Digitalisation has been a feature of the cultural sector at least since the 1990s. Digitalisation of archives, libraries, and museum collections is an ongoing work, as is the engagement of cultural institutions and agencies with social media, and through these with the public. This work is now very much part of everyday life in the Swedish cultural sector.
Internet use in Sweden is among the highest in the world. In 2025, 97 per cent of Swedes had access to the internet, and 93 per cent used it daily. Nearly all of these had access to social media, but only 45 per cent made their own posts on social media (Internetstiftelsen 2025). The use of social media thus appears to be more passive and less participatory than many predicted just ten to twenty years ago. In contrast, many now converse regularly with Large Language Model (LLM) artificial intelligence (A.I.). Among the more common uses of the internet is gaining access to films, video, and music. Already in 2020, 65 per cent of the population used the internet to watch films and TV series, and 69 per cent to listen to music.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the internet became both more central and more vital in people´s lives. At the same time, 49 per cent were worried about their personal information on the internet being collected for advertising purposes (SCB 2020). These figures illustrate the drastic changes, opportunities and challenges posed by new modes of communication to cultural policy. Digital media have become tools in the daily work of all institutions, e.g., in the form of websites, digitalisation of catalogues, online library loans, documentation and registration of museum collections, use of digital equipment for stage and other music and drama performances, box-office sales, etc. Similarly, digital media have become the natural mode of communication and networking, and a growing medium for creative expressions. As pointed out, for example, by the Government Commission on the Restart of Culture in their recent report (SOU 2021:77), the increasingly digital distribution of literature, music, and other art forms create new challenges for professionals in these areas when it comes to being paid for their work. In a report on digitalisation in arts and culture, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee describes the implementation of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market as a chance to improve the financial situation of artists in various fields (Swedish Arts Grants Committee 2021).
A major government priority for Sweden in this area has been education, on all levels. Special funding for equipment and projects has been made available for schools in general and for educational programmes in museums and other cultural institutions. In 2017, the government approved a comprehensive strategy for digitalisation, emphasising competence, security, innovation, leadership, and infrastructure.
Specific projects deal with the digitalisation of cultural heritage. The National Heritage Board is the main responsible government agency in this area, although a large number of public bodies are engaged in such work. Projects are also conducted by the Royal Library concerning the preservation of works published on the Internet, as well as making physical books and documents available through scanning and electronic publishing. Museums and other institutions in arts and culture work with improving electronic access, an effort which acquired increased urgency during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis 2021b). In the national budget for 2024, the government allocated SEK 17 million per year for 2024–2026 to central museums for the digitalisation of archives and collections.
In the last few years, a new layer has been added to digitalisation in the form of emerging technologies and applications in artificial intelligence (A.I.), particularly in Large Language Models (LLMs), and related image-generating programs. In 2025, 37 per cent of the population (above 16 years old) had used generative A.I., according to a survey. About one in six have used A.I. to create images, and two-thirds of students use A.I. in their studies (Internetstiftelsen 2025). These developments now challenge an unknown number of jobs in arts and culture, as well as the copyrights of work used to train A.I. While these threats have been frequently discussed, it currently appears that the initiative in regulating these technologies primarily lies with the E.U., potentially influencing and strengthening the role of the E.U. in cultural policy in the long term, at least if we assume that this area is going to become increasingly central to cultural work in Europe. On the national level, the government displays a generally positive attitude to A.I. in cultural policy, promoting the use of A.I. to a higher degree in government-financed arts and culture, in cultural institutions, and the government agencies themselves. The government has also assigned to the National Archives, the National Heritage Board, the Arts Council and the Arts Grants Committee to map the development of A.I. use in their respective areas of cultural policy.
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