Exploiting the Discursive Opportunity of the Euro Crisis: The Rise of The Finns Party

Peer reviewe

Social Media and the Emergence, Establishment and Transformation of the Right-Wing Populist Finns Party

This paper assesses the significance of social media for the Finns Party and the related anti-immigration movement from 2007 to the present day, in light of theories on the relationship of populism and social media. These include people-centrism, disenfranchisement, homophily, the attention economy, media elitism, and (lack of) communicative resources. Tracing the historical trajectory of the Finnish anti-immigration movement and the Finns Party, I argue that the Finnish case is an example of a movement being born online and using social media to build a political identity and strategically gain influence through a party, eventually transforming it from the inside out—rather than the party strategically using social media for its purposes, as is sometimes assumed in party-centric literature. While acknowledging the continued importance of parties, research on contemporary populist movements must take into account the political engagement of citizens facilitated by online media.Peer reviewe

Developing and Developed Countries, States and Corporations at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, 2015

Two simple rankings tell much about what is at stake, when world leaders meet in Paris in late November to negotiate a global treaty on climate change. One is the ranking of top economies in the world, and the changes in this ranking from 1992 to today. The other is the ranking of the largest corporations in the world, and what these corporations invest in

Moral justifications in the media debate on globalization in Finland, 1995–2014

This article presents a methodological tool, Justifications Analysis, and uses it to analyze the debate on globalization in Finnish mass media between 1995 and 2014. Justifications Analysis focuses on the moral principles evoked to justify arguments, something that tends to be overlooked by most established approaches to media content analysis. Regarding the frequency of coverage, it is found that the debate in Finland deviates from the global issue attention cycle and lasts longer, driven by national key events. Concerning the groups of speakers, the Global Justice Movement is found to have initiated the debate; the elites are divided into two groups, one defending and the other opposing the movement. Moral justifications are used extensively. All parties to the debate justify their arguments by referring to the common good, but disagree over whether it should be defined in terms of market worth, equality and democracy, national values, or some combination of these.Peer reviewe

Affective blocs : Understanding affective polarization in multiparty systems

Research has suggested that affective polarization (AP)—the extent to which partisans view each other as a disliked out-group—has increased, especially in two-party political systems such as in the US. The understanding of AP in multiparty systems remains limited. We study AP in Finland, characterized by a strong multiparty system and a low level of ideological polarization, between 2007 and 2019. We find that AP has increased, driven mainly by voters evaluating their least favorite party more negatively. We also propose an approach that goes beyond earlier literature, which has mostly used a single aggregate metric to measure AP. Using latent profile analysis, we find that voters are grouped into blocs that view some parties positively and others negatively. This suggests that the complex dynamics of AP in multiparty democracies involve relationships between not just individual parties but between what we call affective blocs that span across party lines.Peer reviewe

The climate change movement and political parties: Mechanisms of social media and interaction during the 2019 electoral period in Finland

Peer reviewe

Familiarity as a tool of populism : Political appropriation of shared experiences and the case of Suvivirsi

490Populist argumentation claims to represent ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’, appealing to emotions and reacting to a sense of crisis. By analysing a public debate in Finland in which populist arguments appropriate a culturally shared, familiar experience – that of singing Suvivirsi, the Summer Hymn – I argue that evoking familiarity is an effective way of ‘doing populism’. Analysing media texts from 2002 to 2014 and a questionnaire to political candidates in 2011, and using Laurent The´venot’s sociology of engagements, the article shows that appeals to the familiarity of the hymn are particularly compatible with the populist valorization of the experience of the common people. Familiarity thus constitutes a central tool in the toolkit of populism. Remembering the shared experience of singing the hymn bonds the assumed ‘people’ together and gives an emotional charge to populist arguments. By drawing on pragmatist political sociology and analysing politics ‘in action’ in everyday disputes, the paper makes a novel contribution to the scholarship of populism.Peer reviewe

Populist knowledge : ‘Post-truth’ repertoires of contesting epistemic authorities

‘Post-truth politics’, particularly as manifested in ‘fake news’ spread by countermedia, is claimed to be endemic to contemporary populism. I argue that the relationship between knowledge and populism needs a more nuanced analysis. Many have noted that populism valorises ‘common sense’ over expertise. But another populist strategy is counterknowledge, proposing politically charged alternative knowledge authorities in the stead of established ones. I analyse countermedia in Finland, where they have played a part in the rise of right-wing populism, using a combination of computational and interpretive methods. In my data, right-wing populists advocate counterknowledge; they profess belief in truth achievable by inquiry, not by mainstream experts but alternative ones. This is a different knowledge orientation from the valorisation of ‘common sense’, and there is reason to believe it is somewhat specific to contemporary right-wing anti-immigration populism. Populism’s epistemologies are multifaceted but often absolutist, as is populism’s relationship to power and democracy.Peer reviewe

The Science–Policy Interface as a Discourse Network : Finland’s Climate Change Policy 2002–2015

In this article, we argue that the science–policy interface can be understood as a discourse network constituted by discursive interaction between scientific organizations and other actors that both use scientific arguments in conjunction with other policy arguments. We use discourse network analysis to investigate the climate change policy process in Finland between 2002 and 2015, focusing on the role of and relationships between scientific actors and arguments in the discourse networks. Our data consist of policy actors’ written testimonies on two law proposals, the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (2002) and the enactment of the Finnish Climate Law (2015). Our results show that two competing discourse coalitions have influenced the development of climate change policy in the 2000s. In 2002, the dominant coalition was economic, prioritizing economic growth over climate change mitigation. In 2015, the climate coalition that argued for ambitious mitigation measures became dominant. The majority of scientific actors were part of the dominant economy coalition in 2002 and part of the dominant ecology coalition in 2015. The centrality of scientific arguments increased over time, and both discourse coalitions used them progressively more. These developments reflect the increasingly central position of science in Finnish climate policymaking. We contribute to the literature on the science–policy interface by operationalizing the interface as a set of connections in a discourse network and by showing how the analysis of discourse networks and their properties can help us understand the shifts in the role of science in policymaking over time.Peer reviewe

Who got their way? : Advocacy coalitions and the Irish climate change law

Which organisations saw their positions on two contentious issues reflected in the Irish climate law of 2015, and what role did advocacy coalitions play in the policy process? These questions are answered drawing theoretically from the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and by conducting a network analysis of survey data collected from the organisations involved in the national climate policy process. The study finds that several institutionally important or economically powerful organisations, particularly those involved in the agricultural sector, as well as the government parties saw their preferences reflected in the law. This resulted in legislation that excluded binding emission reductions targets, differentiating it from similar laws introduced in other European countries. Organisations in favour of stronger regulation formed a coalition to advocate for their positions, but they largely failed to get their way.Peer reviewe