Entangled television histories. Media networks and programme exchange between the GDR and Sweden

This project is a contribution to the emerging research field on the history of transnational television in Cold War Europe. Its aim is to investigate the contacts, agency networks and programme exchange between the GDR and Sweden from the late 1960s until the reunification of Germany in 1990.

This project is a contribution to the emerging research field on the history of transnational television in Cold War Europe. Its aim is to investigate the contacts, agency networks and programme exchange between the GDR and Sweden from the late 1960s until the reunification of Germany in 1990.

Central to the study is the concept of entangled history, which is combined with a social network approach in order to highlight the role of individual actors in processes of cross-border cultural exchange. Guiding questions concern not only who, when and which programmes were in transfer, but the project s objective is also to analyse the circumstances, channels and practices of transnational communication in Cold War Europe. What were the cultural obstacles and the common ground for a proclaimed neutral state looking to a communist state in the exchange of television programmes and formats? What cultural and communicative patterns were produced in the process?

While the project centres on east-west (or, more precisely, east-neutral) circulation of people, concepts and products, it challenges the traditional idea of the Cold War period as purely a matter of division, isolation and containment. Placing itself research field of the cultural history of the Cold War, and combining this with the much less investigated aspects of transnational television, the project contributes to a more specific and empirically grounded understanding of the postwar connected history of Europe.