Browsing by study line "Governance, Organizations and Communication"
Now showing items 1-20 of 33
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(2023)In the aftermath of a crisis, uninterrupted flow of the crisis information is vital to take immediate action in battling against the crisis phenomenon which causes threat and harm. Crisis information is transferred through crisis communication practices which is no longer limited to top-down perspective. Ordinary people execute crisis communication with the aspatial digital affordances social media facilitate and they participate in crisis response through networks formed in such platforms. Although significance of the subject increases, the bottom-up perspective of crisis communication on social media remains as a gap in the research literature. This thesis aims to contribute to the research field with a case study on Twitter reflections of 2021 Bodrum Wildfires in Turkey. The crisis phenomenon chosen in this thesis stands out with its intensity and scope as it is considered as the largest wildfires that have happened in Turkey. The purpose of this research is to examine social media reflections of the public during 2021 Bodrum Wildfires as it gives hints of how and what kind of crisis communication practices they performed, especially in forms of crisis response. In addition, functions of social media usage in specific to case of this thesis are explored. In this thesis, 1.000 tweets under the hashtag #bodrumyangın during the acute phase of the crisis are collected from Advance Search inquiry of Twitter. As the principles of digital media ethnography is followed, data are examined via utilizing qualitative content analysis. The results of this thesis showed that people conducted crisis communication on Twitter to disseminate breaking news in regard to Bodrum Wildfires and to facilitate volunteer mobilization networks and crisis response coordination efforts. The main functions of social media usage in this case study are dissemination of breaking news about the crisis, retrieving on-site crisis information, formation of mobilization networks for crisis response, virtual public arena to evaluate crisis management and to discuss origin of the crisis, outpouring emotional load and receiving sentimental support, generation of humorous content as coping mechanism. Findings goes in line with the concept of bottom-up crisis communication on social media in which this thesis adopted as theoretical framework. Additional value this thesis presents is the observation of hashtag utilization on social media crisis communication acting as a digital affordance to ease dissemination and accession of the crisis information.
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(2017)As in many countries, education in Chile has been a huge problem for authorities and researchers. Over time, there have been many attempts to improve quality, but with little to no success. It is difficult to find the main reason why Chilean education faces many problems. One reason could be the way teachers understand the policy instruments; the national curriculum, and how clear it is. However, it also could be related to the way of using skills related to communication in general, and teacher-student interaction in particular. My assumption is they have been ignored or under considered as part of the teaching process. Some experts have recognized the relevance of communication and teacher- student interaction, because of the significance of reciprocity. It has a very crucial role for effective teaching and learning to take place (Arthur, Gordon, & Butterfield, 2003). This is an in-depth research into both systems of education, a comparative and qualitative investigation that aim to analyse guidelines for teachers and principals. This research will collect data through the analysis of both national curriculums, to see how these terms are mentioned and described in them as part of the guidelines of every taught subject, and how many of these teaching methods include teacher-student interaction. For this reason, the purpose of my thesis is to analyse how the elements of communication and teacher-student interaction are presented in the official curriculums of Chile and Finland. Although the analysis of documents is the main source of data, this investigation considers also the observation to understand the dynamics in the classroom, despite being only an illustration.
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(2023)Today, companies are facing an increasing amount of stakeholder demands. These demands often include environmental, societal, ethical, political, and economic themes that are commonly addressed in companies through corporate social responsibility and value communication. The aim of this research was to discover how large Finnish companies are responding to stakeholder demands through value communication on their websites, by recognizing how companies communicatively constitute their corporate social responsibility and how companies appeal to stakeholders through value communication on company websites. Studying large Finnish companies is significant and this study enabled recognizing what is perceived and showcased as important in these companies and how these companies with big audiences and a lot of influence are aiming to impact their stakeholders. This research was conducted as a qualitative content analysis and the material for the analysis was collected from the company websites of four large Finnish companies: Marimekko, UPM, Valio, and Elisa. In total the collected data consisted of 36 pages of textual material and included different types of organizational documents of the companies, such as strategy statements, sustainability reports, and info pages. Qualitative content analysis is a flexible and systematic research method that is based on categorizing the research material based on a coding frame. The method was well suited for this research, since it enabled making sense of the large amount of textual material and recognizing potential patterns and relationships between themes. According to the results of this study, large Finnish companies respond to stakeholder demands by constituting corporate social responsibility through the communication of societal, economic, and ethical themes, and impact on stakeholders. The results are remarkable in providing in-depth information about how these themes are communicated by the companies. Some themes are communicated by all the companies and in similar ways, while some themes are communicated in differing company-specific ways. In addition, companies respond to stakeholder demands by appealing to stakeholders through value communication to gain and maintain legitimacy, adapt to the environment, and cope with fuzziness. Companies use value communication to gain and maintain legitimacy and adapt to the environment more than to cope with fuzziness. The results of this study showed that some themes of corporate social responsibility are perceived and showcased as important widely in all the studied companies, while some themes are only relevant for certain companies’ whose stakeholders voice those specific demands. These results can be especially meaningful to other Finnish companies. In addition, the results of this study providing information on how companies aim at appealing to their stakeholders can be meaningful to company stakeholders and help them be more critical and conscious towards companies’ value communication.
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(2022)Companies are facing increasing pressure to communicate more transparently of their social and environmental impacts. People expect companies to improve the social and environmental wellbeing of the societies they operate in. This way companies can gain acceptance and legitimacy, which is important for their survival. Because of the normative pressure, companies have started to incorporate corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication into their communication strategies. The thesis will study what kind of CSR communication are fast fashion brands doing on Instagram and what kind of sustainability themes are the brands bringing up. The chosen brands are H&M, The North Face, Timberland, C&A, and Vans, who are the forerunners of transparent CSR communication on their websites. Thus, it will be interesting to study the level of their CSR communication on social media. The time frame of the study is one month, and the method of the research is qualitative content analysis. The data will be analysed with the help of the concept of CSR. While CSR is a highly researched topic, the CSR communication on social media has not been studied extensively. Brands’ CSR communication can be considered controversial, since the demand for more transparent communication is increasing but brands that bring up their CSR activity get easily criticized. The results of the study show that fast fashion brands are not doing CSR communication extensively on Instagram. The sustainability themes of the five fast fashion brands’ CSR communication on Instagram are 1. Reuse, Repair, and Recycling, 2. Sustainable Materials, and 3. Equality. Brands are eager to share sustainability issues but not linking it to their own operation, and thus it is not considered CSR communication.
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(2021)The purpose of this thesis is to examine the Finnish state monopolies, Alko and Veikkaus, as hybrid organizations from an institutional plurality viewpoint, since their duty is to decrease the consumption-related harm of their products. Hybrid organizations have existed for long, but societal changes have induced an increase in institutional pluralism. Hybrid organizations have not been studied very thoroughly despite a recent growing interest. State-owned organizations have been examined from a hybridity viewpoint specifically regarding mixed ownership, but constitutional monopoly research is scarce. Research questions inspect what kinds of pluralistic tensions Alko and Veikkaus face, and how the organizations cope with them. Data collection first included background interviews for confirming relevant research themes. One interview was conducted in each company, with employees whose position includes stakeholder contact. Next, annual reports and responsibility reports for 2015 and 2017-2019 were retrieved from the companies’ websites, and processed with qualitative content analysis, which utilized themes identified in both previous research and background interviews. Results showed that the monopolies faced distinct tensions due to different operating environments. The organizations used different coping mechanisms, which is partly due to differences in the core products. Veikkaus’ mechanisms slightly favored responsibilization and decoupling, while Alko benefitted from a strong organizational identity and collaboration with other organizations. This thesis identifies some specific challenges and tensions related to the monopolies in industries of addictive products and contributes to the understanding of coping mechanisms in hybrid organizations.
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(2020)The world in which we live and communicate is complicated and complex. This is also true for political communication, which has moved, in some part, to newer forms of media, such as social media platforms. Politicians have gained the opportunity to communicate directly with their followers online, without any mediators. This allows political actors to present the image of themselves and the version of reality they want to convey. Twitter is one example of such a platform, which provides an interactive channel of communication between political actors and their audience. This thesis aims to analyse how the 280 characters long tweets are used as forms of communication by employing and combining Erving Goffman’s concepts of framing and self-presentation. Frames are interpretative frameworks which are activated by our brains to make sense of situations and events and the understanding of self-presentation describes how actors portray themselves in social settings. (Political) actors can change the way the narrative is framed, depending on which frame of reference they are highlighting in their communication. For the case sample, 1785 tweets by the German party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) have been collected over a period of four weeks at the beginning of 2020. Their categorisation as a right-wing party as well as their active presence on Twitter makes them an interesting subject of study. To structure the collected data, the tweets are divided into 12 categories of framing strategies, which are based on the differentiation between a Positive Self-Presentation and a Negative Other-Presentation. The analysis of the tweets and the employed framing strategies showed that the party emphasised the (perceived) differences between themselves and the other, which ranges from political elites, oppositional political parties and their supporters to civilian groups such as activists, migrants or critics of the party. Language is important for the portrayal of the framing strategies, either through the usage of personal pronouns – for example, “us” or “them” – or through the invention of mocking names classifying the other. The self, here the AfD, is always presented positively and the others are depicted in a negative light. It has been found that the combination of different framing strategies can lead to a stronger emphasis on the positive self and the negative other. The tweets generally portray one version of reality or one version of the narrative that fits best to the objective the party wants to portray. The data sample and the period of data collection are rather limited and would need to be expanded for further analysis. Nonetheless, the results give an indication of how framing strategies can be used daily in political communication, which can add to the knowledge of political researchers and communicators.
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(2022)Ever since the 1980s, political parties have used commercial marketing agencies to conduct their election campaigns. The use of these agencies resulted in what Nicholas O'Shaughnessy has coined political marketing, the marketing of a political product through commercial marketing techniques. This thesis evaluates the normative dimension of this technique, evaluating how it may impact party diversity through the case study of the past three German federal election cycles. To come to a conclusion on the normative dimensions of the utilisation of political marketing the thesis references both O'Shaughnessy's political marketing theory and Otto Kircheimer's catch all party theorem to evaluate the impact political marketing has on party representation. This thesis argues that the political marketing theory and catch all theorem intersect theoretically, making the point that political marketing can both be a symptom and cause of parties transforming into catch all parties, thus constituting a threat to democratic diversity. As its method the thesis uses an audiovisual analysis using the method of iconography. Through it analyses the audiovisual communication of German parties in the past three election cycles by looking at their election advertisement videos. This thesis concludes, through its theoretical framework, analysis of the case study and interpretation, that the advertisements show two main features of a catch all parties defined by Kircheimer: A homogenisation of stylistic means of parties not ideologically affiliated, and de- ideologisation and personification. This means that according to this thesis the German pluralistic party system turning into a system of catch all party system is exemplified and exarcebated by the utilisation of political marketing techniques, a process that is illuminated by the election advertisements of the main political parties.
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(2022)A prevalent narrative associated with contemporary academe in the current era of globalisation is one of constant and increasing mobility. This narrative is acutely modern and tends to obscure the ancient character of academic mobility as a phenomenon. This Master’s Thesis seeks to address a knowledge gap in existing literature by considering the development of intellectual networks in ancient Greece and analysing the movement of Hellenistic philosophers in a prosopographical study of academic mobility utilising an interdisciplinary approach, combining theories and methods of both social sciences and history. Does academic mobility as a phenomenon occur in the context of Hellenistic period, specifically relating to the philosophical schools of that era? Why did Athens become the centre of intellectual activity and philosophical mobility for most of the Hellenistic period? The theoretical framework draws from the study of mobilities, network theory, concept analysis, and (to a lesser extent) human geography. An analytical concept of academic mobility is constructed to enable historical analyses and evaluation of potential historical occurrences of academic mobility. The primary data gathering method employed is an applied form of prosopography, a micro-biographical approach to the study of socio-historical phenomena. The lives of ten Stoic philosophers are summarised in ten case studies, which help illustrate the mobility and social networks of Hellenistic philosophers by providing examples of philosophical movement and career paths. The entries are subsequently analysed in conjunction with research literature to generate answers to the research questions. The study shows that while some of the movement of Hellenistic philosophers indeed meets the criteria for academic mobility, it nonetheless constitutes only a fraction of the mobility exercised by philosophers as a part of their profession and lifestyle. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that the pre-eminence of Athens as the centre of Hellenistic philosophical activity was predicated on a self-perpetuating process of social capital accumulation, as the presence of several prominent thinkers and organised schools of thought engaged in an intense dialectic attracted philosophically inclined individuals from all over the Greek world. The study concludes that the existence, development, and transformation of higher education networks is historically contingent and often affected by forces and factors external to the network(s), highlighting the need to examine occurrences and conditions of academic mobility on a case-by-case basis and suggesting further avenues of research to the study of historical academic mobility.
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(2019)This study aims to explore how family influences graduates in higher education and occupation markets, in the processes of opportunity, selection, purpose and motivation and performance in Hong Kong and Helsinki, Finland by applying the economic, cultural and social capitals introduced by Bourdieu and Coleman. Interviews (N=20) have been conducted to analyse the personal experiences of interviewees in both cities. However, results show that only cultural capital is the most influential resource provided by particularly parents in both Hong Kong and Helsinki. And the way of how parents in both cities contribute to and affect graduates is different from the claims of Bourdieu and Coleman. Thus, some sources of errors i.e. interview questions and interviewee’s answers and limitations are identified to support why results are not strong enough when applying Bourdieu’s and Coleman’s ideas of capitals. Also, diploma disease (Dore, 1976) is identified as one of the key problems in the education system, specifically in Hong Kong, which will be discussed at the end of this study.
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(2021)The purpose of this research is to study how informal communication and information flow changed when the COVID-19 pandemic forced many organizations to transfer from working at the office to remote work at home. In the pre-pandemic world, informal communication occurred at the workplace on a daily basis, thus creating more opportunities for information exchange, whereas in the present, the new remote work mode has erased informal communication from the equation nearly completely. This research studies how the flow of information was impacted by the sudden lack of informal communication, and whether these changes were seen in the basic workflow of organization members. The study is conducted in collaboration with CSC – ICT Center for Science Ltd. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were used as the research method in this study. All interviewees worked in specialist positions, and the sample represented all units in CSC. The interviews were analyzed with qualitative content analysis, which was based on the coding frame built on themes that arose in the interviews. Such themes were meetings, silos, communicational environment and information flow. The results show that without informal communication, the organization members do not have as good of a comprehension of the organization’s projects and daily operation as they did before the pandemic. Furthermore, the individuals’ informal communication networks have reduced during the pandemic, and they no longer communicate with anyone who they do not work with consistently. The reduced communication network and informal communication have impacted the information flow to have become more formal and focused on the substance at hand. Information has become more difficult to access without informal communication to maintain an understanding of who works with what information. The results are corresponding with what is known by previous research. However, this study elaborates more on not only the relationship between informal communication and information sharing, but also on how the dynamics of that relationship works in a changing environment. Without informal communication, individuals are unaware of the information that is flowing elsewhere in the organization. This creates uncertainty and feelings of missing out on potentially relevant information.
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(2022)Women of colour across the globe have played key roles in leading resistance to oppressive regimes, across time and space. Beginning with the anti-slavery freedom movement in the colonial era from the 16th century onwards, and into the digital spaces of the twentieth first century, women of colour’s activism has been pivotal to securing social justice. While this phenomenon has gained momentum in international scholarship, there is very little research on the women of colour digital activism in Finland. This study seeks to answer the following research question: How do women of colour in Finland use digital media to raise their voice[s]? The notion of raising one’s voice signals the need to move from an abject silenced position to take up space in public discussion. For the purpose of this thesis, digital media platforms and spaces represent potential or actually powerful routes for forging solidarity, spreading awareness, advocacy and campaign work in pursuit of social justice. In this thesis, the notion of raising one’s voice has a second implication: it refers to activism aimed at supporting those who are not heard to amplify their voices in public spaces. The study was conducted in the form of 19 semiconstructed interviews with women of colour living in Finland who engage in activism in digital platforms. The data was analysed using thematic analysis. The findings, based on data derived from a thematic content analysis of the interviews, suggest that women of colour in Finland use digital media platforms as a resource to facilitate their participation and amplify their voices in public conversations from which they would otherwise be silenced.
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(2021)This study aims to analyze institutional change and transparency practices of the National Audit Office of Peru (NAO), whose job is to promote accountability in public administration but paradoxically faced an accountability crisis in 2017. This study analyzes the combination of logics of explanation that fostered the changes in the NAO during 2010 to 2020, and the role of transparency practices in institutional change. This study answers two research questions about the logics of explanation that were decisive to promote institutional change and the role of transparency in institutional change at the National Audit of Peru during the ten-year study of 2010-2020. In that regard, this theory-based qualitative research is based on institutional change theories and the four logics of explanation proposed by Vivien Schmidt: institutional design, evolutionary, appropriateness, and communication, the perceptions of seven decision-makers, managers, authors, or participants who worked during the time of the study frame of ten years, plus the analysis of statistical data. Since only one logics of explanation cannot explain the changes, a combination of the four logics of explanation were necessary. Each of the logics of explanation merge with thematical axis proposed after coding the interviewees' perspectives to explain how the changes were produced and the role of the transparency practices that fostered the changes within an accountability public institution between 2010 2020. Moreover, theories of accountability, trustworthiness, transparency and communication are presented to answer the research questions. This study uses the content analysis method and other qualitative research tools such as document review, website review, and information from the organization, which is of public domain. Finally, the conclusions of this study show that the combination of the four logics of explanation was crucial for the changes at the National Audit Office, and the practices of transparency were effects of those changes.
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(2020)This thesis examines how urban sustainability is constructed in the local implementation plans of Sustainable Development Goals, and whether a common discourse can be outlined of them. Cities and other local authorities are increasingly assuming the global responsibility for sustainable development actions alongside the nation-states. In this case, the commitment is demonstrated by voluntarily committing to monitoring progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals as part of a global city network. The potential reasons for cities to engage in such global city networks for sustainability are a disappointment to global cooperation efforts by nation-states, a possibility for peer learning, sharing new practices, and seeking branding possibilities. A sample of local commitments, Voluntary Local Reviews, are analysed in terms of their discursive construction. The analysis is based on the theoretical constructions of environmental policy discourses by Maarten Hajer and John Dryzek. By focusing on policy discourses, it becomes possible to understand how certain issues are organized into politics while others are organized out. The research focuses on nine Voluntary Local Reviews released in 2019 by Bristol, Buenos Aires, Hamamatsu City, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Oaxaca, Mannheim, New York City and Taipei City. The research shows that although cities have internalized the common principles of sustainable development, mainly deriving from the Agenda 2030, many of them are interpreted in various ways. The common framework by Voluntary Local Review offers only a vague guideline for the reviews which leads to cities rather resorting to copying the models from each other or developing their own. The inherent ambiguity that is connected to the term sustainable development is not addressed in any of the reviews, nor is an explicit definition of the used sustainability concept offered in any of them. This supports the notion that cities engage in the discursive construction of (urban) sustainable development with the reviews. Based on the reviews, the following Sustainable Development Goals are considered as most relevant for cities: goal 11 (Sustainable cities and communities), goal 8 (Decent work and economic growth), goal 10 (Reduced inequalities) and goal 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions). Cities also actively position themselves as global sustainability actors in their reviews. They position themselves as eager to bear a global responsibility and as most relevant actors for citizens, close to their everyday lives. Furthermore, they express an urge to inspire other cities nationally and globally to also join in reporting and commit to sharing their progress on global arenas, such as in the United Nation’s High-Level Political Forum. In their connection to national sustainable development reporting, broadly two approaches can be identified. In some situations, national reporting is not mentioned in a review at all and, consequently, its role is highlighted. This applies mostly in situations where national actors are not considered as active as city actors. In other situations, cities see their reporting as complementary to the national one and even consider cooperation as their duty thanks to shared values with national actors. Voluntary Local Review reporting offers an interesting case of voluntary bottom-up commitment by cities to engage in global sustainability spheres and its significance is likely to only increase in the future. Based on results, reporting on the local level requires a careful balancing between adapting goals and indicators to locally relevant form, on one hand, and ensuring that they are general enough to allow for comparison, on the other hand. As sustainable development and Sustainable Development Goals are characterized by ambiguity concerning their precise definitions, the current local reporting offers considerable judgement for cities in terms of what to include in the reporting. More precise frameworks and indicators would allow that also cities with lesser resources could engage in this sustainability reporting.
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(2023)This thesis analyses the Finnish Government report on the need for a reform in integration promotion (2021:62). The material contains reform proposals to the current act regarding newcomer integration. The chosen method for studying the material is a Foucault-inspired critical discourse analysis which regards policy programmes as producers of problematizations concerning social phenomena. The primary study question of the thesis is ‘what kind of problem newcomer integration is represented to be’. This question is supported by five accompanying questions which elaborate how the representation of the problem has come about, what presuppositions and assumptions underlie the problem representation, what is silenced within the problem representation, what effects does the problem representation create and is there a possibility of thinking about the problem representation differently. The analysis concludes that the problem representation within the policy report presents the process of newcomer integration from an outdated point of view. The process is being represented as something that affects newcomers only and that the receiving society primarily has a coordinating role when it comes to providing efficient public services. The arrival of newcomers is perceived as a positive phenomenon only if newcomers commit to integrating themselves quickly and enter the Finnish labour market as soon as possible. Newcomers are thus treated as economic resources needed for solving Finland’s ongoing socio-economic challenges. The representation does not address the two-way nature of the integration process and thus accepts and reproduces the imbalance of power between newcomers and the receiving society. The proposals within the policy programme focus on creating an integration programme for the initial phase of the integration process and developing the integration service infrastructure so that the integration of newcomers could be achieved within a maximum of two years. In addition to intensifying the speed of the integration process, the analysis shows that demands for the receiving society relate mostly to redefining the responsibilities of officials at different governance levels. Equally, increasing the amount of low threshold integration services are given attention so that newcomers outside the labour market would be reached more efficiently. The analysis indicates that the purpose of this is to gather and manage all human capital that is currently left unattended, mould it into a usable resource and redirect it into the labour market. The analysis concludes that the suggested proposals advocate for increasing control on the lives and identities of newcomers as they are categorized according to their competences and skills i.e., their value to the receiving society. Thus, regardless of the reform on the act concerning newcomer integration, the process is still being thought of as a unidirectional economic process. Key words: Newcomer integration policy, two-way integration, critical discourse analysis, governmentality, biopolitics
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(2020)A professionalized climate and external expectations have caused great changes to many development organizations, including a degree of homogenization. Focusing on the identity of organizations is the best way to understand what the impact of change has been and how development organizations are able to hold on to core values and identity while innovating new ways of competitively reaching goals and milestones. The general metrics for success, profit, growth, efficiency, and productivity from within the management perspective follows a logic for which there is much theoretical and empirical evidence. However, the study of organizations and their well-being in terms of their identity in relation to their professionalism is a less researched area. Organizational identity theory can benefit from research to find how to draw direct logical outcomes which can be applied by the organizations in setting directions and goals for their future development. The main purpose for this research is to view how it can explain the differences in how or whether the core values have been affected by the professionalization of nonprofit INGO’s in Finland and how it has been adopted by development NGO’s. Is this theory validated by the phenomenological research data produced by this research? Where organizational identity theory as a framework doesn’t provide a quantitative basis by which to factor in all the variables that influence the social makeup and conceptual whole of an organization, it does provide a framework for the study of the phenomenon as a whole in a qualitative manner. It also gives conceptual paradigm for defining an identity, and how the different organizational features and attributes are related with the identity. The two INGOs chosen for this research, Fida International and Finn Church Aid, were similar enough to offer valid points of comparison by being faith based organizations, both of which have successfully grown into a significant actors in the field of development cooperation. These also offered interesting comparison of how their original organizational identities have lead into different development in organizational structures, global perspectives, and brands they wish to be known for. This kind of research can offer valuable information for NGOs in their future developmental goals. Empirical data on the organizations was gathered from different level staff as they perceived it. The hypothesis is that identity is not always aligned for the convenience of reaching the goals of the organization or even for competitive advantage, counterintuitively identity can be based on independent value decisions even if it doesn’t follow the logic of a professionalized management perspective. Results confirmed the original hypothesis in case of both the researched organizations. A strong organizational identity as is seen in Fida’s case necessitates constant re-alignment to the context, but it is a strength in safeguarding the value base and purpose of the organization; although sometimes at the expense of traditional markers of organizational success such as growth, efficiency and profit it provides a clear vision of what is worth pursuing in the long run. In the other case, the organizational identity of the FCA gives understanding of what the original purpose of the organization was, and even with big changes in its historical value base and consequent shifts in the definitions of development and its purpose, the organization has thrived to meet that challenge, the FCA has become the largest development actor in Finland in order to stay true to its identity.
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(2020)Throughout this century, the world has experienced the emergence of upgraded technologies based on robust data-processing capacities and the expansion of internet networks. This phenomenon has become a transversal aspect linked to economic growth, development of public services, changes in the labor market, and mobilization of political activism, among many other elements influenced by high-technology. On the other hand, political parties play a significant role in shaping and approaching potential regulation and public policies concerning high-technology and digital tools. This thesis explores the implication of technological and digital shifts for political parties in Argentina, Mexico, the United States, and the United Kingdom over the last decade. The main research goal is to examine the salience of emerging trends in high-technology and digitalization on national political platforms, taking special consideration of the diverse set of social, political, and economic characteristics of the cases in each country. The theoretical framework will be divided into aspects linking the emerging nature of technological and digital change with political parties' activities. A conceptual frame of political parties, saliency theory, technology, and digitalization serves as the starting point of further theoretical notions of this study. Later, an exploration of ideas from the digital economy helps to identify the vital role of technology in the modern economy. Similarly, the examination of the magnitude of technological and digital change results in some grounds for justifying the relevancy of studying party policies facing the one-way journey of technology. Moreover, some notions arguing the drastic socioeconomic effects of automated technologies approach the apparent downsides of high technology. The research process eventually reveals the growing influence of technology as a vehicle for enhancing the economic and social policies. To achieve this, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is used to extract and classify data from party manifestos that define party stances. The results provide evidence of the marginal and growing influence of technology and digitalization as issues political parties approach on elections. In the case of the parties analyzed, this presents substantial relevancy from mainstream political parties in industrialized countries. Similarly, the results point to the intertwining of these issues with traditional themes of public policy proposed by political parties on elections.
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(2021)Peacemakers operate in an increasingly complex global environment. Approaches to peace, including peace mediation, also reflect these changes happening in the surrounding world. Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, a new Centre for Peace Mediation within the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (MFA) was established. This thesis conducts a critical inspection of a policy’s seemingly sudden emergence by taking the Centre as its case study. With scarce policy documents, this study collected its data through conducting 10 semi-structured interviews with state and nonstate actors in the Finnish peace mediation field to analyse the way the Centre is perceived to have come about. The interviews lasted around one hour each. In this study, a novel theoretical framework is advanced through inspecting the policy’s problem representations (WPR approach), the forces which affected its establishment (policy diffusion), and the boundaries that are used to demarcate between groups (boundary work) to analyse why the Centre for Peace Mediation was established. The study finds that the Centre for Peace Mediation was not solely a result of a restructuring of MFA resources, but was affected by a multitude of forces on the national, regional, and international planes. By employing the WPR approach and the frameworks of policy diffusion mechanisms and boundary work, the study’s findings point to Finnish efforts to become a credible ‘player’ in the field of peace mediation. Studying how policies and the issues interwoven within them are framed and justified is relevant on many fronts. First, it helps understand governance processes and what groups of people are highlighted at the expense of others. The study also elucidates how civil society can partake in national policymaking. It additionally shows how intergovernmental organisations influence nations through agenda-setting.
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(2023)Datafication penetrates all levels of society. In order to harness public value from an expanding pool of private-produced data, there has been growing interest in facilitating business-to-government (B2G) data-sharing. This research examines the development of B2G data-sharing within the data ecosystem of the City of Helsinki. The research has identified expectations ecosystem actors have for B2G data-sharing and factors that influence the city’s ability to unlock public value from private-produced data. The research context is smart cities, with a specific focus on the City of Helsinki. Smart cities are in an advantageous position to develop novel public-private collaborations. Helsinki, on the international stage, stands out as a pioneer in the realm of data-driven smart city development. For this research, nine data ecosystem actors representing the city and companies participated in semi-structured thematic interviews through which their perceptions and experiences were mapped. The theoretical framework of this research draws from the public value management (PVM) approach in examining the smart city data ecosystem and alignment of diverse interests for a shared purpose. Additionally, the research transcends the examination of the interests in isolation and looks at how technological artefacts shape the social context and interests surrounding them. Here, the focus is on the properties of data as an artefact with anti-rival value-generation potential. The findings of this research reveal that while ecosystem actors recognise that more value can be drawn from data through collaboration, this is not apparent at the level of individual initiatives and transactions. This research shows that the city’s commitment to and facilitation of a long-term shared sense of direction and purpose among ecosystem actors is central to developing B2G data-sharing for public value outcomes. Here, participatory experimentation is key, promoting an understanding of the value of data and rendering visible the diverse motivations and concerns of ecosystem actors, enabling learning for wise, data-driven development.
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(2023)This thesis approaches the topic of homophobia and anti-LGBT rhetoric in the official statements released by the Polish Roman Catholic Church and its officials. It undertakes an extensive study of propaganda and rhetoric analysis to visualise the propagandistic nature of the PRCC’s stance on the LGBT+ community. The core of this thesis examination is the 2020 “The Position of the Polish Bishops’ Conference” which addressed the matter of LGBT+ people in contrast with the religious dogma of the Polish Roman Catholic Church. The 27-page-long document is analysed based on various theoretical approaches, such as the model for propaganda analysis by Jowett & O’Donnell or the list of propaganda devices proposed by the Carolina K-12 group. These factors enable this thesis to determine the propagandistic character of the statement. Furthermore, this project utilises the theoretical approach to the study of homophobia in Poland by attaching the anti-LGBT language used by the PRCC to the theory of the East/West Divide presented by Agnès Chetaille. This paper follows the distinction between the Western and Eastern European stances on LGBT+ rights made by Chetaille and recognises the identity-forming role of homophobia in modern Poland. Through its examination of both the abovementioned theory and the extensive analysis of “The Position of the Polish Bishops’ Conference regarding LGBT+”, this thesis pictures various groups of propaganda devices visible in the statement and proves its propagandistic nature. Moreover, through the careful inspection of the other instances of PRCC officials utilising the aforementioned anti-LGBT+ rhetoric, and by connecting the homophobic propaganda displayed by the Church to Chetaille’s theory of the East/West Divide, this paper shows that through a top-down approach, homophobia enters both the public and private sphere of life in Poland, thus transforming the Polish identity and attaching it closely to ideals such as tradition, religion and heteronormativity
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(2023)This thesis analyses the effect of the Covid-19 crisis and the Invasion of Ukraine on the institutional power of the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The Presidency as an institution seems to be a somewhat under researched topic in EU studies, therefore this thesis aims to contribute to the literature around the topic. This research is done by analysing three case-study Presidencies: Finland in 2019, Portugal in 2021 and the Czech Republic in 2022. Through the study of the performance of these Presidencies, this thesis is looking to make a case for the Presidency’s increasing importance and influence as an institution, especially when considering the smaller Member States influence capabilities in the EU. The study is conducted in two parts. Firstly, with analysing indicators drawn from the empirical model of Vidacak & Milosic (2020) that measure the performance of the Presidency in quantitative matters. Then secondly, with a qualitative analysis using the qualitative content analysis method on the Presidencies Priority programmes. This part of the analysis is a supplement analysis to the first part to further measure the performance of the case study countries. The findings of this thesis state that there is clear correspondence between the presence of these crises and the increased performance of the case study Presidencies. Out of the three case countries, Portugal that held the Presidency during Covid-19 performed clearly better than the other countries, the Czech Republic who held the Presidency during the Invasion of Ukraine performed better than average, and Finland who held the Presidency before Covid-19 performed worse than average. Overall, this thesis cannot conclusively state that this constitutes as an increase in institutional power, due to the complex institutional nature of the Presidency term, and the Council decision-making. However, this research does state that these tendencies provide further opportunities for smaller countries to influence the EU decision-making through the Council Presidency. These results can also have further effect in the power balance within the Union, where the larger Member States traditionally possess more influence over the decision-making.
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