Helsingin Sanomat Research Articles

The Finnish public discussion of giftedness and gifted children

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of research in which the Finnish public discussion of giftedness and gifted children, and conceptions of giftedness and gifted children presented in it, were examined. The research was conducted by analyzing articles from the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the teachers’ periodical Opettaja, using the content analysis method. The results show that giftedness is seen as multidimensional, and both intrapersonal and environmental contributions are recognized as essential in talent development. The conceptions of gifted children were quite diverse, and gifted children’s possible problems were frequently discussed. Moreover, misunderstandings were revealed as well as areas that have not been adequately addressed.

From myth of marginality to portrayals of an addictive society: Reporting on addictions in the Finnish press (1968–2006)

This study uses a systematically collected dataset to explore and discuss how the coverage of addiction has changed in Finland's biggest daily, Helsingin Sanomat, during the period 1968–2006. Newspaper texts have been collected through systematic reading of 432 issues (N = 432) from sampled weeks with the main aim of investigating some general trends in the addiction reporting over time. The study consists of two main parts. First, based on a systematic reading the themes, formats and frequency of addiction reporting were examined. In the second stage, a content analysis was conducted on a corpus of texts on addiction (n = 200) selected with the main criteria of dealing with “continous problematic repetitive behavior” that is related to excessive alcohol use, drug intake, tobacco use, compulsive eating, gambling, and sexual behavior. Variables to be analyzed are (1) type of addiction dealt with, (2) who is the addict, and (3) view(s) on type of problem as portrayed in the text. The results from the study show that the addiction reporting starts out from being a more clear product of so called time-out culture (Jensen BK. 1995. The social semiotics of mass communication. London: SAGE Publications), reflecting on the extraordinary and describing marginality. In the end of the 1990s, the texts start to have another function as compulsive behaviors are seen as something more common, and described more often from the individual's perspective. At the same time, a general tabloidization is putting its marks on the form and content of the addiction coverage.

Designation Practices and Perceptions of Addiction – a Diachronic Analysis of Finnish Press Material from 1968–2006

The study is a diachronic investigation into how addiction is designated in the leading Finnish daily newspaper in the period 1968–2006. It discusses how different designations practices for the concept of addiction are reflected in understanding of the phenomenon. Material and Proceedings Newspaper materials consisting of randomly sampled (n=432) issues of Helsingin Sanomat (HS) served as a base for the investigation. Texts were selected that discuss addiction in ways set out in the inclusion criteria. A total of 34 (=n) texts were analyzed more closely, taken from the years 1972, 1982, 1992 and 2002. Results Two main tendencies can be discerned from the 1990s and onwards. The journalistic pieces start to work an internalization of the problems, i.e. they mediate a perspective from within the problems. Simultaneously, the concept of addiction becomes conventionalized and its use expanded. The cultural unit of addiction starts to include all types of problematic repetitive behavior. The article discusses how these trends serve the general trends towards individualization and medicalization. The expert statements accounted for in the media guide the individual–-the citizen, the consumer, the potential or actual addict–-in the landscape of the logics and mechanisms of addiction.

From Pulp to Fiction?

The pulp mill conflict between Argentina and Uruguay is a topical environmental local—global dispute including various time—space levels (local—regional—national—global). It is also a politico-economic battle among business, civil society and governments in the two South American countries. This article highlights the widely analysed Argentine and Uruguayan perspectives, but it also brings to the fore the Finnish case (of mass media, the global Finnish paper industry, Finnish NGOs and the government). The article seeks to come to an understanding of the characteristics of the conflict as portrayed by the media in Finland and, critically, to examine the effects of the stereotypical Finnish image — `iconic model' — on Argentina and Uruguay. The article is a study of the discussions in the Finnish mass media, mainly in Helsingin Sanomat ( HS), the key national newspaper, and in the television coverage of the Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE. The analysis shows that the Finnish media, too, have created stereotypes that harden attitudes and make conflict resolution more difficult. What is virtually absent in the Finnish media is a democratic multicultural learning culture that fosters and itself is fostered through a more transnational and interdisciplinary perspective. The global and national media have an increasingly important task in such situations of cultural conflict resolution, situations which are also attached to the recent discussions of corporate social responsibility.

Beyond Representation

AbstractProcesses of defining citizenship become particularly exposed in a media context, since this is an arena where a broad range of actors get their voice heard. The aim of this contribution is to explore the claims-making activities by different actors in stories about the Roma in Finnish newspapers. I want to elucidate the access to the mediated space and provide some examples of how citizenship claims are raised and contextualised. The empirical study is based content analysis and qualitative text analysis of articles from 1990-2003 in both the largest Finnish-language and the largest Swedish-language daily newspapers (Helsingin Sanomat and Hufvudstadsbladet). While Romani voices do have the possibility to contest dominant views in newspaper stories related to the Roma, this article argues, firstly, for a diversified coverage on Romani issues and, secondly, for increasing dialogue between a broader group of actors.

Dynamic Finland. The Political System and the Welfare State by Pertti s> Pesonen Olavi Riihinen (review)

REVIEWS 385 the burden of economic adjustmentin Belarus'(p. I63), but ratherdownplaying the growing pressure from the Kremlin to sharply reduce debt pardon, energy subsidies and the like. Denis Krivoshev sensibly indicates the contingent factors that have fuelled Belarus' foreign policy 'Russophilia'. Teresa Dumasy agreesthat 'forBelarus[. . .] alliancewith Russia may alwaysremain a greaterprioritythan forUkraine'and notes that 'EU policy mustbe sensitive to such national differences' (p. I90); but both authors stress that this predominant relationshipis not as exclusive as it appears. The volume is one of at leastthree new books about to come out on Belarus. It sets a good standardfor the othersto follow, and will be a boon to students and scholarsalike. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ANDREW WILSON University College London Pesonen, Perttiand Riihinen, Olavi. Dynamic Finland.ThePoliticalSystem andthe Welfare State.StudiaFennica.Historica, 3. SK FinnishLiteratureSociety, Helsinki, 2002. 323 PP. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?32.00 (paperback). ON the cover, it says that this book has been written for a general audience. Even so, specialistscan learn a lot from the authors,too. They have produced quite a comprehensive work, written in good and clear Englishin a style that flows. Though to a degree the book is a history, the essential configurations are institutionaland conceptual. Nationalism, the legislature,the stilldualistic executive, thejudicial organs, local self-government,the welfare state, values and goals, the state and economics, the ubiquitousEU you can get straight at them, though a bit more could nowadays be written about the increasingly anxious relationsof Finlandwith the EuropeanUnion. The title sets the tone of the whole text. The story is one of dynamic progression.And it is certainlytruethat if you castyour eyes round the world, Finlandwill come throughvery well indeed. Further,it has to be said that the authorsdo not exactly dodge the recountingof something of the darkerside of Finnishpolitical life. They manage to get away from the narrowdefinition of corruption on which Transparency International'sjudgement is based and which has made of Finland one of the least dubious countries in the world. They retell, without themselves naming names, the unpleasant tale of the former minister, Arja Alho, a Social Democrat, and the former banker and politician, Ulf Sundqvist, Social Democrat, whose debt repayments to the state were considerably reduced ('suspectedfavouritism')by Minister Alho's executive action. Criticized in parliament, Minister Alho had the decency to resign. But since this book has been published, she is back in parliament and back on the media as chirpy as ever. Even KaukoJuhantalo, a Centre Party minister,impeached some years ago, found hisway backand is now chairman of the ParliamentaryCommittee on Defence. That case of impeachment is not mentioned in the book. All this notwithstanding, the main gripe of the reviewer revolves around a difference of opinion. In part, this may arise from the very fact that the work 386 SEER, 82, 2, 2004 is not quite a history.What is missingfor this revieweris the pain of historical change, which reaches bitterly into the present. Even so staid a paper as the Helsingin Sanomat reflects, in its correspondence column and sometimes in its editorials, this pain. It is the pain of people living year in, year out in temporary and often part-time jobs and being in consequence no longer creditworthy, paying rents that are far too high for them and with little prospect of gaining, let alone maintaining, a loan for a place of theirown. It is the ever-present threat of the lay-off (yes, its starting again) for many other individualsof diverseskills,including graduates.It is the clamour of the Metal Workers'Union for state help for branches of industrythat might otherwise be in danger of being transferredelsewhere. In the meantime, the tax-cutting mania is affectingallpoliticalpartiesin line with the neo-liberalistichope that if you cut taxes deeply enough the economy will grow and with it, automatically,an adequate enough taxbase, too. What is adequate? The authors are aware of the most strikingmanifestation of the lesions in the Finnish economy, the persistence and threatening rise of structural unemployment. And they are acquaintedwith the volume, publishedin 200 I, by the Academy of Finlandand entitledDownfrom theHeavens, upfrom the Ashes, in which the welfare state, for all its wear and tear...

Political Parties in New Democracies: Party Organization in Southern and East-Central Europe by Ingrid s> van Biezen (review)

386 SEER, 82, 2, 2004 is not quite a history.What is missingfor this revieweris the pain of historical change, which reaches bitterly into the present. Even so staid a paper as the Helsingin Sanomat reflects, in its correspondence column and sometimes in its editorials, this pain. It is the pain of people living year in, year out in temporary and often part-time jobs and being in consequence no longer creditworthy, paying rents that are far too high for them and with little prospect of gaining, let alone maintaining, a loan for a place of theirown. It is the ever-present threat of the lay-off (yes, its starting again) for many other individualsof diverseskills,including graduates.It is the clamour of the Metal Workers'Union for state help for branches of industrythat might otherwise be in danger of being transferredelsewhere. In the meantime, the tax-cutting mania is affectingallpoliticalpartiesin line with the neo-liberalistichope that if you cut taxes deeply enough the economy will grow and with it, automatically,an adequate enough taxbase, too. What is adequate? The authors are aware of the most strikingmanifestation of the lesions in the Finnish economy, the persistence and threatening rise of structural unemployment. And they are acquaintedwith the volume, publishedin 200 I, by the Academy of Finlandand entitledDownfrom theHeavens, upfrom the Ashes, in which the welfare state, for all its wear and tear, is still seen as the safetynet . Long may it so remain. But chapter six of the Academy's reportbreathes a spiritof 'powerlessnessand inability'to find alternativesto the strainsof the present. What this means is thatthe losersin society,whetherstrugglingalong or pensioned-off, do have a case. Leaving aside the human interest (thereis always the welfare state for them), the losers are indicating a failure, a set of failures,in much of the restof the Finnishinfra-structure. At the beginning of the text, the authors, going back to the economic crisis of the early i990s, averthat 'irreversiblechanges'have consequentlyoccurred. Afterreading thisbook, I would stillliketo help to reversethem and as a start I would liketo pay more taxes. Mari Rantanen and Markus Itkonen are to be congratulated for their beautifulcover design of the stimulatingbook entitledDynamic Finland. University ofTurku GEORGE MAUDE Finland van Biezen, Ingrid. PoliticalPartiesin New Democracies: PartyOrganization in Southern andEast-Central Europe.Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, and New York, 2003. xv + 255 pp. Tables. Notes. List of Party Acronyms. Bibliography.Index. C50.??. POLITICAL parties matter. They are integral to the functioning of modern democracies, both in their establishedand newly formedvarieties. In Political Partiesin New Democracies Ingrid van Biezen examines party formation and organizational development in four thirdwavedemocracies: Spain, Portugal, Hungary and the Czech Republic. After two opening chapters exploring comparative analyticalframeworks,the book examines each of the four case studiesin turnbeforedrawingthe threadstogetherin threechaptersdedicated to identifyingcross-nationalpatterns. REVIEWS 387 The chaptersdevoted to Hungary and the Czech Republic arepackedwith a cornucopia of interestingdata and analysis.Van Biezen, for example, charts the organizational development of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSzP) showing how the Communist-successorparty attempted not only to distance itself from Communist ideology, but also to aim at a radical break in its organization through such mechanisms as decentralization and promoting the establishmentof differentinternalfactionsand platforms.MSzP, however, was not immune from the prevailing tendency in Hungarian party organization of an increasinglystrongparty executive. Emblematic of this change was FIDESZ's transmogrificationfromits initialloosely organizedform. Political Parties inNewDemocracies containsinterestingstatisticsdemonstrating the decline in political party membership in the Czech Republic despite the requirements of membership for many parties being little more than supporting the party's programme and paying one's membership fee. Lowlevel membership has had a knock-on effect in terms of the number of candidates running for public office. In the I998 local elections, for instance, politicalpartieswith parliamentaryrepresentationfieldedjust 25.7 per cent of the candidates. Central to van Biezen's book is her desire to discern where power lies in parties in new democracies. Her initial hypothesis suggests that we would expect the partyin public office (asopposed to the extra-parliamentaryparty) to be particularlyascendant because the parties are newly created, acquiring parliamentaryrepresentation at a very early stage of their development; but also thanks to their institutional rather than societal origins; and in part a...

Indigenous Identity in Print: Representations of the Sami in News Discourse

This article examines news representations of the indigenous Sami people in the Finnish news discourse and the role of the representations in the politics of Sami identity. Through critical discourse analysis of Finnish newspaper texts collected from the leading daily Helsingin Sanomat, I analyse the representations by examining how the journalists utilized textual and linguistic resources available to them, how journalistic practices limited and enabled choices made and, finally, how the textual choices contributed to the representations. The study suggests that a combination of the minority position of the Sami, journalistic practices and an unawareness of or insensitivity towards the representational power of news media result in polarized ethnic representations that contribute to marginalization of the Sami rather than participation in the public discussion in the news arena.

The Spitzer Study and the Finnish Parliament

ABSTRACT In Finland, legal recognition of same-gender partnerships was first proposed in 1974 in the charter of the Finnish Organization for Sexual Equality. As the civil rights struggle against more blatant forms of discrimination (such as criminalization of homosexual acts, censorship laws limiting the dissemination of factual information about homosexuality) advanced, the demands for legal recognition for same-gender couples became stronger. In 1993, the first bill was introduced into the Finnish Parliament proposing gay and lesbian civil unions. Although it was initially defeated, support for the bill continued to grow over the next decade. By 2001 it had the support of Finland's ruling parties and its President as well. Opponents of the bill argued that same-sex civil unions threatened the basic fabric of Finnish society. In additional support of their arguments, they offered discredited psychoanalytic theories which pathologized homosexuality. Using the American political model of conservative, antihomosexual groups like NARTH, they cited claims of people being able to change their homosexuality as a reason to oppose the proposed bill. Robert L. Spitzer's then unpublished study was drawn into the parliamentary and public debate. Opponents of civil unions distorted the meaning of the Spitzer study, implying that its author had changed his mind about his historic role in deleting homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual. In response to requests from Finnish gay and lesbian civil rights groups, Spitzer wrote a letter to the Finnish parliament regarding the “misuse” of his study by “those who are against anti-discrimination laws and civil unions for gays and lesbians.” Spitzer said that being able to change is “probably quite rare, even for highly motivated homosexuals” and that it would be a serious mistake to conclude from his study that any highly motivated homosexual can change his or her sexual orientation or that his study shows that homosexuality is a “choice.” Spitzer's letter was read in the plenary session of the Finnish Parliament and was published in the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat on September 26, 2001. On September 28, 2001 Finland's Parliament voted 99 to 84 to pass the same-sex partnership bill.

Sports, ‘race’ and the Finnish national identity in Helsingin Sanomat in the early twentieth century

The main goals of this article are first to examine through Olympic sports journalism what hierarchies and categorisations of the global space and the people populating it were considered important to the national imagery in Finland at the beginning of the twentieth century and, secondly, to assess how the notion of race was intertwined with these categorisations. Sports journalism played an important role in Finland by constructing and legitimising a national imagery and by providing accounts of other races, cultures and nationalities that were considered ‘different’ from ‘us’. The article concludes that sports journalism at that time employed three major discursive practices that were aimed at constructing an image of a white, Western and Finnish nation living in the north. The ‘others’ were placed in a hierarchy, in which their position was determined by their racial background and assumed similarities/differences in appearance and behaviour as compared with Finnish males.

Environmental issues, the Finnish major press, and public opinion

This paper reports some preliminary findings of the ongoing Finnish research project 'Mass Media, the Public, and Environmental Politics'. The present study experiments with macro-level methods by comparing developments of environmental attitudes with changes in the environmental coverage of the major Finnish daily paper Helsingin Sanomat. After the first peak at the beginning of the 1970's the environmental coverage dropped. Since the beginning of the eighties the coverage has grown rather consistently along with the growth and bringing to a head of environmental problems. Public opinion did not follow very systematically the development of media environmental coverage. In the 1980's public concern did generally increase parallel with coverage, but demands for protection of the environment and willingness to make personal sacrifices to that end did not. This is partly due to the fact that the 1980's saw globalization of environmental problems, and the means of preventing them and putting things right receded from peoples immediate grasp and political capability.