Even if most of us aspire reflection (for instance relating recent experiences to earlier ones in order to produce more complex thoughts), we sometimes get stuck in old discourses giving us the wrong food for thoughts. Strategies, questions, are being formulated and framed on the basis of this misleading (maybe obsolete) knowledge.

I have recently been doing fieldwork to understand why people’s behaviors are in disagreement with their answers on questionnaires. It´s much more complicated than stating that the wrong questions are being asked. It’s about scrutinizing discourses that formulated the questionnaire in relation to what truly is regarded as meaningful issues today.

No young informant uses the word entertainment when speaking of or describing media. For example, while Omar, 16, likes being entertained by sitcoms, advertising, and music, he never counts media as entertainment. Media is either information or advertising, not “entertainment”. Is it the new definition of “media”? Should all media be informative, either as advertising (informing/selling) or information (informing/spreading reality,) and at the same time being entertaining to on the whole even be able to sort into the category media? Literature is information, media is information, news is information, advertising is information, and entertainment is information. Everything has to be entertaining, that’s the norm.

Entertainment has started to consume domestic and public spaces. It has been so integrated in everyday life so it’s hard to actually separate it. The new expectations to be involved, to produce, to be active has changed the perception of entertainment. Today almost anyone can participate in the entertainment industry. New technologies allow consumers to master the codes of cultural production.

Anyone else who had tears in their eyes when Uppdrag granskning showed a family of nine living in a two bedroom apartment in Malmö full of cockroaches? A lot of people have difficult lives but in most countries there is an awareness of this. But in Sweden, people just won’t believe it’s true unless it happened to them. Of course it’s sad to see a kid doing homework at the balcony cause it’s the only cockroach-free area in the apartment. But it is even more depressing to observe the blank faces of building owners, politicians, social workers, and so on, saying: “I just can’t believe this is happening in Sweden”. It’s happening in Sweden! It reminds me of the other day when a white lady (sorry for the expression, I just don’t know how else to put it) self assured told me (me, being the black lady) that she certainly never heard anyone say “nigger” so I was wrong saying that racisme exsist in Sweden (I think I even claimed that it was extensively). Just because it didn’t happen to you (white lady) doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

Spending time with informants is such a privilege. Not only do they welcome me into their private lives, they allow me to explore their personal world – an amazing source of information on human behavior. That’s way the ethnographic method is so central for in-depth understanding of people.

The other day I was doing fieldwork with a truck driver. As we were driving and exploring feelings of security on the road she said:

If I feel unsafe I try to ground myself. It’s sort of a meditation act. It’s not that I’m religious but I ask the higher power or… being for help. I notify that I’m in need of assistance. Then I send… chains down through my driving seat, through the truck, through the asphalt, down and down. And that’s how I ground myself. Chains are good, that’s strong stuff, but I actually use spider web a lot. Lots and lots of spider web.

Rashid 17 years
Sometimes reads the local newspapers and enjoys Nacka/Värmdöposten (local newspaper). Likes punkt SE (free newspaper) for the small format but also because it is the newest newspaper he knows of. New things are exciting. Reads aftonbladet.se regularly and believes it has everything: updated news, large text, and competitions. Rashid is an active member of Playahead, Facebook, and Whoa (online community). He chats regularly on his mobile phone and on Messenger. Knowledge is savviness. Savviness is gained through constant contact with internet newspapers, communities, and blogs, something that is a part of youth. He asks the question: “How will I have the time to have this savviness when I’m grown up?”

Filip 17 years
Once in a while Filip will browse GD (Gefle Dagblad, daily local newspaper) which his parents subscribe to. But that is only if he is bored and has absolutely nothing else to do, for example watch TV, send text messages, or read a sports magazine. The sports section is the best part of GD. His parents often buy both Aftonbladet and Expressen (daily evening newspapers) on their way home from work, and Filip finds these much more interesting. To “get a little broad knowledge” Filip surfs to susning.se. “There you can enter just about anything and get some facts, it’s usually fun”. Music is very important and Filip downloads lots of songs from the Internet, but he always buys the CDs of those artists he likes, “it would, like, feel wrong to have a burned Uggla (Swedish artist) album, it’s important to have the original CD.”