Browsing by Subject "politics"

This research explores how Russian national identity is constructed through political discourses pertaining to the Arctic. Theoretically this thesis addresses how national identity is constructed through these discourses and subsequently how this identity is used to justify Russia’s Arctic policy to a domestic as well as an international audience. In order to achieve this a hybrid methodology combining critical discourse analysis and political discourse analysis was applied to two forms of political discourses; speeches by politicians and policy papers. This research has identified five discourses through which a Russian national identity is constructed and policy legitimised. These are international cooperation, security, governance, Russia as Arctic, and environment.

This thesis analyzes the digitalization policy of the Finnish government. The main attempt is to, firstly, identify the central ideas and ideologies behind the approach of the Finnish government toward societal digitalization. Secondly, the attempt is to analyze them from the perspective of the traditional ideas and ideologies of the Nordic welfare state. The underlining research question is, whether the possible approach of the Finnish government toward digitalization is compatible with the traditional ideas and ideologies of the Nordic welfare state. The method in this thesis is a combination of qualitative content analysis and historical research methods. Qualitative content analysis with a focus on an analysis of ideologies is used for analyzing primary sources. A historical perspective is used in an attempt to locate contemporary societal digitalization on a trajectory of societal transformations in post-industrial capitalist states, as well as when presenting the Nordic welfare state model. Overall, the approach of the Finnish government appears largely in line with traditional Nordic welfare state values, such as equality and inclusion. However, one of the main findings of this thesis is that the approach of the Finnish government toward digitalization is a largely apolitical and instrumentalized one. Although possible political, economic and social implications of digitalization are identified, the government appears more concerned with providing all citizens equal access to digitalization than facilitating a public discussion on the nature, form or scope of the phenomenon. While such a consensual approach may be analyzed from the perspective of the Nordic culture of conformity, one of the main arguments of this thesis is that a politicized approach to digitalization could allow for a fruitful discussion on its eventual effects on society.

Fashion blogs are invention of the new millennia. Starting with something as simple as commenting on the outfit or a fashion event using this online medium, modern bloggers transformed it now into a successful business venture and a massive network for sharing ideas, tips and personal struggles with their followers. Thus, nowadays, a successful fashion blogger can be anything from a minor celebrity in the blogosphere, to a major international influencer in the fashion industry. Being personally fascinated by the way modern fashion bloggers run their blogs and manage to create a personal brand, I have decided to focus my research on creation of an online identity fashion bloggers go through whilst managing their personal blogs. Intentionally, or unintentionally personal fashion bloggers develop a certain type of writing and content creation that allows them to connect to many people. Fashion bloggers try to produce an idea that will guarantee them professional success. However, their personal background partially already set them up to be more connected to a certain group of people rather than the other. It is visible in their looks, ethnicity, lifestyle, personal interests and in opinions what type of people would be the majority of their followers. As a results, the network of followers that will be build by the blogger will determine what type of content she will be producing to attract even more readers. This is what will be discussed in this thesis: how fashion bloggers behave and what they primarily focus on in their blogs to keep up the online persona they are constructing.

The topic of forest fires has gathered a lot of media attention in recent years as it relates closely to climate change and other sustainability issues. The media has an important role in communicating these issues as it affects, how the public percieves them, how different sustainability problems are defined and what kind of solutions are seen plausible. I became interested in how the media represents the issue of forest fires. My aim in this thesis is to find out, how the Colombian news media has framed the Amazon rainforest fires. As my material I used the news articles from the Colombian news media El Tiempo. I definined my timeframe from July 2019 to september 2019 because at that time the news subject was of high interest. After the initial search I went through the articles and left out any irrelevant ones. I was left with 24 news articles. As an analytic tool I utilized qualitative frame analysis guided by Robert Entman´s definition of frames and used ATLAS.ti to make an initial thematic coding. After that I mapped out all the actors that were cited in the news articles and divided them into groups. Using these actor groups, I searched for the frames. There were eight actor groups, politicians and political organizations being the most prominent one. Looking at how these actors talked about the forest fires, two main frames came out: populist and scientific. The populist frame concentrated mainly on Jair Bolsonaro. In this frame there was a lot of nationalist and economic arguments and responsability was directed away from him. There seemed to be a lot of enemies also. The second frame concentrated in deforestation, climate change and the forest fires being a global issue. In this frame international actors used economic and political pressure in order to affect Bolsonaro´s policy solutions. The research showed, how difficult it can be to solve shared global problem and made visible a historical political division between authoritarianism and democracy. An other important notion is the lack of marginalized groups in the news media.

This thesis aimed to examine Japan’s lawmaking process that lead to the passage of the PKO law, also known as the peacekeeping law of 1992. The focus was on the government discussions that occurred during the period from September 1991 to June 1992. The issues revolving around the topic were extremely controversial. The root of the problem lies in Japan’s history, and the country’s international standing. This thesis is built on political discourse analysis. The primary objective is to aid in an understanding of the reasons behind the PKO law's creation. Most of the materials cited are government discussions about the law including the explanation of purpose, question rounds, committee reports, and plenary sessions in the House of Councillors and the House of Representatives. The analysis was focused on the expressed views shared by the speakers in the Diet on a micro level, while at the same time showing the effects of the proposed bill on a macro level. Also included were questions about the role played by the leading party, the Liberal Democratic Party, who was the main instigator in the law drafting process. The main questions can be limited to two: Was there a shift in the country's politics as it relates to the issues surrounding the bill's contents? What was the reason that the government strove so hard to pass this bill into law? Through the years, Japan’s foreign policy can be said to be evasive on some points, but with taking part in the peacekeeping operations, there was a slight shift in politics. Japan’s foreign policy was already UN-centered, so participating in the PKO operations was not that massive of a change. Overall, the result of the Gulf Crisis gave the Liberal Democratic Party a reason to make a push for the passing of the PKO bill, and some saw the dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces as the party's last significant effort to redefine Japan as a normal state. In June of 1992 the passed PKO law turned out to be a compromised law. What can be seen from the overall discussions in both houses was that they centered in the perceived unconstitutionality of the bill as well as the use of the army and possible use of force. In some public hearings lawyers and legal advisors stated that they were against the law. Despite this, the opposition, however, did not take into an account changing public opinion, and the government was able to pass the law successfully. Discussion of the bill, in Japan as well abroad, presented a variety of reactions, at the center of them was fear of dispatching the Self-Defense Forces. In conclusion, the army and the peacekeeping operations were two separate matters, and the passing of the bill was a chance for the country to be more active in an international setting.

Violent radicalization is a process in which proponents of an ideology become convinced that the use of violence is necessary to bring about societal change. In this master's thesis, I examine how the Finnish red's party press contributed to the process of violent radicalization in 1917. The data consists of 1025 articles from the Työmies newspaper throughout the year. I have analyzed the radicalism and persuasion tactics of the articles using a method based on extremist core frames. I have developed the method by combining the diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational core frame model with modern conception on the communication of extremist movements. My analysis confirms that Työmies' writing emphasizing radicalism and societal crisis increased during the year 1917. Työmies' writing evolved into fear-mongering and intensified social division. In the early year Työmies had hopeful perceptions of the future and the perception of the enemy was based on proponents of the tsarist regime. In the later year this shifted into fear-inducing crisis consciousness and contemptuous attitude towards domestic political enemies. My work demonstrates that the method based on the utilization of extremist core frames is well-suited for studying the radicalization of text-based materials.

Memory has become one of the most vibrant areas of research within the field of media studies. Due to the technological advancements of the past two decades, our media consumption has developed globally. Collective memory and media memory scholars argue that our memories are increasingly influenced by media as well as our surrounding social groups. This study focuses on the media memories of the Lebanese diaspora in North America concerning two significant Lebanese political events. The main research questions are: What do the Lebanese living in North America remember about the two events? What is the role of media in the way they remember the events? This thesis also explores two sub-research questions: How do the participants’ social groups influence the way the individuals remember the events? How does their media consumption affect their memories? The data for this study was collected through semi-structured interviews with participants from two different age groups in the Lebanese diaspora in North America. The data was analyzed with thematic analysis, and the findings showed that participants remembered very specific details about the events from what they remembered seeing on the TV news. There were some noticeable differences between the memories of the two age groups. This could be contributed to the fact that for the younger participants, their families and other social groups affected their memories of the events. This pointed in the direction that their memories were influenced by the traumatic significance of these events for their social groups. There were types of memories evident throughout the analysis, which were categorized under the concepts of postmemory and flashbulb memories. Essentially, these memories also had influences rooted in social groups and/or media sources for the participants.

The thesis looks at corporate social responsibility and its political discourse in Finland. Corporate social responsibility has gained a lot of public attention during the last decades. Especially the unethical behaviour of multinational corporations has increased the demands for corporate accountability. Anthropologists have observed the chameleon-like character of corporate social responsibility phenomenon. The phenomenon seems to always transform according to the criticism it receives. Thus, anthropologists have questioned the efficiency of corporate social responsibility in addressing the social and global problems caused by corporations. Lately there has been increasing demands to legislate corporate social responsibility. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the current public discourse on the legalisation of corporate social responsibility, and to discuss whether there is a possibility that this discourse will facilitate change in corporate behaviour. By examining this latest shift in the corporate social responsibility discourse, the thesis also critically evaluates the existing anthropological research on corporate social responsibility. The thesis is based on an ethnographic fieldwork that has been conducted in different public events addressing corporate social responsibility in Helsinki, Finland. The fieldwork was conducted between October 2018 and November 2019. The data for this thesis has been gathered through participant observation, unofficial discussions, online ethnography and the international policy documents underlying the discourse, such as UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. The data is analysed through the existing anthropological research on corporate social responsibility. But in order to gain new insights, this thesis draws also from other anthropological research that has addressed global governance. By drawing from the existing anthropological research on corporate social responsibility, the thesis argues that the global guidelines underlying the current discourse aim to establish a symbolic authority on the issue of corporate responsibility to respect human rights. But these guidelines do not set any strict requirements on corporations as they are voluntary. Instead, they promote a post-political ideology of collaborative action and consensus. But the thesis suggests that instead of foreclosing the political discussion on controversial topics, these guidelines actually move political conflicts into other locations. The thesis shows how corporations and other actors in the society negotiate the norms for corporate behaviour. It shows how Finnish corporations appeal to their size in order to displace and diminish their responsibility. However, this thesis argues that also other actors than corporations displace responsibility according to their interests, which is contrary to what the previous anthropological research has suggested. But simultaneously the actors aim to build consensus through partnerships, business case reasoning and development rhetoric, whose discursive power has already been recognised by the existing anthropological research. But the thesis suggests that, in addition to these, the actors in Finland build consensus through national rhetoric and by appearing morally higher and more conscientious than actors outside of Finland. Thus the discourse in Finland frames the issue of corporate respect for human rights as a cultural problem. To address this cultural problem, corporations embrace the development discourse, and thus human rights education is framed as the corporate responsibility of the Finnish corporations. The thesis has also shows how the discourse on the possible law is dominated by the practical problem of making the law. Thus, the thesis suggests that there is a risk that the law will not have much sanctioning power. The corporations can strategically utilise the human rights due diligence process to discharge responsibility, as they can show that they are trying to address the issues in their supply chains. Despite of the critical analysis of the current discourse, the thesis has argued that the public corporate social responsibility discourse, guidelines and legal technologies nonetheless foster change and increase ethical awareness of the corporations. Thus, the thesis argues that the existing anthropological research on corporate social responsibility has been too preoccupied with the focus on the discourse and practices of multinational corporations and the topics of power and inequality. These perspectives have resulted in overly critical analysis that assumes that the corporate social responsibility discourse always privileges corporations. Thus, the thesis argues that the existing anthropological research on corporate social responsibility diminishes the transformative capabilities of corporate social responsibility discourse and practice.