Conditionally One of 'Us'

Conditionally One of ‘Us’ A Study of Print Media, Minorities and Positioning Practices Camilla Haavisto academic dissertation To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki, for public examination in the Arppeanum auditorium, Snellmaninkatu 3, on 13 May 2011, at 12 noon. Helsinki 2011 Publisher: Research Institute Swedish School of Social Science University of Helsinki P.O. Box 16, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland Telephone: +358 9 1911 Telefax: +358 9 1912 8430 © Camilla Haavisto Cover and layout: Tom Backström ISSN-L 1235-0966 ISSN 1235-0966 (print) ISBN 978-952-10-5217-0 (print) ISBN 978-952-10-5218-7 (online) Helsinki 2011 Helsinki University Print Acknowledgements This book has been in the making for several years. It sums up and syn- thesises several strands of case study work and argumentation that I have presented over the last years, mainly in Finnish or Swedish. There are many people I want to thank for being part of this process. To begin with, I would like to thank Ullamaija Kivikuru, the insightful and encouraging supervisor of this project, who never lost interest in my work and never stopped believ- ing in my abilities to finish this book one day. Ullamaija has always treated me as an equal, given me a lot of intellectual freedom, but got involved when needed. I could not have wished for a better supervisor! I am also grateful to Hannu Nieminen, my second supervisor, who has taken me onboard in two challenging projects. He also took the time to read and comment upon a late version of the manuscript during busy times, which I truly appreci- ate. Another very important person for me is Karina Horsti, who has been my mentor and colleague for years. Without her kind pushing, I would most likely have been a PhD-student forever not finding the ‘guts’ to hand in the manuscript. Elisabeth Eide and Kim Schrøder were the pre-examiners of this study. Their sharp but encouraging suggestions gave me energy to finalise this project. Thank you! There are numerous other people who have given me observant com- ments on parts of the evolving text: Tom Sandlund, Sirpa Wrede, Camilla Nordberg, Tom Moring, Charles Husband, Peter Hervik, Mats Nylund and Pasi Saukkonen. Kari Karppinen, Auli Harju and Yonca Ermutlu have, be- sides feedback, provided me with excellent company during lunches, travels and conferences throughout the years. Maria Saaristo née Kreander, Krister Sandlund, Karin Creutz-Kämppi and Heidi af Heurlin have also been an important resource, both academically and socially, particularly in the early stages of my research. Spending time with these people has made academic life remarkably less dull and lonely than it otherwise would have been. I also extend my gratitude to all the ladies in our fascinating new project called Structures of Compassion for forming an academic sounding board and for being such lovely travel company in Rwanda; to Michael McIntosh, Tom Backström, Johanna Warius, Jarmila Rajas, Christian Starck, Minna Lehtola, Mats Engblom, Hanna Bärlund; to numerous research assistants for 5 helping me with various issues relating to the project; and to all the discus- sants in the focus group study for sharing their thoughts with me, a stran- ger. I also wish to acknowledge the Lamppu family, thanks to whom I have regularly been able to withdraw from routines and go on lonesome but very productive writing ‘holidays’ to the Finnish countryside. Nylands Nation, Svenska kulturfonden, Hanaholmens kulturcentrum, and the University of Helsinki have financially supported this project. Having said all this, my final words go to Ira with family, Mum, Dad, Bobe Lulu, and all of my dear friends outside the academia: thanks for being there for me in good and bad weather. Thanks to you I know where home is. This book is dedicated to everyone who keeps on working against all forms of fanaticisms and racisms. Camilla Haavisto In Helsinki on 5th April 2011 6 Contents Acknowledgements 5 PART I: CONTEXTUALISATIONS 9 1. Introduction 11 1.1 The role of the media in boundary-drawing 14 1.2 Aim and research question 16 1.3 Situating the study 18 1.4 Finland as a case in point 22 1.5 The disposition 27 2. Theoretical perspectives on positioning and communicative spaces 30 2.1 Positioning Theory (PT) 31 2.2 Positioning practices in the communicative space 36 2.3 Ideologies influencing positioning practices 44 2.4 Anti-racist media policies 48 3. Material and methods 54 3.1 Making sense of the material 56 3.2 Analytical devices common for both methods 61 3.3 The selection criteria and actor naming 64 PART II: EMPIRICAL FINDINGS 69 4. Case I: Monitoring two Swedish language morning papers 71 4.1 Article themes 74 4.2 Headline themes 81 4.3 Whose voice is heard? 83 4.4 Discussion: What is said and left unsaid? 86 5. Case II: Russians and Estonians 89 5.1 Finnish Russophobia and relations to Estonia 91 5.2 The material: Some central features 94 5.3 Marking and claiming positions 95 5.4 Discussion: Using ‘us’ or serving ‘us’? 104 6. Case III: Arts journalism 107 6.1 The material: Selection criteria and main characteristics 109 6.2 Two cases under the magnifying glass 113 6.3 The typically Finnish 119 7 6.4 Naming practices 122 6.5 Discussion: Positioned as identity worker, cosmopolite or immigrant 124 7. Case IV: Afternoon papers 129 7.1 The material: Selection criteria and main characteristics 130 7.2 Sports and the denial of racism 133 7.3 Crime and minority background 139 7.4 Celebrities and ‘ordinary citizens’ 142 7.5 Discussion: Marking belonging 145 8. Case V: The response from audience-publics 151 8.1 Positioning selves and re-positioning others 154 8.2 Claims of a cultural-ideological character 161 8.3 Claims on journalism 165 8.4 Discussion: Everyone wants to be a potential ingroup member! 170 PART III: INTERPRETATIONS AND OUTLOOKS 175 9. Positioning and the discursive organisation of difference 177 9.1 Summary of main findings and arguments 179 9.2 The mediated storyline: ‘Whose welfare?’ 183 9.3 Four node-positions and positioning as a practice 189 9.4 Audience-publics opposing and coping 194 9.5 Discussing the findings 196 Epilogue 200 Sources 204 Appendix 225 8 Part ı: Contextualisations 1. introduction 1. Introduction A young woman of Bosnian background looks at me and says: ‘I think the media are writing about Islam almost as if it equalled terrorism. They make these linkages, and I think it is so wrong that just because I have Islam as my faith, I would be a terrorist’. The other women around her nod in assent. All of the women are dressed in a ‘Western’ way. Many have jobs, and some are married to ‘native’ men. Despite their seemingly successful adapta- tion to post-migratory everyday life, they are affected by the way in which the media in Finland portray issues relating to their minority religion. They interpret what they claim is one-sided media reporting as a sign of deprecia- tion, feeling that they as ‘good citizens’ have to suffer because of a problem- focused, biased and simplifying media reporting. In their dissatisfaction, some have quit following the news; ‘It’s this bored-to-death-thing again, and it gets so one-tracked, and in the course of time, you simply try to focus on the small things around you […]’.1 This scene occurred in one of the six focus group meetings that I or- ganised in 2006 in order to gain more information about how newspaper readers of various backgrounds relate to news about migration, integration and minority-majority relations. Together with an extensive corpus of press articles (1,782 articles published in five Finnish mainstream newspapers during 1999–2007), these focus group discussions constitute the empirical cornerstone for my PhD-dissertation in media and communication sciences. The main task of this study is to investigate how ethnic minorities and immigrants are positioned in the media and in face-to-face talk, and to explore the practice of positioning in itself. I chose Finland from 1999 to 2007 as a case – not only because I was born in Finland and have lived there most of my life – but also because Finland during this time, in a more intensified way than before, continued to devel- op into a country of multiple lifestyles, ethnicities, religions and languages 1 First commentary is by a discussant called Vesna and the second by Mejram. Names are figurative. (See chapter 8.) 11 CONDITIONALLY onE oF ‘uS’ – PArt ı: contExtualisationS with diverging and converging similarities and differences. This intensified change towards more ethnic and cultural variety was influenced by major political and cultural developments, such as the emergence of information societies, economic globalisation, European integration and increased migration. A similar change towards increased ethnocultural complexity can be seen also in other nation-states in Europe. In the case of Finland, how- ever, the change has been rapid and relatively recent. At the same time the national economy was growing and politics changed towards a more active recruitment of foreign labour. The True Finns – a populist party, sceptical of immigration – had not yet gained the popularity it soon was about to.2 During this particular time and in this particular context, this dissertation explores how the mainstream print media and ‘ordinary’ people of various ethnocultural backgrounds make sense of who belongs where. Who is envisioned as a ‘Finn’, an ‘immigrant’, or as being in a minority, and why? Do these categories ever overlap? What about the role of the media? The media are constituting and circulating these categorisation processes, but is there any pattern in the way in which people of various ethnic, cultural and reli- gious backgrounds are presented? One of the main starting points for this study is that the scope and the pace of demographic change has challenged traditional segment definitions and boundaries, and invited people to engage in a re-envisioning of various imaginary categories like ‘we’ and ‘they’, ‘Finns’ and ‘foreigners’, ‘natives’ and ‘immigrants’, and ‘minorities’ and ‘majorities’.

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