The Nordic media welfare state and the challenge of imagining livable futures: Keynote speech, NordMedia2025, Odense, Denmark, 13–15 August (revised and edited)

Abstract The scholarly debate about a Nordic media system received a major impetus with the publication of the The Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Digital Age by Trine Syvertsen, Gunn Enli, Ole J. Mjøs, and Hallvard Moe in 2014. Ten years later in 2024, discussions continued in The Future of the Nordic Media Model: A Digital Media Welfare State? edited by Peter Jakobsson, Johan Lindell, and Fredrik Stiernstedt. A key concern across these debates has been whether and to what extent the media systems in the Nordic countries actually do form a common “Nordic media system”, and whether this media system is somehow better than other media systems at equipping Nordic citizens with democratic prerequisites. My article outlines the key positions in these debates about the continued role and relevance of the Nordic media welfare state, mainly in the area of news provision, based in part on recent research that explores this issue from an audience perspective (Schrøder et al., 2020, 2024). In the article, I tentatively explore how Nordic news media are presenting climate challenges and thereby equipping us as Nordic citizens for imagining livable futures.