Mellan siffror och politik: riksskogstaxeringen i svensk dagspress, 1923-2022

The contemporary forest debate in the mass media focuses on quantitative issues, such as whether intensified forestry increases or reduces the amount of carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere. The aim of the present popular scientific report is to provide a historical background for this debate. This aim is fulfilled through an overarching investigation of how the Swedish National Forest Inventory—a statistical institution—has been referred to in Swedish newspapers during the years 1923 to 2020, i.e., the period when the Forest Inventory has been operative. Focus is directed at the newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. The report explores the newspapers’ writings about the Swedish National Forest Inventory using the dynamics between quantitative facts and political currents, or numbers and politics. First, facts produced by the Forest Inventory seem to have played a significant role for the newspapers’ coverage of the forest debate throughout the entire period. It is possible, however, that a minor departure from the trend occurred right after the turn of the millennium. Second, the very relation between numbers and politics seems to have changed during the period. From the 1920s to the early 1970s, the newspapers brought up Forest Inventory statistics primarily in the political contexts of business and economics. The statistics were, moreover, seldom contrasted with other numbers or subject to critical discussions. Moreover, new statistics were repeatedly presented as big news. From the 1970s, forest politics and the forest debate was widened to include environmental issues as well, which affected the way the Forest Inventory was portrayed by the newspapers. Now, the Forest Inventory statistics were repeatedly lifted into environmental political contexts alongside business and economical ones. Furthermore, the statistics were contrasted with facts about the forest produced by other institutions. Moreover, during the latter period, the newspapers only seldom treated the statistics as news in their own right. Instead, they were used to create fact boxes, produce diagrams, or support different statements about the forest.