ALKU vai alasajo? Aluehallintouudistus ja ympäristöhallinnon politisoituminen Helsingin Sanomissa

Abstract

The article analyses the politicization of the debate concerning the renewal of the environmental administrationduring the reform project of the State Regional Administration in Finland. The data consists of 55newspaper articles in Helsingin Sanomat during 2008–2009. By using frame analysis, we recognized threedifferent frames through which the actors gave meanings to the reorganizing of environmental administration.The future of environmental administration was interpreted through the frames of nature protection,party politics and the inevitable reform of administrative structure. The most prominent actors in the publicdiscussion were environmental organizations, the representatives of Social Democrats, the Centre partyand the directors of the regional environmental centers. The newspaper itself was in a key position in termsof which actors got media coverage in the public debate and what kinds of topics were highlighted. Thearticle illustrates how the newspaper approached the substantial renewal of the environmental administrationmainly as an unavoidable systemic reform, thus leaving the politicization of the issue in the margin