Three cultural creators on social media: Crucial to reach out

Rickard Söderberg is an opera singer with over 67,000 people who follow him on Instagram, and primarily sees social media as a way to reach his audience. But also lowering the thresholds to an art form that is often seen as difficult.

At the same time he emphasizes the problematic in social media where tone, feelings and expressions are easily misunderstood, and perhaps even reinforced in combination with the high speed of the scrolling country. But even though the climate on social media is sometimes harsh, and Rickard Söderberg sometimes takes breaks from the platform, for him at present it is not possible to leave.

- What is interesting about social media is that on the one hand it has such a bad reputation because it is so dirty. But the moment we choose to treat each other with desire, we will change that. We don't change social media by leaving them, but being there. For me, it's a cornerstone, he says.

Flora Wiström started blogging when she was 12 years old. Today she is an established influencer and social media is her main source of income. A few years ago, she also debuted as a literary writer with the novel Stanna, and earlier this year came her second novel, Keep the Spirit.

According to Flora Wiström, one of the challenges of having a large platform that is divided into the authorship is to manage the image of the author as difficult and difficult to access.

- Being visible in social media takes away a bit of the author's mystique and makes the authorship a little less credible, I would think. It is clear that one asks if the person is allowed to write books only because it is large in social media, says Flora Wiström and continues:

- But I think it is important to distinguish those who have never written before and fall over a book contract, and those who work as writers, who have writing as their main occupation. Few writers can live on their fictional writing alone.

Both Rickard Söderberg and Flora Wiström point out the closeness to the audience that social media enables. For the pastor, the artist, the writer and the satirist Kent Wisti, precisely that proximity has been crucial, he says.

- I have a very large platform that is partly built around my satire. But other things, like my writing and my visual art, would otherwise not have reached the breadth I now have, he says, and continue:

- I have, for example, many times participated in that people come to my exhibitions and it is the first exhibition they have ever attended. It feels great fun!

But as social media spreads, criticism of them has also increased. Swedes' activity on Facebook is declining, and at the same time, voices from inside the closed tech-covered Silicon valley have been raised with criticism of how the global network companies affect both society and the individual.

How do you as an artist think about having a base in these big commercial companies?

- I have a feeling that we are so damn fooled everyone. It's like some kind of insidious dictatorship that only triggers our lizard brains. It's like Kallocain by Karin Boye, I am totally convinced of that.