Finnish Newspapers Research Articles

Public ‘say on pay’ activism in South Africa: Targets, challengers, themes and impact

Background: Shareholders and other stakeholders in South Africa are increasingly raising their concerns in public about seemingly excessive executive remuneration. Most of their criticism is rooted in the large and growing wage gap in the country.Aim: The authors investigated the nature of the entities whose executive remuneration policies and practices were publicly criticised, the types of challengers involved in this social movement, key issues raised and the impact that the challengers had on the targeted executives’ remuneration.Setting: Public activism involving five South African state-owned enterprises and 38 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.Methods: Executives and entities that were targeted in public were identified from three online financial newspapers published between 01 January 2010 and 31 December 2016. A total of 92 events were recorded involving 65 executives. Data on these executives’ emolument and three control variables were sourced from Bloomberg. Descriptive statistics and mixed-model analysis of variance tests were employed to evaluate the quantitative secondary data.Results: In line with the extant literature, most of the targets were large, well-known companies. Individual and minority shareholders represented the largest category of challengers, followed by asset managers and trade unions. The vast majority of concerns centred on the size and composition of executives’ packages and insufficient justifications provided by remuneration committees. The total pay, bonuses and other performance-based incentives decreased significantly in the year after the companies were publicly targeted.Conclusion: The findings suggest that public ‘say on pay’ activism can be an effective mechanism in addressing seemingly excessive executive emolument.

Representation of Children’s Views in Finnish Newspaper Media Across Three Decades

As the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, it is relevant to explore how understandings of children’s rights have appeared during these three decades. As a key public actor in society, the media provides an interesting field in which to study the salience of children’s rights in societal and public discussions. Thus, in this article, we examine how children’s views are represented in «Helsingin Sanomat», the main national newspaper of Finland, in 1997, 2007, and 2017. This examination is based on articles 12 and 13 of the UNCRC, where it is stated that children have the right to express themselves in all matters affecting them. The data collection for this article was based on a systematic random sampling method of these issues in the years mentioned above, and a systematic content analysis was also applied. The results show that, somewhat surprisingly, in 2017, less than a third of news stories concerning childhood and children reported children’s views on the matter, while in 2007, almost half of news stories reported on children’s views. Based on the data, it appears that macro-level issues remained within adults’ sphere of discussion during these years. English abstract Representation of Children’s Views in Finnish Newspaper Media Across Three Decades As the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, it is relevant to explore how understandings of children’s rights have appeared during these three decades. As a key public actor in society, the media provides an interesting field in which to study the salience of children’s rights in societal and public discussions. Thus, in this article, we examine how children’s views are represented in «Helsingin Sanomat», the main national newspaper of Finland, in 1997, 2007, and 2017. This examination is based on articles 12 and 13 of the UNCRC, where it is stated that children have the right to express themselves in all matters affecting them. The data collection for this article was based on a systematic random sampling method of these issues in the years mentioned above, and a systematic content analysis was also applied. The results show that, somewhat surprisingly, in 2017, less than a third of news stories concerning childhood and children reported children’s views on the matter, while in 2007, almost half of news stories reported on children’s views. Based on the data, it appears that macro-level issues remained within adults’ sphere of discussion during these years.

The effect of public investor activism on trust: A case study in the asset management sector

Orientation: Compromised global trust levels appears to be one of the lasting legacies of the 2007 financial crisis, also in the financial services industry. In order to rebuilt trust, it is not only important to identify the drivers of trust, but also to assess the contexts within which trust is cultivated. Research purpose: The researchers investigated the impact that this announcement and a subsequent apology by Futuregrowth’s chief investment officer (CIO) had on trust in the asset management sector. Motivation for the study: Trust could be compromised when investors publicly engage with investee companies on contentious issues. As most investor activism in South Africa takes place in private, a unique research opportunity presented itself when Futuregrowth Asset Management publicly announced that they would suspend their funding to six state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Futuregrowth is the biggest private fixed-income asset manager in Africa and is renowned as a responsible investor. Research approach/design and method: Content analysis was performed on 31 articles published in financial newspapers and magazines. In addition, semi-structured personal interviews were conducted with the CIO of Futuregrowth, another member of his team and six prominent local asset managers. Main findings: The findings suggest that asset managers who wish to engage with investee companies in South Africa, especially SOEs, should preferably do so in private as a first recourse. When they do decide to speak out in public, they should focus on maintaining both calculative and affective trust. Failure to recognise the importance of affective trust, especially during periods of socio-political and economic uncertainty, could jeopardise trust in the asset management sector. Practical/managerial implications: The evidence suggests that affective trust is increasingly important in the chosen sector. Asset managers should no longer only focus exclusively on credibility, reliability and competence but should also give due consideration to the affective trust elements of integrity and fairness. Contribution/value-add: The findings are particularly pertinent in countries with small stock exchanges and high degrees of director interlocking. The research methodology adopted in this study represents a novel contribution to research in the asset management field.

Global ‘revolution’ in the early nineteenth-century Finnish press

ABSTRACTThis article sheds light on the period of revolutionary turbulence by demonstrating how the concept of revolution was introduced in the Finnish print culture through foreign news reports during the early nineteenth century. The examination draws on the use of multilingual digital newspaper collections provided by the National Library of Finland. By combining key word searches to a close reading of newspaper texts, the article explores the ways in which different revolutionary movements were present in the Finnish newspapers during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The article proposes that the role of foreign news flow was crucial in the process of shaping the understanding of revolution in Finland.

Attribution of responsibility for sexual crimes beyond individual actors – construction of responsibility of offenders, victims and society in laypersons’ explanations

This study analyses laypersons’ explanations for sexual violence. It focusses on how the responsibility for sexual crimes is constructed and attributed, and moreover, what kind of effect this has on the attribution of blame. The research data consist of 105 opinion pieces published in the leading Finnish newspaper since the beginning of the 21st century. The theory-driven qualitative analysis utilises attribution theory and focusses on laypersons’ interpretations and explanations for unusual acts and events deviating from social norms. Attribution theory is commonly utilised in relation to micro-level actors, the offender and the victim, whereas in this article, it is broadened to include also society as a macro-level actor. The analysis reveals that the construction of responsibility derives from (I) the chronological presentation and explanation of sexual crimes; especially (II) the causality attached to chronological phases, which emphasises the victim’s actions prior to the crime; and (III) the construction of active female agency against male passivity or absence of the perpetrator. Moreover, blame is based on a combination of active agency, produced in the analysed explanations, and stereotypical features connected to female gender (e.g. rape myths).

Finaalirakenne suomenkielisissä teksteissä 1500-luvulta nykysuomeen

The Final clause in Finnish texts
 from the 16th century to the present day
 Modern Finnish language has a compact means of expressing that the action described in the embedded clause is the purpose of the action reported in the main clause (Hän on ponnistellut lujasti estä|ä|kse|en [prevent+INF+TRANSL+POSS.3SG] neuvottelujen kariutumisen ’He has made considerable effort in order to prevent the failure of the negotiations’) or that the main clause action is a prerequisite of the action reported in the subclause (Hän ei ole elänyt tarpeeksi kauan kerto|a|kse|en [tell+INF+TRANSL+POSS.3SG] löydöstään ’He hasn’t lived long enough to tell about his discovery’). This non-finite construction, named the Final clause (finaalirakenne) at its most scaled-down meaning can even convey simple posteriority (Edmonton meni jatkoon pudot|a|kse|en [fail+INF+TRANSL+POSS.3SG] seuraavalla kierroksella Minnesotalle ’Edmonton made the playoffs and/but lost against Minnesota in the following round’). The construction consists of the translative form of the A-marked infinitive. A possessive suffix is attached to the infinite verb form. It usually refers to the subject referent of the main clause.
 The Final clause appears to be a formation typical to literary language even though the translative of the A-marked infinitive has some lexicalized uses in local dialects. This paper was written by a group of Old Finnish researchers who decided to follow the factors behind its frequency in various old texts. As a result, a pilot study on the Final clause was conducted.
 The construction was investigated from three different perspectives: 1) diachronic changes in religious and legal texts, 2) the effect of genre, and 3) the author’s language background. Pieces of corpora, representing periods of Old Finnish, Early Modern and Modern Finnish, each 35 000 words in size, were determined, and the occurances of Final clause (or constructions close enough to it) were calculated.
 The results show that the Final clause, like non-finite clauses in general, was still seeking its shape in the earliest Biblical and legal texts. Few occurances of the Final clause could be defined in the 16th century texts. The translative of the A-marked infinitive had other uses, though. The Final clause spread rapidly in the 19th century and peaked in Elias Lönnrot’s legal texts as well as in the Bible translation eventually published in the 1930’s.
 From the beginning, the Final clause had a literal tone in it. Antti Lizelius (1708‒1795), parson of Pöytyä and Mynämäki counties and founder of the first Finnish newspaper, made frequent use of the Final clause in his Tiedotuskirja, local history research, while underused it in the newspaper Suomenkieliset Tieto-Sanomat, whose main goal was public enlightenment. Texts of several 19th century authors were investigated in the same manner in order to find out the effect of language background on the use of the Final clause. The writer’s mother tongue appeared to be a greater factor than the status of the text as original or translated. Non-native Finnish speakers were three times as likely to use the construction than native speakers.
 Many further questions arise from the findings of this paper which is a preliminary introduction to a so far little-researched non-finite construction. Nevertheless, it proved possible to follow the birth and development of the Final clause from available literal sources.

Social representations of polydrug use in a Finnish newspaper 1990–2016

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the social representations of polydrug use in the Finnish mainstream media. Social representations are shared ways of talking about socially relevant issues and have ramifications on both individual and socio-political levels.Design/methodology/approachThe social representations theory and the “What’s the problem represented to be?” analysis provided the theoretical framework. In total, 405 newspaper articles were used as data and analysed by content analysis and thematic analysis. The key tenets of the social representations theory, anchoring, objectifying and naturalisation, were used in data analysis.FindingsThe study found that polydrug use was written about differently in articles over the study period from 1990 to 2016. Three social representations were introduced: first, polydrug use as a concept was used to refer to the co-use of alcohol and medical drugs. This was seen as a problem for young people, which could easily lead to illicit drug use. Second, illicit drugs were included in the definitions of polydrug use, which made the social representation more serious than before. The typical polydrug user was portrayed as a person who was addicted to substances, could not quite control his/her use and was a threat to others in society. Third, the concepts were naturalised as parts of common language and even used as prototypes and metaphors.Originality/valueThe study provides a look at how the phenomenon of polydrug use is conceptualised in everyday language as previous research has concentrated on its scientific definitions. It also adds to the research of media representations of different substances.

Undeserving, Disadvantaged, Disregarded: Three Viewpoints of Charity Food Aid Recipients in Finland.

Since the economic recession of the 1990s, Finland has experienced the proliferation of charity food aid as a means of helping people who are afflicted by poverty. However, so far little research has been conducted regarding the food aid recipients. This article gives discursive, demographic, and experiential insights into charity food provision and reception in Finland. Drawing on quantitative survey data, online discussion data related to news published on Finnish newspapers’ web pages, and observation and interviews with food aid recipients, this article sheds new light on Finnish food aid recipients from three perspectives. First, public perceptions about food aid often portray food recipients as dishonourable and responsible for their own poverty. Secondly, the survey data shows that the main reason for people resorting to charity food aid is deep economic disadvantage, and further, that there is an unequal accumulation of disadvantage among the food aid recipients, illustrating internal diversity. Third, observational and interview data show that from the food recipients’ perspective, the food aid system has only a limited ability to answer even their immediate food needs, and for the recipients, food aid venues can become not only socially significant, but also socially demanding and emotionally burdening places.

Lexical Metaphor as Judgment: Attitudinal positioning of editorial writers in business newspapers

Drawing on appraisal theory, this paper aims to analyze how the attitudinal positioning of writers of the editorials of business newspapers can be construed by means of lexical metaphors. The focus is on judgment, the evaluation of human actors, because it indicates the subjective presence of a writer. Based on a dataset o3f 32 editorials of two Finnish business newspapers, the results show that the lexical metaphors used during assessments are mostly dead metaphors, representing the source domains of competition and sports, humans and animals, and war, battle, and violence. The most common targets of judgment are institutional actors that are described by the meanings of capacity, tenacity, and propriety. Economic actors are mostly evaluated positively while political actors are mostly evaluated negatively. Cases where economic actors are evaluated negatively and where individual persons are mentioned are unusual but do arise. In general, judgments in editorials reflect the shared values and ideological beliefs of the papers and their readers. Lexical metaphors offer a subtle way of praising and criticizing institutions and individual people, which makes them an important way of communicating as expected in a discourse community.

National Identity and the Shaping of Finnish Food Taste

Abstract This article examines the development of Finnish food taste during the nineteenth century when the process of canning, railroads, and steamships started breaking down the role of the environment as the principal factor in determining food habits. Food was one of the symbols that the Finnish national identity was built on before independence in 1917. The research is mostly based on the National Library's Digital Collections, which contain newspapers and magazines published in Finland before the 1920s. “National dishes” were mentioned in Finnish newspapers from the beginning of the 1880s. Highlighting the traditional Finnish foods attracted support, and newspapers tried, for example, to give talkkuna an authentic national significance. Finnish authorities were building a nation-state in the spirit of nationalism, yet the national food identity relied heavily on imported goods. Certain elements of Finnish food preferences date back to manufactured foods that came from other parts of Europe. Influences adopted from Switzerland were reflected in the popularity of Emmental cheese. By the beginning of the twentieth century, certain imported foods had become a part of the national food identity: coffee was considered the national beverage and rice and herring as supremely Finnish foods even though none of these goods were produced in Finland. Foods based on imported raw materials was marketed by emphasizing their “domestic origin” and Finnish brand in the early 1900s. Emmental was, for example, sometimes advertised as “Finnish ‘Swiss’ cheese.”

Female Bodies Adrift: Violation of the Female Bodies in Becoming a Subject in the Western Media

This article focuses on how the violation of female bodies in the case of mass harassment of women is rendered intelligible by the Western media and the refugees. Violation of female bodies is approached as a site for politicizing possibilities of becoming a subject in the Western media. Informed by Deleuzian notion of “becoming” and the subjectivation of the refugees, I argue that the understanding of “violation” is a central component in contributing to possibilities of becoming affirmed as a subject in the Western media. Empirical material subjected to critical text analysis includes a key text form the Finnish daily newspaper <em>Helsingin Sanomat </em>and refugee interviews. The analysis suggests that the repression of irreducible conceptions of “violation,” and the subsequent erasure of the uncertainty of a “self” in the process of becoming, yields to offering possibilities of becoming primarily in Western terms and the affirmation of Western ideological certainty in understanding mass harassment of European women by the refugees.

Julkinen kaivoskeskustelu diskursiivisena välienselvittelynä

The aim of this article is to approach one specific environmental topic and the public debate around this topic from a user-oriented perspective – through online news comments. The article analyses online news and comments sections from three Finnish online newspapers concerning the mining accident of Talvivaara company in November 2012. Discourse and discursive legitimation strategies are used as analytical tools with the focus of critical discourse analysis. The study aims to solve what kind of discourses the public debate contains and how these discourses are connected to certain legitimation strategies. In addition, the article also continues the conceptual deliberation about the concept of the public as a group of people participating in public discussion. The study shows that Talvivaara news and news comments consist four main strategies, authorization, rationalization, moral evaluations and mythopoiesis, used for legitimation, relegitimation and delegitimation. However, the parties differ in the way they utilize these strategies and different discourses. Consequently, online news commenting appears as a unique part of the public debate about the topic, rather than remaining marginal flaming. The users tend to absorb the role of the public as a part of the public showdown about the shared issue.

Renewable energy in the news: Environmental, economic, policy and technology discussion of biogas

Decentralised production and consumption of biogas is often argued to provide multiple opportunities for accelerating the transition towards sustainable development. This research focuses on the long-term coverage of biogas in two widely read Finnish newspapers. The results show a relatively voluminous professional but weaker and scattered mainstream media coverage of biogas. Four key storylines of public debate relevant for sustainability transition are investigated. First, the environmental impacts of biogas have been described under strikingly positive framings highlighting a potential for various environmental benefits. In particular, growing emphasis has been placed on natural resource management following the idea of circular economy. Second, the economic storyline has casted doubts on profitability of biogas production by emphasising the need for public subsidies. Newspaper coverage has focused on the micro level economic performance of energy producers and left the macro level economic implications of biogas with little attention. Third, the energy policy storyline has framed biogas predominantly as a local-level solution without extensively discussing a national level target setting for biogas. Fourth, the technology storyline has been relatively thin and it has emphasised the novelty of biogas production without highlighting any major technological problems or risks. Overall, the newspaper coverage of biogas has not seriously challenged the dominant energy discourse taking the centralised energy production as a self-evident overall context of national energy system. The results suggest that there exists a considerable variation between different media and between different national contexts. These variations should be taken into account when designing and implementing energy policies.

Established ideas from established institutions: austerity and structural reforms in the Finnish economic policy debate

ABSTRACTInstead of alternative economic ideas or institutional shifts, the post-financial crisis conjuncture has witnessed the persistence of neoliberal ideas and the strengthening of the institutions implementing them. Instructed by ideational institutionalism, this article analyzes the interplay between ideas and institutions by examining the public debate on economic policy in Finland during the euro crisis. We show how ideas formed by the dominant institutions of Finnish economic policy-making dominated the debate in the leading Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in the years 2009–2014. The media and the elites coalesced around a consensus built by the Ministry of Finance and EU institutions, which demanded austerity and structural reforms to the Finnish economy. Our findings support claims that established institutional forces prevent ideational shifts even during major crisis periods. The media takes part in this through its unwillingness to provide alternative viewpoints on consensual political issues, thus strengthening a post-democratic public sphere.

Politics of Space in News Media: Mapping Religion in Four Finnish Newspapers (2007–2011)

In this article, we examine religion in the news media by applying a spatial approach. Our content analysis of journalistic reporting on religion is based on a study of four Finnish newspapers over a five-year period. The data shows that the space of religion in the Finnish newspapers comprises complex dynamics connected with place, embedded in journalistic conventions and practices. Journalistic practices and the segmentation into newspaper sections result in a strict separation among local, national, and global themes related to religion, consequently erecting boundaries between inclusion and exclusion, proximity and distance, and centre and periphery associated with the religion in question. We conclude with a reflection on the politics of space and its significance in positioning religion not only in the studied newspapers but also in Finnish society and in Europe at large.

Is Financial Regulation Good or Bad for Real Estate Companies? \u2013 An Event Study

This study investigates how three regulatory reforms undertaken in the aftermath of the global financial crisis have affected returns of real estate companies. The three reforms are aimed at regulating different segments of the market – Basel III targets banks, and could restrict the availability of bank debt to the sector; the Alternative Investment Fund Management Directive (AIFMD) targets funds, which could increase compliance costs and reduce the potential investor pool; the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) is aimed at derivative trading and could impact the cost of debt capital. We employ an event study methodology using daily stock returns of real estate companies and identify the regulatory events through news published in major international financial newspapers and news agencies. Our results show different responses across the three regulations. For Basel III we find support for the regulatory burden hypothesis of the bank lending channel for small real estate firms and firms with low debt-to-equity ratios as they cannot diversify their funding sources. The direct regulatory effect as tested using AIFMD announcements supports the profit-based reaction hypothesis for large firms. We also show that the news have asymmetric effects with tighter regulation news more frequently leading to significant responses in average abnormal returns (AARs) than loosening regulation news.

The Framing of Climate-Change Discourse by Shell and the Framing of Shell’s Climate Change-Related Activities by The Economist and The Financial Times

This article presents a qualitative study of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group’s (further - Shell) corporate image building in relation to climate change and how this image is represented in the British financial press. The material of the study involves the official 2014 Shell’s annual report (further - AR) and online coverages of Shell’s climate change-related activities by the leading British financial newspapers, The Economist and The Financial Times (further – The FT). Shell’s image of climate change is investigated by means of identification of conceptual metaphors viewed through the lenses of the methodological apparatus of cognitive linguistics. Conceptual metaphors identified in the 2014 AR are subsequently juxtaposed with conceptual metaphors associated with Shell’s climate-change activities in The Economist and in The FT. The results reveal that Shell’s 2014 AR involves the following conceptual metaphors associated with climate change: ‘Climate Change as a Journey’, ‘Climate Change as a Battle’, ‘Shell as a Responsible Citizen’, ‘Shell as a Caring Corporation’, ‘Climate Change as Growth’, and ‘Climate Change as Money’. In contrast with these conceptual metaphors, The Economist represents Shell’s climate change activities in 2014 via ‘Shell as an Immoral Corporation’ and ‘Shell as a Sinner’. The FT frames Shell’s climate change agenda in 2014 by means of conceptual metaphors ‘Climate Change as Growth’, ‘Climate Change as a Journey’, and ‘Climate Change as Money’ respectively. The discrepancies between Shell’s self-image of climate change and its representations by The Economist and The FT are further presented and discussed in the article.

A general pattern in the construction of economic newsworthiness? Analyzing news factors in popular, quality, regional, and financial newspapers

Journalists use news factors to construct newsworthy stories. This study investigates whether different types of news outlets emphasize different news factors. Using a large-scale manual content analysis ( n = 6489), we examine the presence of seven news factors in economic news across four different outlets types (i.e. popular, quality, regional, and financial newspapers). Results suggest that popular and regional newspapers particularly rely on the news factors of personification, negativity, and geographical proximity. Quality newspapers, instead, employ a rather general pattern of news factors, whereas the financial newspaper consistently relies on less news factors in its reporting. Findings urge scholars to move toward a more detailed understanding of how newsworthiness is constructed in different types of news outlets.

FinnFN 1.0: The Finnish frame semantic database

The article describes the process of creating a Finnish language FrameNet or FinnFN, based on the original English language FrameNet hosted at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California. We outline the goals and results relating to the FinnFN project and especially to the creation of the FinnFrame corpus. The main aim of the project was to test the universal applicability of frame semantics by annotating real Finnish using the same frames and annotation conventions as in the original Berkeley FrameNet project. From Finnish newspaper corpora, 40,721 sentences were automatically retrieved and manually annotated as example sentences evoking certain frames. This became the FinnFrame corpus. Applying the Berkeley FrameNet annotation conventions to the Finnish language required some modifications due to Finnish morphology, and a convention for annotating individual morphemes within words was introduced for phenomena such as compounding, comparatives and case endings. Various questions about cultural salience across the two languages arose during the project, but problematic situations occurred only in a few examples, which we also discuss in the article. The article shows that, barring a few minor instances, the universality hypothesis of frames is largely confirmed for languages as different as Finnish and English.

Finnish women, German pigs and a translator: Translation consolidating the performance of “brotherhood-in-arms” (1941–44)

ABSTRACTFrom June 1941 to September 1944, northern Finland was the host for the Finnish–German military alliance and a space of military as well as civilian interaction and interconnections. As such, the space also became a translation space that called for different forms of mediation on both sides of the alliance. One of the translating agencies was Department Ic of the German Staff (Armeeoberkommando 20) that was responsible, for example, for monitoring the Finnish press. This article analyses one seemingly insignificant translation that was produced as a part of Ic’s daily operative routine in December 1942. Immediately after its publication in the local Finnish newspaper, the German translation of a feuilleton circulated in the German units, causing much annoyance on the Finnish side. By adopting Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, translation is discussed as a powerful weapon in the German campaign to realign the performance of brotherhood-of-arms.