From shuttle traders to middle-class consumers: Russian tourists in Finnish newspaper discourse between the years 1990 and 2014

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe “eastern tourist,” as a reference category to the visitors from Russia, has been a recurring feature in Finnish newspapers. Focusing on the leading Finnish national daily newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, this article explores how representations of Russian tourists as consumers have been changing in the Finnish mass media since the beginning of the 1990s until 2014. The article considers tourists as a discursive category, thereby introducing a discourse analysis approach to tourism studies. Three periods are differentiated: firstly, during the 1990s (when visitors from Russia were represented as “shuttle traders” bringing problems and disturbing social order in Finland); secondly, from the end of the 1990s until 2014 (when the newspaper discourse emphasized the economic gains from the Russian tourists and investigates peculiarities and ambiguities of their taste. At the time, Russian visitors were represented as middle-class tourists); thirdly, around the year 2014 (when the Russians were portrayed as the middle class with declining purchasing power and limited ability to travel, which brought loses in Finland). The analysis allowed us to observe how images of Russian tourists changed in the context of the evolving consumer culture in Russia and the neoliberal shift in the Finnish mass-media discourse.