“Legal interference in public discourse, specifically in journalistic reporting, can decrease freedom of speech generally, and is often associated with disrupting the free marketplace of ideas (Mill, 1859). With increasing regularity, court proceedings are used to limit or challenge this exercise. SLAPPs are complex mechanisms of oppression with multiple actors, which express known and hidden power dynamics both in the text of the law and in court processes. We analyze three case studies using Situational Analysis. … [T]he original stor[ies] [were] no longer the focus of media attention and debate. Instead discursive topics centered on the plaintiffs’ ‘victimhood.’”

Amanda Gentz, Svea Vikander, Victor Vicente, Write or Fight: SLAPPs Against Journalists in Brazil, the United States, and Spain. Sur le journalisme, About journalism, Sobre jornalismo 13(1) 2024

June 2021: MA Thesis at Sámi Allaskuvla in Guovdageaidnu, Sápmi/Arctic Norway. Journalism and Indigenous Studies. Click here for presentation.

Findings:

• Five out of six female Sámi journalists interviewed have experienced some form of sexual harassment at work.

• Two out of three male Sámi journalists interviewed had observed the harassment of or discrimination against a female employee in journalism.

• Sámi news reporting in Ávvir, Ságat, and NRK Sápmi avoids victim blaming but prefers to interview experts, speaking of abuse in the hypothetical instead of reporting on specific incidents.

• Journalists face multiple challenges in reporting on sexual violence in Sámi communities, including:

  • social norms of non-disclosure (aka “Culture of Silence”)

  • small communities

  • feeling uncomfortable when work gets too close to home

  • rumours

  • conflicts of interest

Covered by Sámi journalist Iselin Skum in Ávvir. “Sámi female journalists suffer sexual abuse/harassment at work and are afraid to report about [sexual abuse] cases.”

“Obstetric and early childhood care is no longer a setting in which the ‘doctor knows best’ but a flashpoint of new and overlapping rhetorics. The placenta, once considered medical waste, is reappropriated by alternative health practitioners and mothers seeking a ‘natural’ treatment for postpartum depression. Continuing a very young tradition of placentophagy, these practitioners have adopted the second wave feminist rhetoric of the natural earth mother — but dress it in the biomedical language of hormones, disorders, and pills. The result is a changeling, an uncannily convincing union of language. Each rhetoric derives power and validity from the other, their mutual contradictions forgotten or smoothed over.”

Vikander, S. (2024). Rituals of the afterbirth: Postmodern and biomedical health models in placentophagy. In C. G. Dopfel (Ed.), Maternal materialities: Objects, rituals and material evidence of medieval and early modern childbirth (pp. 339-351). Brepols. https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503605739-1

Enveloping and Tethering:
The Cloth-Mother Metaphoric

September 2015: MA Thesis at Goddard College, Vermont. Clinical Mental Health Counseling (click to open in new tab)

Mothering ideologies convey the idea that mothers should be the sole caregivers of their children. In these mental frameworks, infants are chaotic and vulnerable and mothers are morally bound to contain and protect them. The metaphor of the mother as provider of a warm, sheltering space is common to Christian religious traditions and to twentieth century attachment theory. The author proposes that this perception of 'mother- as-envelope' is an instantiation of an underlying metaphor in which the qualities of cloth, such as warmth, flexibility, softness, and facelessness, are considered the qualities of ideal mothering. The author reviews psychoanalytic, feminist, and fictional literatures that perpetuate and critique this metaphorical equation. Through a psychoanalytically- informed framework of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, three Renaissance paintings of the Madonna-Child dyad are analyzed. Cloth is found to be a metaphor for containment, devotion, and breast milk in these images. Ettinger's (2004, 2006) concept of woven matrixial space and Barthes' (2010) punctum are considered in tandem, as the author identifies areas of punctum in the Renaissance images and discusses their relationship to her own experiences as a mother and to modern-day mothering ideologies.

Keywords: discourse analysis, psychoanalysis, mothering ideologies, cloth, attachment theory

Research cv

Cultural Studies

Kabazira, C., Vikander, S., & Volclair, R. (2024, November 1). The psychological impact of reporting on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Uganda Paper presented at the 10th(!) International Conference on the Safety of Journalists, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway.

Gentz, A., Vikander, S., & Vicente, V. (2024). Write or Fight: SLAPPs Against Journalists in Brazil, the United States, and Spain. Sur le journalisme, About journalism, Sobre jornalismo, 13(1). https://revue.surlejournalisme.com/slj/article/view/523/537

Note: SLAPPs stands for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.

Krøvel, R. (Lead Organizer), & Vikander, S. (Co-Organizer). (2023, December 18–19). Expanding AI & journalism network and collaboration [Consortium in support of EU Horizon application]. Oslo, Norway.

Getz, A., Vikander, S., & Vicente, V. (2023, July). Write or Fight: SLAPPs against journalists in Brazil, the United States, and Spain. Paper presented at the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Conference, Lyon, France.

Boyda, K., Kasahara, Y., Maynard, M., Palumbo, E., Posetti, J., Vikander, S., & Yazidi, S. (2022, November 2). Digital security for investigative journalists [Panel discussion]. Safety of Journalists Conference, Oslo, Norway. Discussion included Boyda and Vikander’s proposal Det haster: A machine learning analysis of hateful comments toward journalists.

Vikander, S. (Moderator). (2022, November 1). Proxy server: Digital security mediated by cultural forces [Paper session]. Safety of Journalists Conference, Oslo, Norway. Presenters: K. Urbanikova, M. Nevradakis, & A. Kasyanenko.

Skogerbø, E., Sunna, A., & Vikander, S. (2021, October) in M. Berg-Nordlie (Chair), Sami journalism, urgent issues. Panel discussion at the Seventh International Conference on the Safety of Journalists, OsloMet University.

Vikander, S. He gave up eventually (but I didn’t): Sámi Journalists on their Experiences Covering Sexual Violence in Sámi Media. (2021, September). Presentation at the Sámi Media Festival, Guovdageaidnu, Norway.

Vikander, S. Sámi journalists' experiences and strategies in covering sexual violence, MA thesis, Sámi Allaskuvla, Guovdageaidnu.

Vikander, S. in Costanza, D. Ed. Placenta, Encapsulated: Postmodern and Biomedical Health Models in Present-Day Placentophagy. Pregnancy and Childbirth: History, Medicine, and Anthropology. St. Mary’s College, June 2018. *Recently acquired by Brepols for peer-reviewed publication in 2023.

Vikander, S. (2015) Enveloping and Tethering: The Cloth-Mother Metaphoric, MA thesis, Goddard College, Vermont.

Vikander, S. (2011). Life Lines. Convergence: A journal of undergraduate and community research, 1, 57-59.

Vikander, S. (2010, February). In S. Sadhwani (Chair). Life Lines: Rupture and healing in the personal and social body. Paper presented at Bodies and Sociohistories colloquium, Goldsmiths University.

Lebedinskaia, N., Mahon, M., & Vikander, S. (2010, February). In P. Burtt (Chair). With information-technological...perceptions of the physicalised body have changed. How has this affected...contemporary culture? Panel discussion at Bodies and Sociohistories colloquium, Goldsmiths University.

Vikander, S. (2010, March). Life Lines. Poster presentation at Study in Action, Concordia University.

Vikander, S. (2009, March). In S. Jensen (Chair). Life Lines: Qualitative study of scars and stories. Paper presented at Spaces/Espaces, Sociology and Anthropology Graduate Students Association conference, Concordia University.

Vikander, S. (2006, May). In S. West (Chair). Life Lines: Scars and inscriptions. Paper presented at Inscribing the Body seminar, Bodies of Knowledge Graduate student research conference, University of Toronto.

Psychology

Vikander, S. (2024, April). Advancements in Psychological Research: A Global Perspective [Online Lecture]. European University of Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia.

Vikander, S. (2024, March). Collaborating for Academic Publishing: Propelling Your Career with International Partnerships [Presentation]. European University of Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia.

• Research assistant at Joan Grusec’s Social Development lab, University of Toronto (2002 - 2006).

• Designed and conducted narrative and questionnaire study of over 100 participants’ experiences of being taught a moral lesson by their parents.

Downey, M.M.D. & Vikander, S. (2016, March) An Introduction to Non-Attached to Outcome Motivational Interviewing. Bay Area Doula Project, Oakland, California.

Vikander, S. (2013) Why Should I Write My Birth Story? And Why Don’t You Write Your Birth Story? Birth Without Fear blog, Austin, Texas. A thematic coding and analysis of over 25 narratives about the psychological mechanics of birth story writing