Kaarina Nikunen

The ethics of hospitality in changing journalism: A response to the rise of the anti-immigrant movement in Finnish media publicity

This article examines the role of the media in the rise of nationalist populism in Finland. The interplay between social media and mainstream media has facilitated the emergence of anti-immigrant agendas into the public debate, which has strengthened nationalist populist politics, despite mainstream journalism following professional ethics of balanced reporting. The article concludes that the traditional journalistic framework of agenda setting is not morally adequate for the new fragmented media environment. It proposes the ethics of hospitality (Derrida, Silverstone) with an emphasis on transnationalism as a moral goal for a multi-ethnic public sphere where everyone has the right to voice concerns and to be heard. Therefore, journalism ethics should address how public debate can be organized in such a way that the principle of hospitality can be achieved. The framework of agenda setting can allow inhospitable discourses to flourish, as the Finnish example shows. Theorisation of hospitality is connected with the need for transnational and cosmopolitan agendas.

Losing my profession: Age, experience and expertise in the changing newsrooms:

The article examines how the crisis in journalism was experienced in the Finnish newsrooms in the spring of 2010. Based on interviews conducted in six newsrooms, this article highlights changes in journalistic practices, and the ways in which these changes have affected professional identity and journalistic expertise, in particular, in terms of age. The change does not affect everyone in a similar way. Its implications are experienced differently according to the position and work history of individual journalists. The article points out two particular factors that had a specific impact on shaping the boundaries of the journalistic profession, and notions of journalistic identity, skills and values. These are the concurrent processes of the move towards convergent newsrooms and the implementation of pension packages to downsize the newsrooms. With the implementation of pension packages as a solution to downsize newsrooms, age became the defining factor for professional identity, capacities and skills in the Finnish newsrooms. This particular time of change was also characterized by the implementation of new technology in the newsrooms. Thus, the measures taken in newsrooms emphasized speed, technological skills and youth as characteristics that were needed to compete in the changing and increasingly convergent media markets. It is argued that journalistic identity is tightly bound to its practice. Changes in practice are reflected in professional identity and the qualities that are valued within the profession. During this time of transition, the older journalists, particularly, struggled to hold on to their professional values and notions of expertise when, in practice, they had difficulties in bringing their expertise into use in the new technology-centered newsroom structure. Research highlights the multiplicity and complexity of change, where taken-for-granted positions are challenged and put into circulation. It provides insight into changes in the professional imagination and shared journalistic values.

Porn Star as Brand: Pornification and the Intermedia Career of Rakel Liekki

akel Liekki (“Rachel Flame”) is probably the best-known Finnish female porn performer. Her career has ranged from painting to hardcore videos, Web presence, mobile phone services, newspaper and magazine articles, and television shows. She is a performer, host, producer, and writer who has both appeared in various adult productions and realized her own visions of pornography. As a vocal public discussant on pornography and commercial sex, Liekki has exceptionally flexible media agency. Liekki’s career is representative of the blurred boundaries between pornography and mainstream culture. No longer confined to the realm of shabby sex shops, pornography slides from one representational space to another and shifts increasingly toward mainstream popular culture. Porn’s general visibility has increased in a process termed pornographication (Driver) or, for simpler spelling, pornification: the expansion and success of the porn industry and play with hard-core representations in fashion, advertising, and other fields of popular culture. In what follows we explore pornification as a reorganization of pornography’s cultural position through analysis of Rakel Liekki’s career. With pornification we do not refer to “pornication” or envision a contemporary culture of fornication in the throes of moralistic nostalgia toward some bygone days of chastity. Rather, we aim to figure transformations in the cultural position and status of porn that require a rethinking of its very concept (Nikunen, Paasonen, and Saarenmaa, Pornification). Doing research on contemporary pornography necessitates stepping away from film as the dominant medium and considering the “cross-platform” nature of pornography. Intermediality—“intertextuality transgressing media boundaries” (Lehtonen 71)—and multimodality characterize contemporary media at large, and pornography is Porn Star as Brand:

Media, passion and humanitarian reality television:

The article explores affective economy in a humanitarian reality television. It shows the ways in which reality television is increasingly occupied with ‘doing good’ by investigating Australian originated series Go Back to Where You Came From. The international format has been sold to nine countries and produced in co-operation with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. By bringing together theorizations of affective economy and post-humanitarianism, the article examines the emotional register and moral claims attached to the imagery of asylum seekers and refugees, and the conditions of television production for gearing audience participation towards humanitarian action. In the heart of this investigation lies the question of media change and marketization of the humanitarian field that proposes new forms of solidarities and moralities in public. The article identifies not only the potential but also the critical challenges of the combination of reality format and humanitarian message.

Hopes of hospitality: Media, refugee crisis and the politics of a place

The article investigates the relevance of geographical imagination in refugee politics in the Mediterranean coast. It is based on empirical research conducted in Calabria, southern Italy, in a small village that in 1997 decided to host over 300 refugees that shipwrecked on its coast. By welcoming refugees the village, Badolato, appropriated politics of hospitality to gain new cultural and economic value for the village that was suffering from high unemployment rates and an ageing population. The story, exceptional as it was, soon attracted international media to cover the story of Badolato. The article depicts developments in the village over the course of 14 years and shows the force and changes over time of media publicity in the process. It points out the relevance of media for the process of geographical imagination and the contradictory and complex implications of the process.

The Humanitarian Makeover

We examine how the makeover paradigm is mobilized in contemporary humanitarian communications—a practice we call “humanitarian makeover.” We demonstrate its operation in the Finnish television programme Arman and the Children of Cameroon and Plans 2013 International Day of the Girl event. The analysis shows how helping distant others is configured within a makeover and self-transformation narrative, providing a stage for performance of an “ethical self.” We argue that while the humanitarian impetus is to disturb and redress global inequality and injustice, which includes exposing and interrupting the failures of neoliberalism, the makeover paradigm is intimately connected to and reinforces individualized “moral citizenship,” which conforms to and reinforces neoliberal values.

Difference in Reality: Ethnic Minorities and the Boundaries of the Nation in Reality TV in Finland

Reality TV has provided a new platform for ethnic minority performers in various European countries. This article explores the implications of such visibility by focusing on two Finnish reality TV shows: Talent and Big Brother. It is suggested that reality TV shows operate as a site where the definitions of the ordinary and the nation are being circulated, contested, and, at times, stretched. The article demonstrates the ways in which global format, production aims, and audience participation together challenge and expand the concept of Finnishness with transnational dimensions of citizenship and cross-border engagements. However at the same time the persistent nationalism in forms of conflicts and racism pushes through the global format. It is argued that representing difference carries particular contextual commercial value for reality formats applied particularly by strategies of diluting difference and emphasizing conflicts that limit the political potential of these representations.

In Between the Accented and the Mainstream: Cutting across Boundaries in Kniven i Hjärtat

The article discusses the Swedish fictional television drama Kniven i Hjärtat (KIH) as an accented drama depicting diasporic experience in contemporary Sweden. It is inspired by an ethnographic audience research conducted by the author among migrant teenagers. KIH, produced by Swedish public broadcasting company SVT (2004) is a mixture of realist drama and youth musical depicting life in Swedish multicultural suburb. It is argued that while KIH shares elements of Hamid Naficy?s (2001) concept of ? the accented? thematically and linguistically, the production of the series parts from Naficy?s understanding of the accented as alternative. Produced by the public service broadcasting company (SVT) KIH is situated in the mainstream media influenced by international television broadcasting, most evidently by the BBC. Moreover KIH seems to be berthed in the European public service broadcasting culture as it embraces the shifts in EBU?s multicultural policies.

Once a refugee: selfie activism, visualized citizenship and the space of appearance

ABSTRACT This article examines the social media campaign “Once I was a refugee” by former refugees as a response to the increasingly hostile political climate in Finland against refugees. With selfie activism, the campaign expanded the “space of appearance” and introduced new voice and visuality to the public debate. The case depicts politics of claiming citizenship and social value through self-presentation to counter views of refugees as economic burden, noncitizens, and surplus humanity. The empirical material is based on analysis of the Facebook and Twitter campaign and interviews with the participants. It is argued that selfie activism may occasionally, through new voice and visibility, expand the space of appearance and contribute to the rise of affective or counter-publics that can come together and make use of digital media for political action. However, the case also reveals how difficult it is to speak from a refugee position without being drawn into the discourse of deservingness.