Autonoma krafter och anpassade människor: diskursiv makt inom svensk IT-politik

Abstract

Autonomous forces and adapted subjects: discursive power in swedish it-policy. The objective behind this article is to study the proliferation of the politics of information technology in Sweden in the years of 1994-2003 based on a discourse analysis. The article argues that the Swedish IT-political discourse is characterised by a guiding rule according to which there exist an autonomous and inevitable historical path towards the ‘information society’. Swedish citizens are defined as dependent subjects, without any means to influence the advent of this new society. Instead they have to comply with new requirements in terms of swift social adaption and life-long learning. In addition, the IT-political discourse is distinguished by nationalist optimism, as well as democratic ambitions. This also gives rise to peculiar contradictions within the discourse, for instance in the educational arena where there is a clash between individualist pedagogical doctrines and collective compliance to the information society. The author concludes that Swedish IT politics have hitherto mainly focused on affecting definitions and perceptions through the persuasive use of a model of steering which the author labels ‘visionary governance’, i e the establishment of an authoritative definition of the future by certain experts or ‘visionaries’. Discursive power within such a model consists in making all actors addressing the political issue unanimously.