Fredrik Stiernstedt
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Fredrik Stiernstedt currently serves as Head of School at the School for Culture and Education at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. He is Professor of Media and Communication Studies and an internationally recognized scholar of media, democracy, and digital transformation. His research explores how digitalization, platformization, and artificial intelligence reshape conditions for welfare, democratic communication, and for citizens’ trust in knowledge institutions.
Stiernstedt has led major collaborative projects on media trust, media capture, and the transformation of public service media, contributing both conceptual innovation and empirically grounded insight to debates digitalization, welfare, AI and democracy. His work bridges media studies, political communication, and critical AI research, combining qualitative inquiry with comparative and policy-oriented analysis. He is widely engaged with policy, industry, and public stakeholders, translating research into societal impact.
In Septembre 2026, Fredrik Stiernstedt joins the Paris IAS for a ten-month research stay where he holds the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Research Chair. This Swedish foundation supports research in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Research topics
Medias, Digitalization; Artificial Intelligence (AI); (Media) Welfare; Trust; Distrust.
Data Welfare and Digital Vulnerabilities – Conceptual Development for the Public Good
The project explores how the growing use of digital technologies—especially artificial intelligence and automated decision systems—is transforming welfare services and reshaping relations between states and citizens. While such technologies promise efficiency and better services, they may also introduce new forms of risk, inequality, and loss of trust. The research focuses on two emerging ideas: “data welfare,” describing welfare systems driven by data and algorithms, and “digital vulnerability,” referring to harms that arise from dependence on digital infrastructures.
To advance understanding, he develops clear definitions and an integrative theoretical model that connects fragmented research across social sciences, humanities, and technical fields. The work systematically maps existing theories, identifies shared assumptions, and synthesizes them into concepts that can be studied empirically across sectors such as health, education, and social services.
By clarifying how digital welfare systems affect rights, participation, and inclusion, the project provides tools for future interdisciplinary research and evidence-based policymaking. Its results will support the design of digital welfare systems that strengthen democratic values while reducing emerging vulnerabilities.
Key publications
Jakobsson, P., Lindell, J. & Stiernstedt, F. (2024) The Future of the Nordic Media Model: A Digital Media Welfare State? Gothenburg: Nordicom.
DOI: 10.48335/9789188855893-i
Kaun, A. & Stiernstedt, F (2023) Prison Media. Incarceration and the Infrastructures of Work and Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
DOI: 10.21428/cb6ab371.62543289
Jakobsson, P., Lindell, J. & Stiernstedt, F. (2021). A Neoliberal Media Welfare State? The Swedish Media System in Transformation. Javnost – The Public, 28(4), 375-390.
DOI: 10.1080/13183222.2021.1969506
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