Media Management During COVID-19: Behavior of Swedish Media Leaders in Times of Crisis

Abstract

In contrast to the majority of European countries, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Swedish authorities did not put the country in lockdown, but mainly presented relatively mild recommendations to work from home and not gather in groups of over 50 persons. Thus, much of the decision-making and restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus had to occur at the organizational level, i.e., within companies. This paper reports the findings from an online survey carried out in June–September 2020 (n = 196), in which Swedish media managers were asked to focus on perceived media leadership during the COVID-19 crisis. The results indicate that Swedish media managers acted with confidence in their remote leadership and engaged in crisis management leader tasks in line with previous crisis management research. While managers learned to appreciate remote work, they stressed the difficulty of being an inspiring leader in a remote setting and the challenge of motivating creativity, one of the most important components in managing journalism and media work.