EN PUDEL ÄR INGEN HUND!!

Tidningen OSA som social arena

Författare

• Kristina Öhman Göteborgs universitet

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37447/bk.143374

Nyckelord:

Publishing, Media, Pop culture, Youth culture, Insändare, Ungdomskultur, Popkultur

Abstract

In 1992, the Swedish Postal Service launched OSA, a free paper aimed at tweens and teens. OSA was distributed in locations frequently attended by teens, such as high schools and youth clothing stores, and consisted almost exclusively of messages and letters written by the readers themselves. In these messages, the young readers would reflect on their everyday lives, their relationships, problems, and ideas. They could involve themselves in political debates and argue their points on topics such as power structures, school politics, sexual health, and pop culture. Furthermore, OSA became an instrument for challenging power structures, such as the unequal power dynamics between teacher and student. The messages were written anonymously which allowed the participants to experiment with boundaries from behind a fake or otherwise unknown identity. By creating stories of broken taboos or setting out to disclose the names of people they don’t like, the authors behind the messages take action against their own sense of submission.

Hence OSA was a media product aimed at and, to an almost full extent, created by tweens and teens. The participation and the paper itself were free of charge, and thousands of messages were submitted to the editors—a large amount of which is currently in the archives at Nordiska Museet, Stockholm. The young readers understood it as a force to be reckoned with, which alarmed an adult crowd. An employee at a school writes to OSA, asking them not to distribute the paper to his school anymore. The notion of youths speaking freely and anonymously on a public platform was unheard of, and a sense of impending chaos might have followed the school board.

Every issue of OSA exclaimed “Write to be heard!”. In the submissions provided by the readers they eagerly took the opportunity to produce something to be viewed by youths across the country and to challenge the boundaries and limitations that conditioned the life of a teen in the 1990s.