Is the University Key to Digital Development? : A study of the role of KTH in the digital development of the Swedish news media industry between 1990 to 2005

Abstract: The digital development of the 1990s and early 2000s had a major effect on the Swedish media industry, including newspapers. Still, it is not clear what role academia had during this process. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to examine the role of the university in the digital development of the Swedish news media industry. To investigate this, a case study has been performed, focusing on the Swedish technical university KTH Royal Institute of Technology. A theoretical background was created, consisting of the three waves of digitalization by Yoo et al. (2010), the emerge of the entrepreneurial university, and the Triple Helix model. Data were collected through archival research consisting of the Swedish magazines Ny Teknik and Pressens Tidning, and semi-structured interviews with seven individuals. The results showed that the digital development of the Swedish news media industry was characterized by the rise of the Internet, which generated both new news channels and contributed to digitally develop the printing industry. The results indicate that KTH’s role in this development was to provide the industry with well-educated engineers as well as innovations through research projects, to help media companies handle the opportunities and the challenges the digital development offered. The results also indicate that KTH in some ways can be compared to an entrepreneurial university, since the university has contributed to economic activities in society. However, most of these activities would not have been possible without the participation of the media industry, demonstrating that the concept of the Triple Helix to some extent also can be applied to this case study.