Articulations of Populism : the Nordic Case

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.Peer reviewe

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

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Populism in political cartoons : caricatures of Nordic populist leaders

This article analyses political cartoons that depict contemporary populist politicians in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden between 2005 and 2015, a period which focuses on the electoral successes of these movements. The hypothesis is that by analyzing cartoons we can explore the underlying moral and normative confrontations linked to current political populism in the Nordic liberal democracies, which arose during the insurgent phase of the domestic right-wing parties. In total, 60 political cartoons are analyzed by means of content categorization and visual semiotics. The most popular caricatures in the cartoons depicted the leaders of the populist parties, while the most common signifiers linked the populism in the cartoons explicitly to fascism, Nazism, nativism, and racism. In this, the cartoons differed from news journalism, reflecting the specific role of cartoons in public opinion discourse and indicating special characteristics that derive from particular political contexts and also the cartoonists' own perspectives.Peer reviewe

Populistiskandaalit uutena poliittisen skandaalin muotona : Esimerkkeinä Halla-ahon ja Immosen tapaukset

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The Finns Party: Euroscepticism, Euro Crisis, Populism and the Media

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The Life Cycle Model and Press Coverage of Nordic Populist Parties

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Aporetic Apparatus : Epistemological Transformations of the Camera

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Pakko vapauteen: toimittajan työ muutoksessa

Kirja-arvio: Luostarinen, Heikki & Raittila, Pentti (toim.) (2014). Journalistin vapaus. Tampere: Vastapaino.Non peer reviewe