Amid growing concern over harassment and intimidation targeting journalists, scholarly attention to their occurrence and implications has mushroomed. One aspect of these phenomena that often gets overlooked is that not all journalists seem equally targeted or affected. Applying ordinal regression analysis of 505 sets of questionnaire responses from Finnish professional journalists, the authors found that only a small proportion of respondents experienced harassment and intimidation regularly, while the vast majority reported being targeted very rarely, if at all.

Existing methods for quantifying polarization in social networks typically report a single value describing the amount of polarization in a social system. While this approach can be used to confirm the observation that many societies have witnessed an increase in political polarization in recent years, it misses the complexities that could be used to understand the reasons behind this phenomenon. Notably, opposing groups can have unequal impact on polarization, and the elites are often understood to be more divided than the masses, making it critical to differentiate their roles in polarized systems. We propose a method to characterize these distinct hierarchies in polarized networks, enabling separate polarization measurements for these groups within a single social system.

The related concepts of partisan belief systems, issue alignment, and partisan sorting are central to our understanding of politics. These phenomena have been studied using measures of alignment between pairs of topics, or how much individuals' attitudes toward a topic reveal about their attitudes toward another topic. We introduce a higher-order measure that extends the assessment of alignment beyond pairs of topics by quantifying the amount of information individuals' opinions on one topic reveal about a set of topics simultaneously.

On social media, the boundaries between people's private and public lives often blur. The need to navigate both roles, which are governed by distinct norms, impacts how individuals conduct themselves online, and presents methodological challenges for researchers. We conduct a systematic exploration on how an organization's official Twitter accounts and its members' personal accounts differ.

It has been a widely shared concern that social media reinforces echo chambers of like-minded users and exacerbate political polarization. While fostering interactions across party lines is recognized as an important strategy to break echo chambers, there is a lack of empirical evidence on whether users will actually become more integrated or instead more segregated following such interactions on real social media platforms. We fill this gap by inspecting how users change their community engagement after receiving a cross-party reply in the U.S. politics discussion on Reddit. More specifically, we investigate if they increase their activity in communities of the opposing party, or in communities of their own party.

Media alustojen ajassa piirtää esiin kokonaiskuvan 2020-luvun digitaalisesta mediamaisemasta. Se avaa sosiaalisen median alustojen toimintalogiikkaa ja liiketoimintamalleja sekä kartoittaa journalistisen uutismedian toimintaedellytyksiä mainosrahoitteisilla mediamarkkinoilla.

It is often thought that an external threat increases the internal cohesion of a nation, and thus decreases polarization. We examine this proposition by analyzing NATO discussion dynamics on Finnish social media following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In Finland, public opinion on joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had long been polarized along the left-right partisan axis, but the invasion led to a rapid convergence of opinion toward joining NATO. We investigate whether and how this depolarization took place among polarized actors on Finnish Twitter.

We identified the Twitter accounts of 941 climate change policy actors across nine countries, and collected their activities from 2017--2022, totalling 48 million activities from 17,700 accounts at different organizational levels. There is considerable temporal and cross-national variation in how prominent climate-related activities were, but all national policy systems generally responded to climate-related events, such as climate protests, in a similar manner. Examining patterns of interaction within and across countries, we find that these national policy systems rarely directly interact with one another, but are connected through consistently engaging with the same content produced by accounts of international organizations, climate activists, and researchers.

Victor Roudometof's goal is to defend the analytical value of ‘globalization’ against declarations concerning its alleged obsolescence, and especially against theories that associate globalization with Eurocentric narratives of Western modernity. His aim is to demonstrate the fruitfulness of examining the interconnections between different world regions that go beyond conventional temporal frames. In this he succeeds well, but the article has some omissions and contradictions, whose consequences I address in my response. A central one of these is that Roudometof seems to subsume capitalism under modernity, or at the very least avoids integrating the unprecedented intensification of capitalist imperatives to his analysis of cultural globalization and global connectivity, which is particularly problematic in the present historical conjuncture.

This study conceptualizes “banana populism,” a novel analytical framework to examine how whimsical imagery functions in in contemporary populism. Banana populism utilizes the ordinary—exemplified by the banana—for its ubiquity, inherent humor, and absurdity, transforming these elements into powerful political tools. These articulations effectively mainstream extreme ideologies, invite affective investment from broad publics, and delineate antagonistic frontiers by employing familiar cultural symbols and everyday objects, such as military attire or MAGA hats. Such performative elements not only enhance the authenticity of populist leaders but also make their messages more accessible and emotionally engaging, increasing their appeal and relatability. Furthermore, the memetic nature of banana populism underlines its adaptability and potency on social media, where these performances become part of a participatory and dynamic political discourse. This framework shows how seemingly innocuous visual articulations can profoundly impact political communication and identity formation in contemporary political landscapes.

Moniäänisyys on perinteisesti käsitetty journalismin demokratiatehtävään lähei sesti liittyvänä hyveenä, mutta viime aikoina siitä on tullut yhä kiistellympi aihe. Moniäänisyyden ympärille syntyvissä erimielisyyksissä on osittain kyse käsite sekaannuksesta, jota journalismin tutkimus ei ole pystynyt riittävästi selkiyttä mään. Suomalaista keskustelua mutkistavat sekä moniäänisyyteen kohdennetun tutkimuksen vähäisyys että erityinen sana–moniäänisyys–jota ei englannin kie lestä sellaisenaan löydy. Toisaalta kiistoissa on kyse suuremmasta asiasta: moni äänisyys on osa median monimuotoisuuden ja arvoisuuden laajaa ilmiötä, jonka sisällä neuvotellaan journalismin tehtävästä, sen roolista yhteiskunnassa ja tietysti vallasta. Tässä tutkimuksessa selvitetään, miten moniäänisyys ymmärretään journa lismin ammattikentällä ja miten tämä ymmärrys liittyy laajempaan monimuotoisuu den ilmiöön. Aineisto on kerätty haastattelemalla aiheeseen perehtyneitä toimit tajia ja kokoamalla aihetta käsitteleviä juttuja toimittajien ammattijulkaisuista. Tuloksena on, että alan ammattiymmärryksessä moniäänisyys jäsentyy painotetusti journalististen sisältöjen monipuolisuutena, johon vaikuttavat kokonaisvaltaisesti kaikki median monimuotoisuuden osaalueet. Journalismin moniäänisyys on siis prosessi, joka hyvin toteutuessaan auttaa journalismia luomaan mahdollisimman totuudenmukaisen kuvan monimuotoisesta maailmasta.

Chapter about Finland in a volume that explores the increasingly significant topic of “hate speech” and its regulation all over the world, in both traditional and online media.

This study examines how fabricated historical narratives and slow memory processes can shape nation-building efforts. We propose an expansion of Wüstenberg’s (2023) slow memory framework, suggesting that the gradual accumulation of positive pseudohistorical accounts significantly influences collective remembrance. These processes cultivate what we term ‘slow joy’ – the gradual accumulation of positive emotions through sustained engagement with mythologized narratives of national greatness. Employing rhetoric performative discourse analysis, we explore performative actions and communication surrounding the medieval King Svätopluk I and the controversy over his statue erected at Bratislava Castle in 2010 to uncover how Slovak cultural organisations and governmental entities interweave historical facts with nationalistic lore for nation-building endeavours. Our findings reveal that these curated historical accounts, marked by a cherry-picked chronology and the elevation of particular historical icons like Svätopluk I, construct a continuous national identity with ancient origins. This paper contributes to memory studies by demonstrating the interaction of pseudohistory and slow memory in national identity formation, offering insights applicable beyond the Slovak context.

Conceived as institutions funded by the public purse and intended to exist devoid of political influence, the mandate of public service media (PSM) entities is to disseminate reliable news content and high-quality audiovisual productions to all demographic segments, inclusive of marginalized communities and audiences that are typically under-served. Over the previous ten years, the rise in prominence of global platforms in national media systems has precipitated many changes in the media sector, including unique challenges for PSM institutions guided by specific public service values. Using a holistic conceptual framework for assessing the implementation of these values, this article analyzes the impact of platformization on Europe’s PSM and discusses how the Union’s policy approaches affect related challenges to PSM. The analysis indicates that while the European Union (EU) has accorded a high priority to PSM within its media policy framework, the role that Brussels plays in protecting the independence and efficacy of PSM has been circumscribed, given that the onus of regulating PSM entities rests with national governments. This has engendered contrasting experiences wherein certain PSM outlets enjoy political independence and command significant public trust while others function as state-controlled propaganda vehicles, advancing the objectives and interests of governing bodies. The EU has addressed global platform power in recent attempts to safeguard its digital future, including the Digital Services Act (DSA), Digital Markets Act (DMA), and the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). However, these acts do not adequately address PSM’s two central and often interconnected problems: funding challenges and political pressures.

In recent crises, domestic and international discussions on national security and resilience have been marked by significant concern about information disorders eroding societal trust. With the influence of social media, this phenomenon has spread to various aspects of life and broad audiences, whether it is about well-being and health safety or political propaganda from foreign powers. Policy-makers and other stakeholders have begun to seek means to strengthen national and regional resilience to such information disorders. Recent studies indicate that resilience against disinformation depends on various national societal, political, and media-system-related characteristics—and a robust public servive media (PSM) seems to be one of the concrete structural aspects defining highly resilient societies. This chapter discusses PSM as a part of national resilience-building with an understanding that resilience depends both on content providers (information resilience as a structural characteristic of society) and information users (epistemic resilience as an individual’s communicative, knowledge-related capacities and capabilities to participate in society). PSM have a special role as the former to strengthen the latter.

The role of public service media (PSM) online, and specifically the provision of text-based news content, has been under scrutiny in many European countries. This chapter focuses on the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) as a case study of the dynamics between European competition law, national PSM policymaking, and lobbying from the private media industry. The chapter examines the process that led to a legal amendment limiting Yle’s text-based services online and its impact on the conditions of public service journalism. As part of a series of complaints about unfair competitive advantage by the private media industry, the Finnish Media Federation, an advocacy organisation for private companies in the media and printing industries, originally filed a complaint with the EU Commission in 2017, claiming that Yle’s text-based online content conflicts with EU state aid rules. The chapter first addresses how competition law has been used to restrict PSM online in other EU member states. It then describes the Finnish case, highlighting the key problems of the amendment accepted by the Finnish Parliament in 2022. Finally, we discuss what the case means more broadly in terms of PSM policy and public service journalism. We argue that the case of Yle exemplifies opaque communication policy decision-making and presents a danger of curbing the scope of PSM through inaccessible and technocratic processes instead of open public debate. The case can also be seen as part of a continuing transition in Finland from the so-called media welfare state to the competition state.

This dissertation investigates the psychological and societal mechanisms underlying disinformation susceptibility and truth perception dynamics within Hungary's political context. The research addresses how" fake news" affects democratic processes and how media shapes public truth perception. It examines how social-psychological factors—including biases, ideological preferences, institutional trust, and epistemic frameworks—influence disinformation belief. The research employed a multimethod approach across three studies. Study I (N= 295) utilized quantitative analysis to identify social-psychological predictors of disinformation belief among Hungarian citizens, highlighting the significance of conspiracy mentalities and motivated reasoning. Study II implemented a person-centered analysis of the same dataset, revealing distinct belief profiles ranging from government supporters to skeptical independents. Study III employed Discourse-Historical Analysis (DHA) to examine rhetorical strategies in Hungarian Facebook discussions about the Bucha massacre, showing how users construct and negotiate competing truth claims in social media environments.

Julkisessa keskustelussa polarisaatiota tarjotaan selitykseksi mitä moninaisimpiin yhteiskunnallisiin ilmiöihin. Mutta mitä polarisaatio oikeastaan on? Ali Salloumin ja Arttu Malkamäen kirjoittama teos Poliittisen polarisaation hahmottaminen ja mittaaminen. Käsikirja jakielioppi. auttaa hahmottamaan poliittisen polarisaation käsitettä ja ilmiökenttää sekä tarjoaa konkreettisia esimerkkejä siitä, miten poliittista polarisaatiota voidaan mitata ja mallintaa.

Suomi tunnetaan kansainvälisesti poliittisista ja pedagogisista innovaatioistaan media- ja informaatiolukutaitojen eli MIL-taitojen kehittämiseksi. Mediaan kohdistuva lukutaito on Unescon ja Euroopan unionin keskeisiä politiikkakäsitteitä, jota suositellaan yhdeksi lääkkeeksi informaatiohäiriöihin. Resilienssi eli vastustuskyky erilaisia informaatiohäiriöitä, kuten valheellista viestintää, kohtaan on kuitenkin laajempi ilmiö, johon kytkeytyy olennaisena luottamuksen kokemus. Resilientissä yhteiskunnassa on luottamusta mediaan, koko yhteiskuntaan ja toisiimme.

This dissertation investigates the psychological and societal mechanisms underlying disinformation susceptibility and truth perception dynamics within Hungary's political context. The research addresses how "fake news" affects democratic processes and how media shapes public truth perception. It examines how social-psychological factors—including biases, ideological preferences, institutional trust, and epistemic frameworks—influence disinformation belief.

Global digital platforms have become important actors for economy and work with social policy consequences. This article analyses strategies and actions of global digital platforms from the perspective of how and what kind of global social policy these represent. It draws from analysis of how platform company strategic approaches relate to rights, regulation, and redistribution, and then using abductive reasoning and mixed methods empirical case study in Europe, articulate challenges to future global social policy. It examines what priorities of platform companies imply to global social policy and identifies five political and strategic elements of importance for global social policy: (1) denial or avoidance of employer status, (2) identifying as a “tech company providing services”, (3) focus on private social insurance in contrast to statutory social security, (4) addressing social security as a market-based service through voluntary partnerships, and (5) investor driven business model and global engagement. Drawing from theoretical and empirical data, the article further examines potential countermeasures and solutions, which could be of relevance at different levels of governance. It concludes that social policy impacts of platform economy are more related to the business model than technology. Platform economy business models currently support upward redistribution and avoidance of regulatory measures to address minimum income, social protection, and workers’ rights, yet platform economy is data rich and also could provide scope for government and regulatory action.

The chapter discusses the political context in the Netherlands during the 2019 EP elections and introduces the political communication environment of the country. Particular attention is given to the role of Twitter in Dutch political communication and populism in the country’s party field during the twenty-first century. The empirical Twitter analysis focuses on 11,397 tweets sent from 223 Twitter accounts by various political actors during a one-month period in May 2019.

Finnish Yleisradio (Yle) has been one of the most innovative public service broadcasters in Europe. The new tax-based funding system and broad remit have allowed the company to shift its focus from broadcast television and radio to online services without jeopardising its relevance or resources. Now Yle has set preconditions for the future availability of its online television in case digital terrestrial television (DTT) would be switched off and all ultra high frequencies reallocated. This is not because Yle would want to focus only on growing video audiences online, but because the Finnish spectrum policy favouring mobile industries could endanger Yle’s capability to fulfil its public service remit. We argue that Yle’s conditions for abandoning television broadcasting on DTT are so tight they might never be met by the Ministry of Transport and Communications. In this chapter, we also examine what consequences public service without broadcasting could have.

Hate speech on digital platforms manifests itself in ways that need to be addressed both in practice and on a policy level, taking Nordic (media) policies into novel areas. For this chapter, I analysed and compared policy documents discussing hate speech from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, with a focus on how hate speech is defined, the perceived harmful functions of hate speech, and the suggested remedies. The analysis shows that hate speech is perceived to endanger societies’ democratic functions, public debate, and freedom of speech. Hate speech targets specific minorities and especially those in public positions or participating in public debate. The suggested remedies correspond with media welfare state ideals: increased collaboration between all relevant parties, state support for both citizens and media, and adjustments of existing laws. The role of online platforms is crucial, but concrete measures to hold them responsible still wait for the implementation of the European Union’s Digital Services Act legislation.

During moments of hegemonic crisis, it is crucial to understand the dynamics of media power. This article identifies key structural forces and disruptive tendencies that are factors in a current crisis of the neoliberal hegemonic order. This intellectual background underpins an empirical analysis of Twitter data collected during the UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland (COP26). We identify large attention clusters around established political actors and their counter-hegemonic challengers; concluding that during these intense global political events a hegemonic crisis produces spaces where systemically marginalized actors can harness relational attention power and mobilize it toward distinct political purposes.

This chapter contributes to the study of epistemic rights by addressing how the Nordic countries support freedom of speech and dialogical rights during the digital era through regulation and other media policy measures. Also considering their historical backgrounds, we examine the differences and persistent similarities in the Nordic countries’ practices through three example cases. First, we examine the regulation of online audiovisual media, demonstrating national path dependencies in content moderation legislation. Second, we explore disputes between public service and private media related to media content and subsidies, which are both essential in supporting the public’s rights to varied information and social dialogue. Third, we discuss national policy responses to online hate speech that challenge both freedom of expression and dialogue.

This mixed-method study of 1,374 Russian-speaking immigrants living in Finland investigated how different characteristics of their socio-political integration are reflected in their attitudes towards supporting Ukraine during the war. The results of survey responses showed that trust in Finnish media and engagement with Finnish societal issues predicted stronger ‘pro-Ukraine’ attitudes (i.e., support for Finland's aid for Ukraine and condemning of Russia's invasion), while experiences of increased hate speech or discrimination of Russian speakers in Finland were related to weaker ‘pro-Ukraine’ attitudes. Next, person-centred analysis identified three socio-political integration clusters. High Integration cluster respondents highly supported Ukraine as compared to Critical and Low Integration clusters. Critical Integration respondents were somewhat more integrated than Low Integration respondents, except they felt that discrimination towards Russian speakers had increased due to the war. Analyses of open-ended responses confirmed that Critical Integration respondents were most likely concerned with discrimination. Low integration respondents had ambivalent attitudes in that many were opposed to the war but felt that Western countries were also responsible. Our findings highlight the role of socio-political integration – and especially perceived discrimination – in shaping immigrants' political views during political turmoil. Receiving societies should promote non-discrimination and inclusiveness to mitigate intergroup conflicts in societies with significant diasporic communities. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Information disorder occurs when the fact-based, reliable, and professionally validated provision of information becomes confronted by information that attacks previously trusted media platforms, disputes the known or scientifically validated facts, or uses rumours and gossip as sources. Information disorder intensifies during turbulent times, as evidenced by the global rise of xenophobic movements, disbelief in science, and belief in conspiracies. Although Nordic countries fare remarkably well by many measures that assess democratic and robust communication environments, they also face these challenges. In this chapter, we view the Nordic media welfare state as ideally entailing an epistemic commons – a shared forum for trustworthy knowledge and culture – that supports citizens’ communication rights of access to and availability of diverse content, as well as privacy and dialogical public communication. Based on these key principles embedded in the Nordic media welfare state model, we assess its present condition by employing the framework of communication rights as our analytical tool. We argue that rights-based approaches in policy and practice are essential if a Nordic digital media welfare state is to be realised and maintained.

In principle, liberal democracy is about an equal right to decision-making and presumes a public sphere, equally open to all. However, in practice, this normative ideal, articulated, among others, by Jürgen Habermas and John Dewey, is farther away today than ever since WWII. The “real” public sphere, distinguished from its ideal, is harmed by conflicting and divisive interests, often presenting themselves in the form of information campaigns targeting the most vulnerable groups of society. The information offered is often labelled as disinformation, i.e. information that is misleading or purposefully false. However, this article claims that we must distinguish between different uses of the concept of disinformation. Although disinformation campaigns are increasingly harmful for democracy, the label of disinformation can be used to silence necessary critical voices and movements in society, thus promoting a public sphere based on a forced consensus. This article focuses on current European developments, although there are references to the developments in other continents as well. It is based on a review of recent research publications and public policy documents about different aspects of disinformation and inequality.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, public service broadcasters (PSBs) have been confronted with the rise of the Internet as a mainstream medium of communication. This has sparked a debate on the transition from PSB to public service media (PSM). In this article, we present a review of the academic literature on PSM and the Internet produced from 2000 to 2021. We focus on contributions interrogating the implications of PSM’s online activities for the delivery of public service values. We identify seven streams of research and show how, as a whole, this body of work has highlighted the main tensions and dilemmas that PSM organizations have faced, given their special nature, when engaging with the technological affordances of the Internet. Researchers have also shown how the delivery of public value can be enhanced via PSM’s online services. Arguing for the continued relevance of PSM, they have reasserted traditional values while also identifying new roles that PSM are called to play in the context of today’s digital communications.

Tämä artikkeli on osin katsaus kahdenkymmenen vuoden päähän ja toisaalta katsaus eteenpäin. Artikkelissa hyödynnetään pohjana alkuaikojen viestintäoikeuden asemointia eri tutkimuksissa ja viisi vuotta sitten yhdessä Pauli Rautiaisen kanssa kirjoittamaani katsausta viestintäoikeuden vuosikirjojen sisältöön. Kirjoituksessani pohjana on näin ollen lukuisia omia tekstejäni ja yleisesti aikalaisena suhtautuminen käytyyn keskusteluun tuo oman perspektiivinsä. Tästä syystä tämän artikkelin tyylilaji on esseemäinen enkä pyri häivyttämään omaa osuuttani viittauksilla.

In this article, we demonstrate how international social-media discussions offer a platform for taking a stance on the war in Ukraine, redrawing national boundaries and legitimising their defence. We do so by analysing data that consist of comments triggered by a viral YouTube video depicting an encounter between an ageing civilian woman, labelled ‘Babushka Z’, and a Ukrainian soldier. Using a critical discursive psychological framework, we identify five interpretative repertoires: vulnerability, incapacity, national continuity, masculinised warriorship and righteousness. Our analysis illuminates how these repertoires draw on and reproduce intersecting categorisations based on gender, age and ethnic heritage. With the help of these categorisations, the repertoires build competing images of the actions of the figures in the video, which come to symbolise in various ways both patriotism and treason, heroism and cowardice. By aligning with competing historical-national narratives, the commentors use these images to (de)legitimise the war and its actors.

As social media is a key conduit for the distribution of disinformation, much of the literature on disinformation in elections has been focused on the internet and global social media platforms. Literature on societal and media trust has also grown in recent years. Yet, disinformation is not limited to global platforms or the internet, traditional media outlets in many European countries act as vehicles of disinformation often under the direction of the government. Moreover, the connection between trust and resilience to disinformation has been less discussed. This article is aimed at tackling the question of what makes a country vulnerable to or resilient against online disinformation. It argues that a society’s information resilience can be viewed as a combination of structural characteristics, features of its knowledge-distribution institutions including its media system, and the activities and capabilities of its citizens. The article makes this argument by describing these dimensions in four European case countries, based on comparable statistics and document analyses. The results indicate that European-wide strategies do not uniformly strengthen national resilience against disinformation and that anti-disinformation strategies need to be anchored in targeted assessments of the state of information resilience at the national level to be more effective. Such assessments are central, particularly to understanding citizens’ information needs in key democratic events such as elections.

In the past decades, the development of higher education institutions (HEIs) in industrialized countries has become intertwined with innovation policy and the goal of national competitiveness. Focusing on the discourses on innovation by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC), this article illustrates the transformation of Finnish higher education policy ideas in the late 2010s following the demise of the previous policy consensus built around the notion of the National Innovation System. Through a critical policy discourse analysis of 35 publications by the MEC, we demonstrate that its recent policy discourses are dominated by an increasingly market-centric strategy of entrepreneurialism in conditions of major cuts to the public funding of universities and R&D. This strategy has serious limitations and contradictions, which have generated institutional conflicts and hinder the development of a more sustainable and balanced innovation agenda for the Finnish higher education field.

In the history of freedom of speech, the law has been seen as an obstacle to economic and commercial innovations. However, technological development is a key part of the history of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech has been synonymous with freedom of the press, which as a concept refers to specific communication technology. Internet regulation is based on the exemption of liability for certain internet companies. This has created a new public space and new business models. Now this activity is being reined in again through law. The central question posed by the article is how law and communication technology interact and how the law can act as an enabler.

This edited volume offers a comprehensive introduction to epistemic rights as a central public policy issue and features analyses of epistemic rights both as a theoretical concept and as empirical cases. The book demonstrates the impact of epistemic inequality on the crisis of democracy.

In the history of freedom of speech, the law has been seen as an obstacle to economic and commercial innovations. However, technological development is a key part of the history of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech has been synonymous with freedom of the press, which as a concept refers to specific communication technology. Internet regulation is based on the exemption of liability for certain internet companies. This has created a new public space and new business models. Now this activity is being reined in again through law. The central question posed by the article is how law and communication technology interact and how the law can act as an enabler.

We define tribalism as a mode of articulation that draws an antagonistic frontier between societal groups. Unlike populism, tribalism does not have a hegemonic character. It articulates groups through a horizontally oriented shared value system; whereas populism is an essential part of a democratic system, tribalism disregards democracy. To conceptualize tribalism as a separate theoretical frame from populism or (ethno)nationalism, we used discourse theoretical analysis to analyze the Facebook pages of four political party leaders in Slovakia (Marian Kotleba, Krisztián Forró, Igor Matovic, and Boris Kollár).

Recent research on digital constitutionalism highlights a rights-based approach to limiting the exercise of power in the digital communication environment. However, little research has examined multiple and political meanings of digital rights empirically from various actors’ perspectives. This article discusses findings from a discourse-theoretical analysis of 12 semi-structured interviews with civil society actors in the context of transnational digital governance. The analysis demonstrates that the concept of digital rights can be viewed as a “floating signifier” on one hand, partially fixed to human rights. On the other hand, digital rights function as a site of discursive struggles that highlight openness and contestation of norms, rights, and principles in relation to the Internet and other digital technologies. The article suggests that the very definitions of norms, rights, and principles related to the Internet and other digital technologies not only limit but also produce power, providing a novel perspective to digital constitutionalism.

Recent debates concerning problems in the digital environment have promoted different conceptualizations of digital rights. However, current problems of digital communication are often discussed separately from earlier debates pertaining to the democratization of the media. This article argues for the re-grounding of digital rights debates to address systemic communication problems.

Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation

Viestinnän sääntelyä koskevan keskustelun yti messä ovat viimeisten kahden vuosikymmenen ajan olleet yksilön oikeudet. Koskaan aiemmin historiassa ei yksittäisillä ihmisillä ole ollut yhtä laajoja mahdollisuuksia julkaista, levittää ja vastaan ottaa erilaisia sisältöjä kuin nyt, digitaa listen julkaisualustojen aikakaudella. Keskustelu yksilön oikeuksista liittyy julkisuudessa ja tutki muksissa esitettyihin huoliin sisältöjen ja julkisen keskustelun portinvartijoiksi nousseiden alusto jen vallasta ja niiden aiheuttamista uhista yksilön autonomialle (esim. Zuboff 2019). Maksuttoman julkaisukanavan vastineeksi käyttäjät joutuvat solmimaan alustojen kanssa sopimuksen, joka antaa niille luvan yksityisyyden alaan kuuluvien tietojen hyödyntämiseen liiketoiminnassa sekä julkisen keskustelun ohjaamiseen muun muassa suodattamalla ja kuratoimalla sisältöjä salatuilla algoritmeilla.

The digital disruption of the media and society has changed how citizens participate in public debate and democracy. Today, internet platforms play a significant role in the public sphere. However, their role in the spread of disorders in the public sphere has increased fears about the future of democracy. The main hypothesis of this article is that the regulation of freedom of speech in Europe is fragmented. Therefore, the European Union and individual states are asking social media platforms to monitor their content. A lack of competence in regulating platforms has led to the introduction of various forms of regulation, such as loose co-regulation and the private censorship of content. These new regulations challenge the underlying rationale and justification of the freedom of speech doctrine and principle of the rule of law.

The sociology of news (SoN) paradigm laid out the foundations for journalism studies, a growing, dynamic, global and multidisciplinary field of inquiry. It is opportune to reassess its validity and influence, especially considering massive transformations in news and journalism, as well as recent trends in academic scholarship. In this paper, we argue that the SoN remains influential, despite major transformations in the journalism industry and the ways publics engage with news in the digital era. The classic SoN tradition built a theoretical and conceptual scaffolding and produced rich empirical studies that remain relevant. However, at a time of niche scholarship and middle-range theorizing, SoN does not hold the paradigmatic status it had in the past. Furthermore, radical changes in the information landscape and contemporary political trends make it necessary to revisit its original arguments and contributions.

The sounding board of worries about propaganda has often been the image or sense of social (and political) change and instability. This was the case during the first decades of twentieth century, when “propaganda” as a concept broke through to public discourse (Glander, 2000). The unpredictable power of the mass press, and the influence of emerging new media like film and radio, raised concern. Around the turn of the century, sociologists had coined a mental image about changing social order ushered in by industrialised modernity and the breaking of traditions. The populations of the Western democracies were considered uprooted from their earlier frames of social order and common sense, their attention and volatile loyalty seemingly up for grabs by manipulative communication. Against the imagination of masses of atomised individuals, the idea about the potential of propaganda made sense. Communication became a key social problem, an overdetermined object of hopes and anxieties:“There are abundant signs of interest in international propaganda since the War of 1914”, is the opening statement in Harold Lasswell’s (1927/1971) Propaganda Technique in World War I–one of the classic studies on the subject.

For the Habermasian theory of the “public sphere” to make sense in the 2020s, it must be able to address the modern tendency toward global systemic crises. To examine the relevance of the Habermasian public sphere to today’s deeply interconnected digital world, this article provides a selective reading of Habermas’ writings on the public sphere, examining how he developed the concept from its conceptual core (1962) through his Legitimation Crisis (LC; 1973) and The Theory of Communicative Action (TCA; vol. 1 [1981] 1984, vol. 2 [1981] 1987). Working from the perspective of the “differentiated lifeworld,” we show here that the theory’s background assumptions about reality (truth), solidarity (justice), personality (authenticity) are now being exposed and destabilized by current crisis tendencies and imaginaries. Here, we examine three exemplary (and interconnected) global disruptions that expose these assumptions: the climate crisis, the intensification of financial inequality in the Global North, and the rapid push toward datafication. Through our examination of whether the public sphere as Habermas conceived of it can exist in today’s world, we provide a more expansive form of criticism of the public sphere (which is usually critiqued on the narrow grounds of the rational bias of communicative rationality). Here, we underscore the fundamental importance of addressing the complex system-lifeworld dynamics that are today re-conceptualizing and re-contextualizing the “public sphere” in this era of contemporary global crises.

In spring 2019, there was a heated debate in the media concerning the Al-Hol camp in Syria, where a number of women and children were detained. This article explores intersectional dynamics of exclusion in online comments on news items regarding the repatriation of women and children from Al-Hol to Finland. The analytical framework is based on critical discursive psychology combined with an intersectional lens. The analysis distinguished three interpretative repertoires: the repertoire of a foreign threat, the repertoire of neglected maternal obligations, and the repertoire of irrationality. Within these repertoires, three subject positions were also applied to women—the deceitful villain, the bad mother, and brainwashed fools—with two subject positions applied to children—innocent children and future threats. The analysis shows the dialectical nature of positionings through which the Otherness of these women is constructed via the interplay with evaluations of their motherhood and positions applied to other actors, such as Muslim men and Finns. Moreover, the analysis shows how positionings mobilise intersectional categorisations based on gender, age, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and race.

The book provides a comparative constitutional analysis of the relationship between freedom of speech and disinformation. By examining reports which focus on Belgium, Canada, Croatia, the European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Macau, Romania, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Vietnam, this book analyses the constitutional challenges of balancing freedom of speech and falsehood, and the approaches adopted to deal with the spread of disinformation. The chapter on Finland was written by Riku Neuvonen of DECA.

Perinteisen median aseman on katsottu rapautuneen ympäri maailmaa 2000-luvun aikana. Kehityskulun nähdään ilmentävän yleisempää yhteiskunnan legitimiteetin kyseenalaistamista (Edelman 2022). Synkimmät arviot ovat jo pitkään povanneet demokratian kriisiä (van der Meer 2017).

This country brief summarises the survey findings for Finland. It then embeds the survey findings within a national and cultural context for each country. The aim of these summaries is to situate the findings within their respective sociopolitical and sociocultural contexts. The literature review and rationale for the proposed model, analysis of the full dataset, and discussion can be found in the full 7.1 report, which also contains the country briefs.

The International Press Institute (IPI) and the Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC) are proud to announce the release of the Media Capture Monitoring Report for Finland, marking the sixth publication in our series assessing media capture across Europe. This report examines Finland’s compliance with the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), which came into effect in May 2024, setting new standards for safeguarding media independence and diversity within the European Union.

The purpose of the survey was to map the plans of Ukrainian refugees who have arrived in Finland with regard to their residence in the country, applying for registration in a municipality of residence and possible return to Ukraine. The survey is based on the results of an online Webropol questionnaire for Ukrainians. The questionnaire was filled in by 1 302 Ukrainians. The survey was a follow-up to a similar study carried out in summer 2022, and it was commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior. Of the respondents, 53% had registered their municipality of residence in the population register and 28% intended to apply for registration. Only 2% of the respondents said they did not intend to apply for registration. The reasons given by respondents for not applying for registration were uncertainty about the continuation of their residence permit, lack of information about applying for registration in a municipality of residence and fear of losing services and benefits. The majority (82%) of Ukrainians who responded to the survey planned for the next six months to remain living in the same place where they were residing in Finland. Of the respondents, 12% intended to return to Ukraine once the security situation in the country has stabilised, 35% were unsure and 51% said they wanted to settle in Finland permanently. According to the survey, Ukrainians trust the information provided by the Finnish authorities more than before. Over 90% of the respondents were satisfied with their life in Finland. How long the respondents had been in Finland did not affect their level of satisfaction.

Miten suomalaiset päätoimittajat kokevat toimintaympäristönsä sekä yleisöjen luottamuksen rakentamisen osatekijät ja reunaehdot? Miten mediakuluttajat kokevat luottamuksen eri viestimiin – niiden vallan ja vastuun sekä luottamukseen vaikuttavat seikat? Tutkimuskonsortio DECA ja Turun yliopiston Tulevaisuuden tutkimuskeskus toteuttivat loppukeväästä 2023 kaksi kyselytutkimusta: toinen päätoimittajille, toinen kansallisesti 15–79-vuotiaille suomalaisille, osin yhtenäisin kysymyksiin.

A new study released today by the MJRC examines how the EU navigates the delicate balance between protecting its values, fostering a competitive market, and satisfying the diverse needs of its member countries in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Sitran Digitaalinen valta ja demokratia -projekti järjesti maaliskuussa 2024 pyöreän pöydän keskustelun, jonka tavoitteena oli hahmotella toimenpidesuosituksia kansalaisten tiedollisten oikeuksien turvaamiseksi nopeasti teknologisoituvassa ja tekoälyistyvässä yhteiskunnassa. Raportti on koostettu tilaisuudessa tehtyjen muistiinpanojen pohjalta DECA:n ja Sitran yhteistyönä.

A diverse group of experts convened at the invitation of the DECA Project at the University of Helsinki in November 2023 to discuss the state of diversity in Finland and to consider concrete measures to increase it. This report has been compiled from notes that were taken at the round-table event.

This NORDIS study, co-funded by the C.V. Åkerlund Media Foundation, focuses on Nordic audiences’ experiences of media trust and experiences of disinformation, based on nationwide, representative surveys in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden in May-June 2023.

Marraskuussa 2023 monipuolinen asiantuntijajoukko kokoontui DECA-hankkeen koollekutsumana Helsingin yliopiston juhlahuoneistolle keskustelemaan moniäänisyyden tilanteesta Suomessa ja pohtimaan konkreettisia toimia moniäänisyyden lisäämiseksi. Tähän raporttiin on koostettu keskustelun keskeinen anti.

Kooste 9.11.2023 käydystä pyöreän pöydän keskustelusta, jonka aiheena oli "Inklusiivisuus ja digitaaliset taidot – eri ryhmät käyttäjinä ja toimijoina tekoälyssä".

Kooste 30.8.2023 käydystä asiantuntijakeskustelusta.

Tietopaketti siitä, mitä suomalainen tai vertaileva kansainvälinen tutkimus on viime vuosina kertonut meille nuorten suhteista ja suhtautumisesta mediaan.

Raportti 17.3.2023 järjestetystä pyöreän pöydän tilaisuudesta.

Raportti 26.1.2023 järjestetystä pyöreän pöydän tilaisuudesta.

Suomessa valtaosa ihmisistä ajattelee, että uutisiin voi luottaa. Tämän kertoi jälleen Reuters-instituutin vuosittainen Digital News Report -tutkimus. Kesäkuussa julkaistussa kyselytutkimuksessa 69 prosenttia suomalaisista kertoi luottavansa useimpiin uutisiin. Reilua vuotta aiemmin tehdyn eurobarometrikyselyn mukaan 73 prosenttia suomalaisista luotti mediaan. Luku on suurempi kuin muissa EU-maissa. Näiden lukujen perusteella silti vajaa kolmannes suomalaisista ei luota uutisiin, vaan kyseenalaistaa suurten tiedotusvälineiden välittämää tietoa. Mitä he ajattelevat mediasta, ja miksi?

Professuuriesitelmä, Itä-Suomen yliopisto, 25.9.2024.

Monikielisen tiedon tarve on kasvanut merkittävästi, ja käännösteknologiat voivat olla ratkaisevassa roolissa tiedon saavutettavuuteen liittyvien haasteiden ratkomisessa. Konekäännösten ja tekoälyn käyttöön liittyy kuitenkin kompastuskiviä, joista on hyvä olla tietoinen. Maarit Koponen ja Juha Lång pohtivat blogitekstissään käännösteknologioiden roolia monikielistyvässä yhteiskunnassa.

Miten käy kansalaisuudelle alustojen ajassa -tilaisuudessa keskusteltiin alustatalouden tuomista haasteista ja etsittiin ratkaisuja sääntelystä ja uusista toimintatavoista. Tilaisuudessa alustivat Tuija Aalto Tampereen yliopistosta, Kreetta Simola Liikenne- ja viestintäministeriöstä sekä johtava asiantuntija Tiina Härkönen Sitrasta. Blogitekstissään Astrid Söderström valottaa tilaisuuden keskeistä antia.

Vuosittain Helsingissä järjestettävä Slush-kasvuyritystapahtuma on ollut näkyvästi esillä mediassa jo 2010-luvun puolivälistä alkaen. Slush ei olekaan pelkkä bisnestapahtuma, vaan se on suuresti vaikuttanut siihen, mitä teknologiayrittäjyys Suomessa tarkoittaa. Henri Koskinen, Marko Ampuja ja Salla-Maaria Laaksonen pohtivat kirjoituksessaan, millaisia teknologia-ja yrittäjyysmielikuvia Slush-uutisoinnissa ja sosiaalisessa mediassa rakennetaan, ja onko pöhinä alkanut 2020-luvulla latistua.

Tekstiversio professori Maarit Koposen professuuriesitelmästä Itä-Suomen yliopistolla 25.9.2024.

Comment on the proposed COMMISSION DELEGATED REGULATION (EU) of supplementing Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council by laying down the technical conditions and procedures under which providers of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines are to share data pursuant to Article 40 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065

Yrittäjyyskoulutuksen viimeaikaisessa nousussa ja yrittäjyyden merkitystä korostavassa koulutuspolitiikassa laajemminkin on ngelmia ja yksipuolisuuksia, joista olisi syytä keskustella nykyistä enemmän ja avoimemmin. Perustelen tätä väitettä seuraavassa omaan tutkimukseeni ja aihetta koskevan tutkimuskirjallisuuteen nojaten. Asetan aluksi yrittäjyyskoulutuksen esiinmarssin yliopistoissa laajempaan yhteiskunnalliseen ja poliittiseen kontekstiin. Tämän jälkeen kuvaan sen saamia muotoja nyky­-yliopistoissa, ja lopuksi esitän kriittisiä huomautuksia kyseisen kehityskulun sokeista pisteistä. Kirjoitukseni tarkoituksena on tuoda esiin, että yltiöoptimistinen puhe yrittäjyyden siunauksellisuudesta johtaa yliopistopolitiikkaa harhateille tai vähintäänkin yksipuolistaa sitä tavalla, joka ansaitsee julkista kritiikkiä.

Salla Tuomolan essee pohjaa DECA-hankkeessa tehtyihin tutkimushaastatteluihin. Tuomola haastatteli 25 ihmistä heidän luottamuksestaan mediaan sekä siitä, millaisia odotuksia heillä on journalismille. Essee on julkaistu Journalisti-lehdessä 14.8.2024

Tribalism has emerged as a key term in political discussions — often used, but not clearly defined. Ilana Hartikainen and Zea Szebeni propose reconceptualising ‘tribalism’ to differentiate forms of political mobilisation. Tribalism, they argue, forms exclusive groups around shared values — and it’s gone global

Tällä hetkellä tekoäly on vallitseva ilmiö monilla aloilla. Samalla siihen liittyy myös monia pelkoja ja uhkakuvia. Erityisesti luovilla aloilla sen pelätään ja uskotaan korvaavan luovan työn tekijät. Keskustelusta usein kuitenkin unohtuu, että tekoälyä koulutetaan olemassa olevan aineiston perusteella. Onko tämä tekijänoikeuden kannalta sallittua? Entä voiko tekoäly olla tekijänoikeuden suojaan oikeutettu tekijä?

Tutkimuskonsortio DECA ja Turun yliopiston Tulevaisuuden tutkimuskeskus toteuttivat vuonna 2023 kaksi kyselytutkimusta: toinen päätoimittajille, toinen 15-79-vuotiaille suomalaisille, osin yhtenäisin kysymyksin.

Kommenttipuheenvuoro Oikeus-lehden numerossa 2/2023.

Blogiteksti perustuu Salla Tuomolan 10.3.2023 pidetyn väitöstilaisuuden lektioon.

Julkilausuma pohjautuu 26.1.2023 käytyyn pyöreän pöydän keskusteluun, johon osallistui parisenkymmentä medialukutaidon asiantuntijaa niin tutkimuksen, julkishallinnon kuin kansalaisyhteiskunnan kentiltä. Julkilausuman ovat allekirjoittaneet DECA:n lisäksi IMAGINE-hanke, CRITICAL-hanke, Sitra, Faktabaari, Kriittinen korkeakoulu ja Tiedonjulkistamisen neuvottelukunta.

Teksti on tuotettu taustaksi Pyöreän pöydän keskusteluun julkisen palvelun roolista alustojen aikakaudella 17.3.2023

Nopeasti muuttunut viestintäympäristö haastaa suomalaisen hyvinvointiyhteiskunnan turvallisuuden ja keskinäisen luottamuksen. Demokratian episteeminen toimintakyky algoritmien aikakaudella - konsortio (DECA) tutkii yhteiskunnan tiedollisia järjestelmiä, käytänteitä ja ongelmia yksilöiden, instituutioiden ja digitaalisten infrastruktuurien tasoilla.

DECA has a channel on SoundCloud that is filled with interesting podcasts on project’s themes, especially on communication rights, disinformation, and platformization. Interviewees include Tendai Chari (University of Venda), Karen Donders (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Marko Milosavljević (University of Ljubljana), and many others.

Tiivis kuvaus DECA-konsortion tutkimuksesta ja yhteistyöverkostosta.

Tieteellisen tutkimuksen tietosuojaseloste/-ilmoitus. EU:n yleinen tietosuoja-asetus 12–14 artiklat. Laatimispäivä: 1.12.2022.

Tieteellisen tutkimuksen tietosuojailmoitus. Tiedon episteeminen ymmärtäminen vastahegemonisissa positioissa Suomessa.