Public goods and private property : A waltz between Big Tech and the Nordic welfare states

The Internet’s evolution into a critical societal infrastructure has reconfigured the material conditions for communication and led to the emergence of a wide range of new media and communication platforms. Yet, media system analyses continue to focus on legacy media institutions rather than on the broader digital ecosystem that these are embedded in and increasingly come to rely on. In this chapter, we suggest a new path for analyses of the power structures and dynamics that shape contemporary digital communication environments. Foregrounding the material resources that enable and constrain Internet-based communication, we explore how digital infrastructures are organised and controlled in the four largest Nordic countries. We thereby provide an alternative basis for discussing the mutual influence of the welfare state and the increasingly globalised and commercial communication system, and we conclude that the four media welfare state pillars suggested by Syvertsen and colleagues are theoretical ideals rather than empirical realities.