Masculine tears, feminine tears - and crocodile tears : Mourning Olof Palme and Anna Lindh in Finnish Newspapers

The supposed ‘emotionalization’ of the public sphere has recently been the target of much hostile commentary, both lay and academic. In the news media, there certainly seems to be a growing interest in emotion, as more and more space is devoted to the representations of mourning in the coverage of major disasters or extraordinary deaths. In this study I look at the news coverage of the display of public grief in the Finnish newspapers following the murders of Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden in 1986, and Anna Lindh, the Foreign Minister of Sweden in 2003. The similarities between the Palme and Lindh cases give an opportunity to examine how the representation of mourning has changed over time. The second aim of this article is to explore how gender is constructed in the portrayals of grief: are we witnessing a change regarding the persistent stereotypes about the emotional woman and the unemotional man in the representations of grief or just a new deal in gendered emotions?Peer reviewe

The Personalisation of Conflict Reporting : Visual coverage of the Ukraine crisis on Twitter

This study explores the question of the blurring of traditional boundaries between the personal and the professional in relation to images tweeted during the Ukraine conflict. The study focuses on two Moscow-based correspondents, Shaun Walker and Alec Luhn, and a photojournalist, Paul Hansen, all of whom created parallel conflict narratives on Twitter while reporting on the Ukraine conflict for legacy newspapers. Their use of Twitter is examined here in the context of “personalised reporting” that allows for more opinion and displays of emotion than are typically acceptable in traditional news reporting. The results demonstrate the coexistence of the traditional media’s visualisation of conflict with that driven by social media logic.Peer reviewe

Grassroots Humanitarianism on YouTube : Ordinary fundraisers, unlikely donors and global solidarity

Social media have become important channels for directing humanitarian communication. Aid organizations increasingly use social networks and simultaneously we have seen the emergence of self-organizing volunteers who take on a variety of humanitarian tasks that previously belonged to institutional agents. The focus of this study is on user-created disaster appeal videos on YouTube, which are a type of citizen communication that occurs in the aftermath of a disaster. Appeal videos aim to raise funds for the disaster victims by acting as intermediaries between humanitarian organizations and the public. The study explores how these appeals try to create solidarity with the plight of disaster victims, and how viewers respond to these appeals from ordinary humanitarians. The article argues that this peer-to-peer moral education may help to get round the distrust of humanitarian organizations and may also be able to cultivate the idea of global solidarity within the everyday lives of YouTube viewers.Peer reviewe

Visual Gatekeeping in the Era of Networked Images : A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Syrian Conflict

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Value of Emotion : An examination of television journalists' notions on emotionality

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Disaster Aid as a Domain of Media and Humanitarian Politics

This chapter discusses the role of media and communications play in the construction of disasters. The construction of disasters refers to the meaning-making and political action related to disasters. The chapter addresses the relationship between communication, media and disasters from four perspectives. First, it explores the changing conceptions of disasters, in particular the definitional power of humanitarian discourses. Second, it examines the role of media and humanitarian communication in sustaining various political and economic interests. Third, this chapter explores how new media technologies have contributed to the visibility of disasters and to the empowerment of disaster-affected people. Fourth, the chapter addresses the role of disaster narratives in shaping how people make sense of disasters and the ways in which disasters are managed and responded to.Peer reviewe

“Despicable, disgusting, repulsive!!!” : Public emotions and moralities in online discussions about violence towards refugees

This article analyses the affective-discursive work that the image of an anti-asylum seeker demonstrator dressed like a member of the Ku Klux Klan and waving a Finnish flag generated in online platforms in Finland. Specifically, it focuses on how the vocabulary of disgust served to draw boundaries between “us” and “others,” thus reconstructing hierarchies of human worth and deservingness. The aim of the article is to discuss the role of disgust and related emotions in relation to what has become known as the European refugee crisis and whether the language of disgust allows for solidarity with the plight of asylum seekers.Peer reviewe

Flagging Finnishness : reproducing national identity in reality television

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Journalism and Witnessing

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Misfortunes, Memories and Sunsets : non-professional images in Dutch news media

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