Iiris Ruoho

Women’s magazines in the Nordic style: Politics, politicians and the welfare state

The article explores the engagement of women’s magazines with the political public sphere in Finland. The material for the study consists of the political content of three long-lived (1968–2008) women’s magazines that are still in existence. Women’s magazines in Finland have supported the rise of women in power from the 1960s onwards. Consequently, women’s magazines are being utilized in political performance in ways that should be put under critical scrutiny rather than bypassed as mere political advertising. Theoretically, the article draws on the debates around the personalization of politics and the emergence of celebrity politics. Furthermore, in studying these women’s magazines, the article highlights the particularity of the Nordic context.

Reality and Finnish TV Criticism

Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Tampere, FIN-33014 Tampere, tiiiru@uta.fi This article examines realism conceptions in Finnish TV criticism. The analysis concentrates on journalistic evaluations of long and middle-length serial dramas in TV2 (YLE) between 1961-1996. The intention is to analyze in detail in what ways journalistic television criticism has seen as important or less important the fact that series in one way or another participate in reality. The article starts with conceptualization of ‘realisms’ and continues by considering the substance of journalistic television critique, and its special characteristics. Following conceptualization, the article gives an empirical overview of the data, which consist of 411 critiques of different kinds. The qualitative analysis concentrates on reviews and critiques written about the following family series: Pääluottamusmies (1970), Rintamäkeläiset (1972), Oi kallis kaupunki (1975), Tankki täyteen (1978), and Kohtaamiset ja erot (1994). These five series are chosen because of their comparability and distinctiveness as regards the selectivity of social realism as convention and the ‘utility drama’ as discourse. As the study shows, the majority of the critiques establish some sort of a relationship between the dramas and ‘reality’ as well as the critics’ assumed connection to reality. On the general level of the analysis, these relationships and connections can be examined from three points of view, following Stuart Hall’s analogy on language (Hall 1997, 2425): reflective, intentional and constructionist. With the first view, critics evaluate whether or not existing reality is reflected in the TV series. According to the second view, the author, for example the writer or director, is considered to have her or his own unique way of seeing and talking about reality that can also be recognized by critics. In third case, criticism fairly openly builds its own reality, seemingly independently from the ‘reality’ portrayed in television drama.

Journalism and Gender

Abstract In this article, we raise some methodological questions regarding the study of journalism and gender. We start with the idea that in many studies, researchers tend to think that the relationship between gender and journalism is external, that is, gender and journalism are considered essentially separate phenomena. In such a scenario, journalism appears to be gender neutral. Instead of theoretically keeping journalism and gender apart, we suggest that it is worth studying journalism as a gendered institution with its own history, culture, and social roles. We ask how the understanding of the relationship between journalism and gender may change if different social, cultural, and conventional dimensions of journalism are examined. Our main argument is that journalism and its relationship to gender can be investigated systematically as a multidimensional object that highlights various aspects of both concepts, depending on the specific research focus. Based on our former study, we aim to develop a model for examining these diverse facets of journalism.