In 2018, Svenska Dagbladet’s daily essay-page “Under strecket” celebrated 100 years. It is a unique forum for qualified knowledge dissemination aimed at a broader audience. For this reason, we took the opportunity to deepen the understanding of this platform for communication and show how “Under strecket” could be used as digital resource in today’s media landscape.

The project comprised three interlinked purposes

1. We have digitized and made available about 350 specially selected essays from the last 100 years. The ambition has been to digitize articles of a particular historical interest, by renowned writers and/or texts who deal with important historical events and which represent the various subject areas that have been dominant over the years – from culture, literature and history to science, technology and politics.

2. In 2018, we turned to a number of researchers and writers and asked them to analyze how different subjects have been depicted in the daily essays throughout history. They discussed their findings in articles that we published just as daily essays in Svenska Dagbladet in 2018. Although these were limited research tasks, these so-called “meta essays” contributed to the knowledge of “Under strecket” and its place in the cultural and media history increased considerably. At the same time, these articles cast light on how communication of knowledge in the public domain has been developed.

3. In order to broaden the discussion, we also organized three physical gatherings in 2018. In all three cases, these were events where we let researchers and writers together with an interested audience.

On the whole, we are satisfied with the outcome of the communication project. Within its framework, the knowledge of “Under strecket” as an arena of knowledge has increased, both in the past and in the present. At the same time, we made available a large number of historical articles that will also be freely available via SvD’s website.