysis at ten-year intervals from 1938 to 2018, with an emphasis onthe last forty years. Recent structural transformations in the newspaper industry and editorial choices cut the number of articles on religionconsiderably in 2018 compared to earlier years. However, the relativevisibility of religion in the share of the total editorial output is fairlystable, at about 1.5 per cent of the content. Rather, the changes havebeen with the diversity and criticism of religion. The representationof Islam has strongly increased, while the newspapers have playeddown the coverage of the Lutheran majority church. The conflictualdiversity and contested cultural heritage in the newspaper material arepartly shaped by the media dynamics in the mediatization of religion.