This chapter concerns the communicative conditions in the relation between informal practice of sakprosa and informal style in social media communication. By focusing on knowledge and interaction in authorities’ crisis communication, the objective is to discuss whether the public discourse undergoes an informalization within the framework of critical discourse analysis. The aim of this study is to shed light on communicative strategies in authorities’ prose on social media. The data consist of two corpora from the Twitter platform of the Swedish crisis authority—the first from the terror attack in Stockholm in 2017 and the second from an official false alarm for a total number of 1,951 tweets. Methodologically, the data are arranged chronologically and rest on a qualitative approach to style.

A result of this study is that boundaries within the public discourse in social media are not blending, but rather are parallel. When the authority takes the initiative to post informative tweets, they use formal written style. On the contrary, when they write responses to citizens’ tweets, they often use a personal and informal style. Another result is that when the authority does not communicate, it seems to trigger citizens to post informal and sometimes harsh comments.

Artikeln handlar om vetenskapligt skrivande. Många läroböcker och skrivhandledningar tar upp den vetenskapliga textens disposition, språk och stil. Här ligger i stället fokus på hur övningar i att värdera kunskap och information kan främja ett kritiskt-analytiskt förhållningssätt som en grundläggande förutsättning för att kunna skriva texter av vetenskaplig karaktär.

This paper use rhetorical criticism methodology when investigating linguistic and rhetorical means in the reportage genre. The concept of eye-witness is explored in six reportage from the GDR-propaganda published in 1962. Through analysis of dialogue and perception in text, the notion of presence is discussed. An assumption is that presence in text can be of paramount importance for the technique of persuasion. It  is claimed that presence might be communicated though dialogues. However the main impact of presence is connected to the perceptivity of the narrator. Values and arguments are highly emphasized when detailed descriptions are experienced by the narrator. Consequently the conclusion of the analysis is associated with the rhetorical concept evidentia. Finally it is claimed that the GDR-propaganda use reportage from industries and construction sites to show western countries the advantages of East German version of socialism. The concept of political myth is introduced and is in the final discussion connected to the myth of technical development and the myth of progress. The theoretical frame-work consists of rhetoric, linguistics, and literary studies.