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@Sweden – a new look at Sweden Posted by on Apr 2, 2012 in Culture

As the first country in the world, Sweden hands over the country’s official Twitter account to its citizens – and this ladies and gentlemen, is a real gem. If you are on Twitter, you must make sure to follow @Sweden – a new way of portraying our beloved country.  And by the way, I’m only telling you this because I know you are faithful to our blog and would never ever thinking of abandoning us for some other Swede, right?

Anyway, the rules are simple. Every week, someone in Sweden is @Sweden: sole ruler of the world’s most democratic Twitter account. For seven days, he or she recommends things to do and places to see, sharing diverse opinions, and ideas along the way. After that, someone else does the same thing —but most certainly different!

So far, 17 Swedes has been in charge of the account, sharing their 140 caracter thoughts and answers to followers questions about weather, the newborn princess, TV programs, punk music, farming, free schools, fika, Melodifestivalen, signs of spring… You name it, they’ve tweeted it.

The project Curators of Sweden is an initiative of the Swedish institute and VisitSweden, both part of NSU, the National Board for the promotion of Sweden. The idea is that the curators will show the world a different Sweden than the one usually obtained through traditional media and the initiative has proven popular with 27 600 followers so far.

This week’s curator:

I’m Sakine Madon, a 32 year old journalist in Stockholm. I work as managing editor at the Swedish opinion site Newsmill and as an independent liberal columnist at Expressen’s editorial pages.  My family and I came to Sweden in 1985. I was born five years earlier in southern Turkey (Adana). Since my father is Kurdish and my mother Turkish, I often get questions about immigrants, other cultures and so on. I’m often described as outspoken. I believe that says more about Sweden and Swedish “konsensuskultur” (culture of consensus) than me. It’s not that difficult to stick your neck out here. I hope you’ll find my tweets interesting, or at least amusing

If you know someone who you think might make an excellent currator for Sweden, you can nominate your favorite. Email your suggestion to curatorapplication@visitsweden.com – your nominee has to be a Swedish citizen and have Twitter account and you must motivate why people outside Sweden might be interested in him or her specifically as a curator.

If you want to follow the curators of Sweden without a Twitter-account, here’s the official site of the project where you can also look back at all the past curators.

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