Finnish Newspapers Research Articles

Reception of Finnish translations of contemporary Russian fiction: unveiling cultural perceptions through book reviews

ABSTRACT This article investigates the image of Russia and Russian literature conveyed through book reviews of Finnish translations of contemporary Russian fiction. It also explores the reception of Russian literature and the motivation of Finnish audiences to read it. The research material comprises book reviews of contemporary Russian fiction translated into Finnish in the twenty-first century. The reviews, gathered from Finnish newspapers, magazines, and book blogs, provide a comprehensive overview of the perspectives and expectations of Finnish readers regarding Russian literature. A data-driven analysis shows that translated literature is expected to provide insights into Russia, either reinforcing stereotypes or offering new understandings. The image of Russian literature is shaped by previous experience of Russian classics but is still considered an important source of knowledge. The analysis reveals that Finnish readers are motivated to read Russian literature primarily for its potential to provide insights into Russian society, as the literature is often relied upon as a trusted source of knowledge. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the reception of Russian literature and the role of translated Russian literature in shaping Finnish image of Russia and Russian literature.

Dealing with the Quiet Opposition? News Coverage of Climate Skepticism in Two Finnish Newspapers 1990–2021

ABSTRACT This article examines news coverage of climate skepticism in two Finnish newspapers between 1990 and 2021. It approaches climate skepticism as a professional problem that involves a tension between conventional professional ideals that underscore balanced coverage of conflicts and emerging ideals that stress communicating climate change responsibly. Content analysis focused on two core forms of climate skepticism that have remained relatively stable throughout the 31-year research period: evidence and process skepticism. The presence of all kinds of skeptical contents (skeptical arguments, arguments against skepticism, and descriptions of skepticism) was examined to evalutate the overall media visibility of climate skepticism. The analysis then focused specifically on the coverage of skeptical arguments. The role of sources as well as the use of journalistic voice in the presentation of skeptical contents was examined. This study elaborates earlier anecdotal accounts concerning the limited public role of climate skepticism in Finland. Four per cent of news articles included sources who were quoted presenting their own skeptical views. Skeptical arguments were mainly presented by quoting foreign sources whereas arguments against skepticism were presented by quoting domestic climate scientists. “Climategate” caused the most notable increase in the volume of skeptical contents during the research period.

Press Subsidies and Business Performance of Newspaper Publishing in Three Nordic Media Welfare States

The Nordic countries have been regarded as so-called “media welfare states.” Despite the large amount of public money used on press subsidies over the decades in the Nordic countries, there is not much academic research on the financial performance of the newspaper publishing industry in these countries. This study examines the “media welfare state” approach to public support for newspapers and the financial performance of newspaper companies in three Nordic countries: Finland, Sweden, and Norway. Our data consists of the key financial figures of newspaper publishing companies in the aforementioned countries from 2005 to 2019. Based on our analysis, we argue that direct press subsidies in Sweden and Norway have not been able to prevent a decrease in the number of titles and, importantly, have resulted in a number of subsidy-dependent news outlets unable to survive on their own income. By contrast, the Finnish newspaper publishing industry has been in a better financial situation in terms of almost all indicators and throughout the review period, despite Finland abandoning direct press subsidies in the 1990s.

Original sin or natural order: Dialogical construction of social knowledge of animal production

AbstractThis research examines the public discussion around animal production in Finland. Applying a dialogical approach to social representations theory, we elucidate the hotly debated nature of animal production by analysing news articles (N = 50) and the related reader‐produced comments (N = 1501) in Finnish newspapers. We employed qualitative methods for analysing multivoicedness and dialogue to identify ego–alter pairs constructed in the material in relation to the object of animal production. Four prevalent ego–alter pairs were identified: advocates for animal rights–animal production defenders, producers–consumers, orthodox–unorthodox Christians and provincials–urban dwellers. The study contributes to the study of everyday knowledge by showing how various contradictory understandings of the same topic are generated in public discourse. The research also demonstrates how the theoretical concept of ego–alter embedded in the social representations theory can be empirically utilised in analysing debates in contemporary media environments and to shed light on the dialogical dynamics around the discussions.

MACHINE TRANSLATION IN TRANSLATING BUSINESS TEXTS: MYTH VERSUS REALITY

The translation of various types of texts is not a challenge anymore nowadays since the market offers several types of machine translation. But how reliable is it compared to human translation? In the present article we focus on a business article issued by a Romanian financial newspaper and we translate it into English with the help of Google translate, SDL Free Translator and Microsoft Bing. Then we analyze the differences provided by these three tools and observe the advantages and drawbacks of machine translation compared to human translation.

“Jos et aloita, mikään ei muutu”: Tulevaisuuksien rakentuminen median sijoitusdiskursseissa

Over the past few years, individuals have become increasingly interested in investing and this investment boom is also reflected in news media content. Investing is an activity based on predictions and expectations about the future that seeks to actively influence accumulation of wealth and thus one’s own future. This study focuses on imagined futures in investment discourse and the performative role of imagined futures in the construction of financial markets and market society as a whole. The data spans the years 2015–2022 and consists of a 1.2-million-word corpus of articles and reader comments from four Finnish newspapers. This corpus is analysed using corpus-assisted discourse studies, combining quantitative and qualitative text analysis. In the light of the material, the future is imagined both from an individual perspective and from broader global or societal perspectives. Investors’ individualistic futures are mainly imagined as positive and can therefore motivate people to invest. Broader visions of the future are more negative, for example the idea that in the future society will not afford to pay pensions, which in turn requires the individual to prepare through investing. The investor is predominantly seen as a neoliberal subject who takes responsibility and is able to influence their own future.

Technology hype, promises, and expectations: The discussion on small modular reactors in the Finnish newspaper ‘Helsingin Sanomat’ in 2000–2022

While the construction of collective promises is vital to the success of any techno-scientific innovation, it also entails the risk of overpromising and cycles of hype and disappointment. This article explores the discursive construction of the nuclear sector’s latest promise concerning small modular reactors (SMRs), using Finland as an example. It provides a brief overview of the Finnish context of SMR development and analyzes it's coverage in the leading Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat 2000–2022. Efforts at promise construction have so far been aimed at building legitimacy for SMRs, while strengthening credibility – another key element of successful promise construction – has only just begun. The increasing number of SMR-related articles indicates a growing hype, but the absence of a corresponding ‘hype language’ suggests that the considerable media attention does not automatically translate into emphatic media coverage and discursive hyping.

Agents of change or victims of transition? Media framings on household roles during the energy crisis

The energy crisis that began in late 2021 and escalated after the war in Ukraine in early 2022 was seen as a disruption accelerating the energy transition in Europe. It forced households to save energy and change their patterns of energy use in a struggle to cut dependency on Russian energy, and in public discussions, various kinds of agency were required from and allocated to households. In this article, we analyze a total of 220 articles on energy use published in the main Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, during the energy crisis between 1 November 2021 and 31 October 2022. We investigate how household agency driven by the energy crisis is framed in the media by analyzing the variety of roles assigned to households and the framings of the agency attached to those roles in relation to mitigating the energy crisis. The analysis provides insights into how households are embedded within the energy system and whether and how they are expected to facilitate the energy transition; moreover, the article contributes to a better conceptualization of the understudied roles and agency of households in transitions.

Selecting and Editing of Readers’ Letters in the Late 19th-Century Finnish Press

This article shows that readers’ letters were selected and edited in late 19th-century Finnish newspapers for a variety of reasons. The criteria for selection and editing fit the four rules identified by professor of journalism Karin Wahl-Jorgensen for the selection of readers’ letters in modern newspapers and it also demonstrates the 1890s newspapers’ role as gatekeepers and the continuing professionalization of journalists. The editors considered the selection and editing of readers’ letters demanding and frustrating, but they also saw themselves as men of principle, the defenders of the free word. The research sources include the correspondence columns and the editors’ writing instructions to the readers in the 1890s press of the Grand Duchy of Finland.

The media campaign against denunciations as a tool of nationalist mobilisation in Finland, 1899–1917

This article examines the role of the print media in a campaign against political denunciations in the Grand Duchy of Finland from 1899 to 1917. It explores how the public condemnation of denunciations and denouncers evolved into a means for Finnish nationalist activists to raise national awareness and mobilise citizens against the integration policies of the Russian government. The source material includes Finnish newspapers and magazines, analysed through qualitative and computational methods, and a corpus of letters between citizens and the Governor-General. The article shows that the increase in the media coverage of denunciations was linked to the imperial integration policies, and that newspapers across party lines framed the denunciations as a national threat. The anti-denunciation campaign culminated during the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, when the nationalist news media published extensive name lists of denouncers based on findings from the confiscated papers of the imperial authorities. Overall, the article suggests that the media campaign against denunciations effectively suppressed the practice of denunciation in Finland, even if it also fostered an atmosphere of ubiquitous surveillance and may have inspired some individuals to become denouncers.

Free Press, Regulated Competition

This paper examines newspaper cartels, a largely unoccupied field in media history, from the perspective of longevity. We analyse Finnish newspaper industry from the 1910s to 1970s and show that newspapers sought to regulate various aspects of competition, such as subscription prices, advertisement tariffs, and newsprint prices. Data indicates that political rivalry shaped the newspaper cartel collaboration until late 1950s: the cartel was set up by right-wing and centrist papers and, unlike in other Nordic countries, the Social Democratic press remained outside of the association until 1958. Political shocks of the Finnish Civil War in 1918 and the Second World War also changed the composition of the cartel. The era of private cartels in the newspaper industry gradually started to fade away as a result of anti-cartel laws in the 1960s and governmental anti-inflation measures in the 1970s. We conclude that the economics of newspaper industry and the cartelisation of the wider business environment, newsprint suppliers in particular, encouraged newspapers to co-operate with each other. The results of this article increase the understanding on the collaborative and competitive environment of newspaper companies, but also contributes to broader questions on cartels and their inner dynamics.

Post-publication gatekeeping practices: Exploring conversational and visual gatekeeping on Finnish newspapers’ Instagram accounts

Abstract News media share gatekeeping power with social media platforms and audiences in the digital news environment. This means news media is no longer the sole gatekeeper when gatekeeping is viewed post-publication, that is after news content has been published and entered circulation. In this study, we approach interacting and commenting on social media as post-publication gatekeeping practices. This means gatekeeping materialises as and in social interaction, as conversational gatekeeping. We engaged in a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Instagram posts and comments on Finnish newspapers’ Instagram accounts during a period of one year (April 2019–March 2020) to explore how conversational gatekeeping emerges in the increasingly visual and multimodal social media environment. We contribute to the emerging stream of post-publication gatekeeping research by showing how multimodal Instagram content initiated four different styles of performing conversational gatekeeping: affirmative, critical, corrective, and invitational styles. Our typology helps to understand the social interactional relationship between news media and their audiences in general, as well as the micro-level practices of post-publication gatekeeping in particular.

Constructing a regime of truth to support palliative care at risk

For decades, Finland, along with many other European countries, has applied austerity politics in which especially the female-dominated spheres of life, such as long-term care, have been the targets of savings. In this societal context, a hospice focusing on particularly demanding palliative care was at risk of redundancies. The article illustrates how a local regime of truth about the hospice was discursively constructed, supported and contested in an influential Finnish newspaper. A regime of truth is formed when a certain discourse becomes dominant, in this case, the good work done in the hospice and the need for its continuity. The data consist of newspaper articles covering the topic of the redundancies that the hospice was facing. The discourse analysis reveals three main gendered discourses: professionalism, de-medicalisation and de-institutionalisation. Professionalism stems from the masculine field of medicine, and the two latter discourses align with female-dominated long-term care, which are located lower in hierarchies of care.

Corporate Governance, Media Coverage, and Corporate Environmental Protection Investment: Empirical Evidence from Listed Companies in China’s High-Pollution Industries

In this study, regarding listed companies of high-pollution industries in China’s A share as the research object and media coverage as the moderator variable, corporate governance data from 2015 to 2019 were selected. Studied the impact of corporate governance and media coverage on corporate environmental protection investment. Corporate governance was divided into four dimensions: shareholding structure, characteristics of the independent directors, characteristics of the board of supervisors, and management characteristics. A multiple regression model and monitoring model were constructed to study the influencing factors of the environmental protection investment behavior of enterprises, and the relationship between relevant variables was empirically tested. The results show the following: (1) The equity structure is expressed by the degree of separation of cash flow rights and shareholders’ control rights. There is a significant negative correlation between shareholding structure and enterprise environmental protection investment. The characteristics of the board of supervisors and management are measured by executive compensation. The characteristics of the board of supervisors have a significant positive impact on an enterprise’s environmental protection investment. Management characteristics have a significant positive impact on enterprise environmental protection investment. (2) Media coverage as a moderator variable is measured by the data reported by important Chinese newspapers. In the robustness test, media coverage is measured by the number of Chinese financial newspaper reports and the number of online media reports. Media coverage positively regulates the relationships among the ownership structure, the characteristics of the board of supervisors, management characteristics, and enterprise environmental protection investment. (3) Positive media reports have a more significant moderating effect than negative media reports.

Optical character recognition quality affects subjective user perception of historical newspaper clippings

PurposeThis study aims to identify user perception of different qualities of optical character recognition (OCR) in texts. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of different quality OCR on users' subjective perception through an interactive information retrieval task with a collection of one digitized historical Finnish newspaper.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on the simulated work task model used in interactive information retrieval. Thirty-two users made searches to an article collection of Finnish newspaper Uusi Suometar 1869–1918 which consists of ca. 1.45 million autosegmented articles. The article search database had two versions of each article with different quality OCR. Each user performed six pre-formulated and six self-formulated short queries and evaluated subjectively the top 10 results using a graded relevance scale of 0–3. Users were not informed about the OCR quality differences of the otherwise identical articles.FindingsThe main result of the study is that improved OCR quality affects subjective user perception of historical newspaper articles positively: higher relevance scores are given to better-quality texts.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this simulated interactive work task experiment is the first one showing empirically that users' subjective relevance assessments are affected by a change in the quality of an optically read text.

Sentiment and emotion in financial journalism: a corpus-based, cross-linguistic analysis of the effects of COVID

Sentiment and emotion play a crucial role in financial journalism, influencing market perceptions and reactions. However, the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the language used in financial newspapers remains underexplored. The present study addresses this gap by comparing data from specialized financial newspapers in English and Spanish, focusing on the years immediately prior to the COVID-19 crisis (2018–2019) and during the pandemic itself (2020–2021). We aim to explore how the economic upheaval of the latter period was conveyed in these publications and investigate the changes in sentiment and emotion in their language compared to the previous timeframe. To this end, we compiled comparable corpora of news items from two respected financial newspapers (The Economist and Expansión), covering both the pre-COVID and pandemic periods. Our corpus-based, contrastive EN-ES analysis of lexically polarized words and emotions allows us to describe the publications’ positioning in the two periods. We further filter lexical items using the CNN Business Fear and Greed Index, as fear and greed are the opposing emotional states most often linked to financial market unpredictability and volatility. This novel analysis is expected to provide a holistic picture of how these specialist periodicals in English and Spanish have emotionally verbalized the economic havoc of the COVID-19 period compared to their previous linguistic behaviour. By doing so, our study contributes to the understanding of sentiment and emotion in financial journalism, shedding light on how crises can reshape the linguistic landscape of the industry.

A Nordic Colonial Career Across Borders: Hjalmar Björling in the Dutch East Indies and China

ABSTRACT Building on the latest literature on transimperial mobilities, this article analyses the career of the Finland-Swedish Hjalmar Björling, a merchant and colonial careerist who moved out to the Dutch East Indies around 1870, later also working in assorted roles on the coast of China and in Sumatra’s then-developing plantation economy. He was also an active writer, relaying colonial news and market intelligence as well as accounts of his personal experiences in various Finnish newspapers. This article examines the global, cross-border structures that facilitated Björling’s migration to Southeast Asia and his integration there, arguing that his colonial career sketched out the contours of a pre-existing transnational and specifically Nordic subcircuit of Western imperialism that straddled the boundaries of the Dutch and British empires. Moreover, through his correspondences and ventures, Björling sought to establish himself as an active node in that network connecting northern Europe and maritime Asia. The article argues that a careful consideration of ‘outsider’ experiences like Björling’s challenges conventional, nation-centric understandings of nineteenth-century European empires and helps to uncover the multi-layered systems of mobilities that underpinned their expansion around the world.

Digitized Finnish Newspapers in Digital Humanities Research Projects: Challenges and Solutions from the Library Perspective

Libraries have a direct influence on digital humanities (DH) research projects that utilize digitized newspapers from their collections. However, a library’s level of participation in a project will vary and may range from resource provider to active collaborator. Libraries must manage the different expectations of each project; thus, a variety of services are needed.The National Library of Finland continuously aims to improve its services and provide researchers with broader access to digitized collections. The library’s DH research team has extensive experience in research projects, and they actively support the work of DH researchers. In this paper, I present an overview of the experiences of the DH research team. I focus on projects that have used digitized historical newspapers and journals, and I outline a range of potential problems and suggest possible solutions.

Professionalism, privilege and publicity: representations of development cooperation in amateur photography and Finnish newspapers, 1968–1972

This article explores the visual rhetoric of development cooperation in Finnish newspapers during late 1960s and early 1970s. Photography, with the political and geographical imagination that it reinforces or dissolves, has the power to shape our perceptions of place, culture and people. The study compares two data sets, one collection of official press photography and another collection of amateur photographs shot by an individual development cooperation worker. It asks, how were development experts represented in the official press photos approved by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Finland (MFA) and, more importantly, how it differed from the set of photographs taken by an amateur photographer, Lasse Björkman, who worked in Tanzania from 1970 to 1972. The results show that the press photos excluded any signs of leisure, tourism or anything associated with exoticism, to centre on experts and expertise, professional diligence and places or actions of work. The public image of individual development cooperation workers was carefully built on the premises of political neutrality, anti-imperialism and rationality. Political appearances are, thus, not only negotiated in offices and conferences but also in choices of representation and publicity.

The relevance of crowdfunding in the entrepreneurial framework from a specialized media perspective

The use of technology has helped increase the availability of new forms of financing for entrepreneurs, with crowdfunding receiving increasing interest over the years. This study examines how the digital press addresses crowdfunding in the context of its entrepreneurship discourse. A linguistic corpus of content on entrepreneurship was created using the digital editions of the three biggest Spanish financial newspapers over the period 2010 to 2021. Word association and co-occurrence analyses were carried out. A non-supervised clustering process was used as the basis for thematic analysis. The results reveal a gap in the media discourse on crowdfunding in an entrepreneurial context. Although attributes such as “financing” and “campaign” are linked to “crowdfunding”, the concept of crowdfunding has a low profile in the entrepreneurial corpus and hence in the entrepreneurship discourse of the digital press. Policymakers can use these findings to promote the use of crowdfunding to finance entrepreneurship.