Propaganda rebranded? Finland’s international communication from the Kantine committee to the Mission for Finland report

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis joint article starts with Finland’s nation branding to look at image-building activities as context and path-dependent activities. The main empirical example will be Finland’s image-building efforts between 1988 and 2011. Despite changes in tone and methods, the 2011 Mission for Finland-report on the nation’s brand and the 1990 Kantine-report were both parts of a continuum in Finland’s image policy practices. In an effort to contribute to studies drawing historical comparisons between image crafting policies, we would like to suggest that different contexts in fact produced different patterns of the same phenomenon, different expressions of the same urge to present Finland to the world for what was perceived as pressing political, economic, and identity-based reasons. On this basis, our article suggests a series of variables with which to organise differences and similarities between the development of Finland’s 1980s–1990s public diplomacy and its 2008–2011 branding committee and following campaign.