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Swedish news, week 41 in 2024 (free preview)

Swedish politics and interesting reports of the week
Swedish news, week 41 in 2024 (free preview)

Welcome to this week's incomplete and biased overview of the Swedish news by some immigrant who lives in Norrland.

Politics

Here are the hottest topics as per two podcasts, one from Swedish public service and one from the biggest morning newspaper (SverigesRadio's Det politiska spelet and Dagens Nyheter's Älskade politik, owned by Bonnier):

  • Jimmie Åkesson (leader of the Sverigedemokraterna party) continues to get attention after the head of a motorcycle club was spotted at his wedding. The club is linked to organized crime, and SD has been driving the topic of being hard on organized crime, so this raised a lot of eyebrows. Both podcasts noted that Jimmie admitted this is a potential security risk which was in contrast to his usual tactic (denial and counter-attack). He claims he didn't know that the guest was in an MC club. News outlets report the man was also a guest at previous, smaller events hosted by Åkesson, and that several top names in SD as well as its press department knew about the guest's background but did not notify Jimmie Åkesson about it.
    If you heard jokes about “a man who doesn't know” this week, this is what that's about.
  • Tomatoes and onions were thrown at the newly assigned foreign minister Maria Malmer Stenergard as she was taking part in the parliament debate. The debates are open to the public, but the procedure might now be reviewed.

Reports: Maktbarometern

Medieakademin, a non-profit organisation, has presented the yearly report on institutions and people that have the most influence in Sweden. It's called Maktbarometern (power barometer) and has been published since 2017. Medieakademin also makes Förtroendebarometern (trust barometer), but that's in spring. Looking forward to finding out whether we still trust Systembolaget way more than SJ (69% vs 13%). In the meantime, the fresh Maktbarometern has the following highlights (this is a shortened translation of the Swedish article with some numbers from the .pdf report thrown in):

  • Sverigedemokraterna (SD) is the biggest on social media among the political parties, followed by Socialdemokraterna (S), Moderaterna (M), and Vänsterpartiet (V). Medieakademin sees this reflected in the results of the EU election in June 2024
  • Family Lundell is #5 in the total rating (across all the social media), but their indirect influence is larger
  • Aftonbladet is the biggest on TikTok (and went 56 places down in the Facebook rating). The troll accounts of SD used to be the biggest among political accounts on TikTok until they were forced to close; after that the official SD account has seen growth
  • X (Twitter) is still used by Swedes, but the biggest Swedish creators say they're getting less engagement (40% fewer likes on the tweets of top-500 creators). Also, for the first time ever, more than half of the top-100 accounts are right-wing political actors. #1 in the rating is Hanif Bali
  • Facebook pages have less and less significance, and it's harder and harder to reach out to the public through them. Pictures of animals in need work for non-profit organizations. 20 out of 100 biggest accounts are representatives of political parties
  • YouTube is emphasizing TikTok-like “shorts”, and Medieakademin thinks this makes the older, “traditional” youtubers either lose positions or leave the platform. Joakim Lundell is for the first time out of top-3. Therese Lindgren, Filip Dikmen, and Bianca Ingrosso have left YouTube this year. A new generation raised on TikTok is gaining positions: Daria Garipova, Winsent Thunholm Wikman, SamTheMan
  • On Instagram, there are now (slightly) more men than women among the top-100 creators. Humor grows the most, but also the trend for cleaning and organizing, for example this year's “rocket”, Kevins Kvadratmeter.

Top-10 across all the social media:

  1. Sverigedemokraterna (right-wing political party)
  2. JLC (humor group)
  3. SVT (Swedish television — part of public service)
  4. Aftonbladet (social-democratic tabloid, owned mostly by Schibsted)
  5. Family Lundell (influencers)
  6. TV4 (biggest ad-sponsored TV channel, owned by Bonnier)
  7. IJustWantToBeCool (humor group)
  8. Socialdemokraterna (centre-left political party)
  9. Emil Hansius (influencer)
  10. Expressen (liberal tabloid, owned by Bonnier)

Culture and science

Nobelveckan is exciting news for many outside of Sweden as well. We now know all the winners, and somehow AI just keeps popping up.

A Development Research Conference is coming up, it's going to take place in Lund in a couple of weeks.

DevRes 2024
The Development Research Conference (DevRes) is a bi-annual conference gathering researchers working in fields linked to development and sustainability. The conference in 2024 is hosted by Lund University and this year’s theme is “Reaching the Sustainable Development Goals in a polarized world”.

Other news

Northvolt, the battery maker that's been trying to establish huge factories in Sweden and especially in Norrland, has announced workforce cuts, fired the CEO in Skellefteå, and had its subsidiary file for bankrupcy. A lot of the fired workers are immigrants, so the municipality and other actors are trying to support them with finding new jobs within three months. And there was an interesting AMA with a Northvolt worker on reddit. It paints a slightly different picture than the media, and among other things names these three factors as the main reasons for Northvolt's current problems: (1) battery production is actually complex and on top of that has a long feedback cycle, (2) the top management took the worst parts of the Tesla culture, namely, utterly unrealistic deadlines leading to expensive post-factum fixes, and (3) absolutely unrealistic ambition, trying to do everything at once and be better than the traditional industry on top of that.

The government announces strengthening the support to avhoppare — those who want to leave the criminal life. The government is therefore giving a number of agencies the task of continuing this work with increased focus on children and young people. The results will be reviewed 1st March of 2025, latest.

Members of the Parliament have submitted a total of 3178 independent motions with 11022 requests. This year the period for submitting the motions was from the 10th of September till the 4th of October. Last year we had 2701 motions, and in 2021 — 4149. Just as an example, one of the motions in the previous years had a name “Tänderna är en del av kroppen” (the teeth are a part of the body), and proposed to treat the dental care as all the other medical care, since problems with teeth can lead to other serious health problems.

Good local news

The teens driving slow-moving vehicles are wearing seatbelts more often since the rules got harder, and there's been fewer accidents involving those vehicles (a-traktorer). I'll make a post about them one day, and the raggare culture, it's amazing.

A bit of randomness

Winter is coming, and here's a nice list of most common Swedish birds you get to see during the winter half-year. It's just the (Swedish) names of the birds and very good pictures of them, here's an example (by Daniel Pettersson). No affiliation with Natursidan.

Rödvingetrast (photo: Daniel Pettersson)