Browsing by master's degree program "Globaalin politiikan ja viestinnän maisteriohjelma"

This thesis examines the power relations of the United States pharmaceutical industry to answer two research questions: (1) to what extent does the US pharmaceutical industry have power? and (2) does the US-based pharmaceutical industry attempt to gain power abroad? This work builds on the assumption that the US industry has some level of power, particularly as it is able to operate in an environment in which it operates with unregulated prices, high profit margins, patent monopolies, all while receiving assistance in the form of publicly funded research and tax breaks from the government. Following the introductory Section 1, Section 2 provides a background of the main concepts considered within this study. A brief history of the pharmaceutical industry is provided, as well as discussion surrounding today’s era of medical neoliberalism, i.e. neoliberal ideas in the healthcare sphere. Corporate lobbying is introduced in terms of theoretical perspectives as to why firms lobby, a prominent idea being that firms lobby to create value. The importance of intangible assets and intellectual property rights for pharmaceutical firms is presented, as are two theoretical perspectives on how the pharmaceutical industry should operate: neoclassical economics and social justice. Section 2 concludes with a framework on power as presented by Steven Lukes on three dimensions of power: decision-making, non-decision-making, and ideological. Section 3 presents the research design that this study undertakes. Building on the power dimensions of Lukes, this thesis considers three forms of power: ideational power (neoliberal ideas of e.g. innovation), vertical power (political connections), and property power (intellectual property rights). As such, three collections of material are used to analyze each power type individually. Articles from the New York Times are used to examine ideational power, focusing on various discourses found in the articles. Lobbying reports of three large pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Merck are used to determine what issues and areas the firms spend resources on. The negotiation process of the TRIPS Agreement is discussed to show how the US pharmaceutical industry was a main player in terms of creating an international intellectual property rights regime. Section 4 analyzes the three power types framed above, and Section 5 discusses the findings. Ideational power showed a general norm in which the pharmaceutical industry’s operations are normalized in the United States and more broadly the Global North. Vertical power found that pharmaceutical companies are interested in engaging with issues both domestically and internationally. On an international level, the firms focused on intellectual property rights, trade agreements, and taxes. Property power showed that the TRIPS Agreement emerged in part due to corporate interests in the United States, including the pharmaceutical industry. These private actors were able to collaborate and work with governments to create a more favorable international environment in terms of intellectual property protections. Section 5 also discusses the contributions of this study to the overall field of global political economy, as well as presenting limitations and paths of future research. Section 6 concludes.

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.

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.

This thesis will investigate how in transnational media outlet Politico Europe Europeanness is framed in relation to LGBT rights. The concept of Europeanness is highly contested and is largely shaped by the framed context in which it is studied. The concept of Europeanness in the context of this thesis is understood as a set of ideas that are relational and temporal. This allows the thesis to investigate how the concept of Europeanness is framed in contemporary settings and in relation to LGBT rights. The theoretical focus of the thesis is how an internal sexual Other is constructed in relation to Europeanness. This Othering process in constructing Europeanness and in relation to LGBT rights is often studied through the notions of Rainbow Europe and Freezer Europe. The case in point for the thesis is what is referred to as the Hungarian anti-LGBT law of 2021 that was adopted by the Hungarian government on the 15th of June 2021. The empirical material consists in total of 18 online newspaper articles of Politico Europe. The data collection method was performed through random sampling. The data is organised and coded using MAXQDA software. The method that is used to analyse the data is qualitative frame analysis method (FA). After analysis of the empirical material, the main frames that create the notions of “Rainbow Europe” and “Freezer Europe” are organised into two categories. “Rainbow Europe” notion is framed through fundamental rights frame, tolerance frame, and backsliding frame. “Freezer Europe” notion is framed through temporality frame, backwardness frame, and intolerance frame. The main results are that Europeanness in relation to LGBT rights is framed in Politico Europe through the notions of Rainbow and Freezer Europe, with the creation of a temporal difference in Hungary post-2010. Europeanness is framed as essentially LGBT friendly, and the framing of Rainbow Europe notion heightens this construction of Europeanness. Hungary is framed through the notion of Freezer Europe, which renders it as not European “enough” to be considered part of Europeanness in relation to LGBT rights. The thesis contributes to the understanding of contemporary framings of Europeanness in relation to LGBT rights in transnational news media.

Parties in federal states are active on multiple levels. While attention has been given to multi-level parties and the multi-party system in general circumstances, less research has been done on how these parties act during campaigns. One of the latest trends in political campaigning is the so-called grassroots campaigning. Grassroots campaigning takes the party members at the center of the campaign and uses them as facilitators of the party’s political message in various ways. The party Alliance 90/ The Greens in Germany embraces this grassroots democracy principle and is, therefore, the optimal case to analyze. The unit where most of the party members accumulate in the German party system is the district association. To see how grassroots campaigning works within a multi-level party, this thesis aims to examine the interactions between the Greens district associations with the federal association's campaign during the federal election campaign 2021. The research data consists of six semi-structured interviews with campaign managers of the Greens parties’ district associations who were active during the federal election campaign 2021. The interview transcripts are analyzed by using a qualitative content analysis method to gain knowledge of prominent and reoccurring categories of the campaign managers' experiences during the federal election campaign. The analysis showed that the campaign managers' district associations primarily focused on the mobilization of party members as well as the localizing of politics. Furthermore, the data showed that the campaign managers do not see any influence from their side on the federal election campaign besides the formal influence through assemblies. However, they experienced different forms of autonomy which is in line with the theoretical construct of grassroots campaigning. Last, of all, the data revealed a lack of transparency from the federal campaign side. The outcomes of this study indicate the main tasks of the district associations as mobilization of members and localization of politics. Additionally, the district association seems to have a rather high amount of autonomy within the federal campaign, but on the contrary, the side might not be able to influence the federal association's campaign as such. Nevertheless, this study provides the first research on the aspect of multi-level campaigning and thereby addresses the gap in the literature on political campaigning.

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

This thesis sets out to investigate how the ideas of what it means to be a woman and femininity are constructed and propagated through the film Raya and the Last Dragon, the latest Disney Princess film, in the form of stereotypes. Previous studies show that Disney Princess films, from The Walt Disney Company, produce effects on the behaviour and thoughts of children when it comes to gender roles. As propaganda became associated with totalitarian regimes, studies about media effects rarely coin said effects as caused by propaganda. Therefore, propaganda as a field of analysis lacks a body of literature and a consensual set of analysis rules. This thesis contributes to the establishment of propaganda as a field of analysis, by defining it under Jacques Ellul’s categorisation. The study relies on a qualitative analysis based on the propaganda analysis model proposed by Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell. The empirical material consists of the film Raya and the Last Dragon, and it is available on Disney+, the streaming service of The Walt Disney Company. The findings of this thesis illuminate how the ideas of a woman and of femininity are constructed in Raya and the Last Dragon and allow to understand, against the literature review, if these constructions have changed and evolved when compared to previous Disney Princess films. The results indicate that the film presents a world where women and men are seen as equal, leading it to break previous stereotypes associated with women and femininity. By presenting a female-centric story, with independent characters who have diverse personalities and clothing, who fight and have no romantic interests, the film subverts the trope of a passive woman in a dress waiting to be rescued by a man from a powerful evil woman. Additionally, the film rotates around the relationship between Raya and Namaari, using the patriarchal trope of plotting a woman against a woman to focus on female friendship. Yet, as the filmmakers are conditioned by their positionality, some stereotypes are still oriented by patriarchal logic and a western perspective, namely the omnipresence of a patriarchal figure that guides the protagonist. In the end, besides its contributions to the field of propaganda analysis, the thesis updates the tradition of studies done on the gendered stereotypes present in the Disney Princess films.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a political process where individual citizens are given the opportunity to express their preferences and interests in public forums, along with the right to vote on specific policies, thereby affecting how the budget is allocated. Participatory budgeting is often seen as a potential solution to the challenges faced by representative democracies. It provides an opportunity for new voices to enter the political arena and promotes social justice by enabling citizens to express their preferences and interests. It also enhances bureaucracies by opening new channels of communication between city experts and citizens and by creating new tools and processes for enacting policies. Since its first appearance in Brazil in 1989, participatory budgeting processes have proliferated, with approximately 8,000 rounds conducted worldwide. In this thesis, I analyzed Helsinki's OmaStadi participatory budgeting process, which took place from 2018 to 2020. It was the first of its scale in Finland, with EUR 4.4 million allocated to various projects proposed by Helsinki residents. Over 1,200 proposals were submitted, and nearly 50,000 people voted for 44 projects to be realized. In the thesis, I first examine the background and theory of participatory budgeting and then discuss the methodological tools used in my analysis. I then move on to the analysis itself, where I compare material coded from the final evaluation and examine it through the lens of the four principles for enacting social change in participatory budgeting programs introduced by Brian Wampler: voice, vote, social justice, and oversight. My goal was to determine to what extent the pilot project succeeded in enacting social and political renewal through this framework. I approached this task by conducting a case study and using content analysis as my tool for analyzing the final evaluation of OmaStadi conducted by BIBU, the research project funded by the Strategic Research Council of the Academy of Finland. In my analysis, I also offer various suggestions and pointers for the development of the next rounds of OmaStadi. My findings suggest that, in addition to its many successes, as a pilot project, there is still a lot of potential for further developing OmaStadi to better achieve the ideals set by the four principles for successful PB programs.

Online disinformation has been identified internationally as a concerning phenomenon due to its potential effects on communication, democracy, and the very conceptions of truth and reality. This thesis aims to examine the question of what factors may make societies resilient to disinformation. Based on the theoretical framework originally outlined in Humprecht et al.’s (2020) cross-country ranking of 18 Western democracies, this thesis analyzes how structural environmental factors at the country level may strengthen resilience to online disinformation in two countries: Finland and Poland. Based on longitudinal mixed methods analyses informed by international indices, reports, and national scholarship, this thesis analyzes the political, media, and economic environments of Finland and Poland to consider how these environments—colored by cultural, historical, and societal contexts—may contribute to each country’s respective resilience to disinformation. This within-case analysis shows the challenges of quantifying and ranking resilience to disinformation and to develop the theoretical framework further. While Finland has historically been found to perform well in resilience studies, its examination alongside the Polish case demonstrates the necessity of nuancing each factor, informed by questioning what each factor actually entails as well as the impact of country contexts. Indicators such as populist communication, public service media, and trust in news were revealed to be more complex than originally outlined in the framework when applied to two different country contexts. This thesis also identified two novel additions to further contribute to the framework: journalistic standards, roles, and ethics and media literacy. By proposing additions to the framework and critically discussing the interactions between factors, this thesis also identifies key areas of future research to contribute to the field of disinformation studies.

Thirty years after the fall of communism, the post-socialist countries find themselves in a state of economic dependency. The main argument of the thesis is that the Visegrad Four (V4) countries (the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia) operate in an FDI-led growth model, characterized by strong presence of foreign capital (especially in export-oriented manufacturing sector), but a low level of knowledge spill-overs from foreign-owned sectors to those in domestic ownership, which constraints the productivity growth of the domestic-owned enterprises (the so-called dual economy). Integration into the global economy, conducted in the V4 countries mainly through ties with Germany, was initially highly beneficial, however, it is increasingly becoming a constraint on further development, illustrated e. g. by the inability to achieve full convergence to EU-15. The aim of the thesis is to describe how did the FDI-led growth model developed in the V4 countries between 1990 and 2019; what was the political discussion of the growth model; and the differences in these two spheres between the V4 countries. This is studied on two levels: the FDI-led growth model itself (described using a set of macroeconomic indicators); and analysis of the political discussion. The conclusion is that the V4 countries differ both in terms of development of the FDI-led growth model (the biggest outlier is Poland, which is less reliant on foreign investment then rest of the group), and in terms of the political approach to the model (especially Poland and Hungary after 2010 take active steps to limit the impact of the FDI dependency; the Czech Republic and Slovakia are more or less aware of the dependency, but take no interventionist measures). Given the high levels of economic growth in Poland and especially Hungary after 2014, there is most probably a causality between the efforts to limit the dependency and the economic development (although other factors, such as the size of the economy, play a role too). However, it is also argued that unlike certain level of economic nationalism, populism is not a prerequisite for limiting the dependent growth and in the long run can actually be harmful to economic development.