Juha Herkman

The Structural Transformation of The Democratic Corporatist Model: The Case of Finland

Abstract As in many other European countries, the Finnish political public sphere has been mediatised and commercialised over the last three decades at the same time that structural changes have taken place in the national media systems. By using Finland as an example, article considers the structural transformation of the “Democratic Corporatist Model” defined by Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini in their /Comparing Media Systems/ (2004). Article also examines what the Finnish case could bring to the discussions on the public sphere and its relation to empirical analysis in general.

Convergence or intermediality? Finnish political communication in the New Media Age

The article considers political communication in the age of digital media and the internet by testing how the idea of convergence culture has emerged in Finnish political campaigning. The concept of convergence is compared here with the concept of intermediality. Instead of ‘melting into each other’, intermediality asserts that political communication takes place by increasing the number of media channels and communication technologies, which are inherently linked to each other, but which also have histories and traditions of their own – traditions that cannot be reduced to a single concept of convergence. Empirical analysis of Finnish political campaigns in 2006–2008 shows that traditions and institutions in local political cultures and media systems prevent the diffusion of convergence culture into political communication. This, in turn, deepens a divide between voter and media generations. Authoritative political performances of both politicians and journalists do not encourage the participatory practices of convergence culture.

The Life Cycle Model and Press Coverage of Nordic Populist Parties

The article traces the life cycles of the Nordic populist parties by exploring the relationship between media coverage and contemporary populist parties in Finland (Finns Party), Sweden (Sweden Democrats), Norway (Norwegian Progress Party) and Denmark (Danish Peoples Party). Empirically the study is based on a content analysis of 3337 journalistic articles published in the leading quality and popular newspapers of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark during the first parliamentary elections of the 2010s. The analysis confirms the life cycle model introduced in The Media and Neo-Populism. A Contemporary Comparative Analysis edited by Gianpietro Mazzoleni, Julianne Stewart, and Bruce Horsfield (2003, Praeger, Westport, CT), which found that parties in their insurgent phase gained more media attention than parties in their established phase. This study found populism currently a more important topic in Finland and Sweden, where populist movements were entering parliament, whereas in Norway and in Denmark, after long-term success, the domestic populist parties had become more mainstream and their media attention normalized. The popular newspapers tended to be more positive about populist parties than quality papers. However, these results can be explained partly by journalistic routines and by country-specific political conditions. Thus, further research is needed to prove the life cycle model.

Re-evaluating the relationship between politics and popular media:

There is a broad consensus about the inherent connection between today’s parliamentary politics and the media. Modern politics is therefore often defined as mediatized politics in which the logic of the mass media has become central to political agency and agenda setting (e.g. Mancini and Swanson, 1994; Mazzoleni and Schulz, 1999). Yet there is no consensus at all about the consequences of the shotgun marriage between politics and the media. Explanations of the issue vary from ‘neutral’ descriptions of the modernization and professionalization processes to more critical analyses of Americanization and the decline of the political ‘public sphere’. The most contested field in the media–politics-junction has been the role of the popular or entertainment media in politics. The opposing perspectives have stressed either the inconvenient or the empowering influences of entertainment on politics or civic society. A critical perspective has been common among media researchers and political scientists who rely on structural explanations of (Marxian-based) critical theory. This group has been interested in macro-level relationships between economy, society, politics and the media, and their focus has been more on social theories than on empirical analysis. The more positive perspective has been common among cultural scholars and researchers of communicative practices. This perspective has been more empirically grounded and has often focused on micro-level analyses of everyday life or political performances. Both perspectives have their advantages, but also their disadvantages. According to Liesbet van Zoonen (2005: 2) the main problem in encounters between politics and entertainment has been that ‘there is little knowledge but much opinion’. The confrontation between negative and positive views has continually circumscribed the understanding of the phenomenon and prevented the appearance of dispassionate analyses and fresh theorizations. I therefore agree with van Zoonen (2005: 4), who writes that: ‘entertainment in politics comes in various formats and qualities that need to be analysed in their particular contexts, with their particular features and their particular effects on the democratic project, before they can be denounced, cheered or blissfully ignored’. The main objective of this article is to make a brief meta-analysis of the perspectives evaluating the relationship between the popular media and politics, and through that analysis, to find ways to bridge the divide between opposing evaluations. First, I will outline a more detailed synthesis of perspectives in the relationship between politics

Articulations of populism: the Nordic case

ABSTRACT Populism as a concept is elusive and has been connected to very different political movements. Generally, populism’s connotations are rather negative and the term is often used pejoratively in the academic field as well. However, Ernesto Laclau has approached populism by arguing that populist reason is a manifestation of political logic in which group identification – formed through various signifiers such as ‘the people’, which are articulated as part of an ‘equivalence chain’ – eventually establishes political agency as a totality. This paper uses Laclau’s articulation theory to analyse the public construction of contemporary populism in the Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark. The analysis demonstrates that mainstream media frame populism rather negatively, although examples of the term’s positive identification with ‘the people’ are available, especially in the tabloid media. Thus, the positive identification behind the forming of populist movements clashes with the media discourse that prioritizes established journalistic views, practices and sources, making populism a ‘floating signifier’, that is, a concept that has several meanings which are contested in various public discourses. A general pattern in the construction of populism in Northern European multi-party democracies can be discerned, thus identifying the central role of nationalist and nativist identifications in contingent populist articulations. However, the differences between the Nordic countries emphasize a context-driven approach.

Next Stop: Multimodality: Report on the Multimodality and Culture Conference 8-9 June 2001 at the University of Tampere, Finland

Held on 8-9 June 2001, the Multimodality and Culture conference was organised by the Media Culture Programme at the University of Tampere with fir~ancial support from The Academy of Finland. The conference reflects a growing interest in questions of multimodality and intermediality. While this interest is relatively recent, multimodality (the use of more than one semiotic mode at the same time in a text or in a culture) denotes a long-standing phenomenon. The term ’multimodality’ refers firstfy to the fact that cultures always rely on more than one mode of representation. Secondly, it reminds us that all modes of

Old patterns on new clothes? Populism and political scandals in the Nordic countries:

The paper analyses political scandals connected to the contemporary populist parties of Denmark, Finland and Sweden. The dramaturgies of these scandals repeat the general patterns of political scandals identified in previous studies, but they also share special characteristics that make them a specific type of neo-populist scandal. The starting point of the typical neo-populist scandal occurs due to the moral transgression of a member of a populist movement, usually through the use of unacceptable language or behaviour, insulting non-native inhabitants or other minorities within the population. However, provocation and playing the role of the underdog are common strategies employed by populists, and a populist movement may even benefit from a scandal, though the consequences of the scandal depend on the life phase of the movement and on the status of the member involved in the scandal. The moral transgressions and political consequences of neo-populist scandals may serve as an indicator of the condition liberal democracy enjoys, but also reveal contextual differences in particular societies and their moral order.

Aporetic Apparatus: Epistemological Transformations of the Camera

Abstract In this article, we examine the epistemology of the camera today. In order to answer this question, we concentrate on three social and technological forms: the camera obscura, the photographic camera, and the digital camera. On the one hand, the camera extends our human sensibilities and helps us to obtain knowledge of the world. On the other hand, it works as a device for delusion, bodily vision and spectacle. Historically, these two functions are meshed together in complicated ways and this establishes the paradoxical epistemology of the camera. We argue that, even if contemporary debates about the truthfulness of the photographic image have persistently been tied to the digitisation of the photographic process, the very origin of these debates actually lies in the camera itself and its contradictory epistemology. The camera has worked, and still works, as an apparatus that relentlessly produces irresolvable ambiguity, aporia, between true knowledge and illusory vision.

Construction of Populism

Abstract The terminology of populism is often taken for granted, even though the very meaning of populism is quite unclear. The article approaches populism by exploring the meanings given to the term in the Nordic press during the first parliamentary elections of the 2010s in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. A combination of the quantitative content analysis and the qualitative frame analysis of the leading quality and popular papers is favoured. In the study of the use of populism in the British press the conclusion was that the term was used more or less explicitly in a pejorative way, although uses of the term varied and had no consistent logic. In the Nordic press recurring frames were found, but the meanings given to populism were only fully understood in their political and cultural contexts. The different life phases of the domestic populist parties as well as differences in Nordic political cultures especially explain the variation in the usage of the term.