Opinionen i pressen under kommunsammanläggningen 1968-1974 : Medias rapportering om lokala motsättningar emellan centrum och periferi under kommunblocksreformen i Årjängs kommunblock.

Sammanfattning: The government has in several steps decided about municipal mergers during the 20thcentury. In many places the mergers provided the basis for a local conflict. This conflict wasnot always easy to resolve and lives in many places remain in today's municipal issues. Amulti-tiered municipality tends to create local contradictions between what constitutes thecentral core and the other locality or territories in the municipal territory, it looks like they arein the municipality's periphery. The municipal reforms that were implemented tended tocreate conflicts of softer values, the sense of belonging within the municipality and what isreferred to as local identity is a sensitive issue when the independence of a small municipalityis absorbed by another, often bigger, municipal unit which in short term reduced the civicinfluence.Municipal mergers or similar mergers of legally governing territory have been conducted inmany European countries and, above all, municipal mergers have been conducted in theNordic countries which has had similar structures. The results vary, as does the population'sview of these reforms. The municipal merges that have been done had been a consequence ofurbanization and a tool to ensure the legal security and taxation of the state. Decisions on themergers were made in various referral bodies and were based on demographic conditions andforecasts. The soft values that the citizens felt before a merger were resolved at the local levelin the municipal.The press provided a platform and a forum where discussion could take place in the form ofsubmitter columns and interviews. Local rulers and opinion leaders used this channel toinfluence and urge the public to take a stand on important local issues. How frequent was thepublication about the municipal assembly and what views were expressed in block 10,Årjäng? In this study, I have analyzed the magazines' notices regarding the municipalassembly in the selected geographical area. I have reviewed the reports that were published innational and local press to find out what came to the public´s notice, as well as how opinionleaders expressed themselves during the municipal block reform. As expected, the localnewspaper contributed more opinions in the form of submissions and more news articles thanthe national newspapers.The purpose of the text and media analysis was to find out who wrote, for example, asubmitter and partly what the writer wanted to convey or form opinion on. In my work, Ihave used the receiver-oriented strategy as a tool for analyzing the press's published newsreporting and opinion columns. The strategy is based on three components that must be takeninto account when analyzing a text - Who deals with the text, what aspects should be studiedand addressees as actors in specific positions. The study of the text and the content of thenewspapers gave an insight into what caught the interest of the inhabitants and what thepublic considered important in the municipal assembly. For this specific study, the surveymaterial is limited to focus only on the municipalities within the municipal block of Årjäng.