Perussuomalaiset ja eurokriisi mediassa

Kirjoittajat

• Juha Herkman

Abstrakti

The paper explores how the EU-critical populist Finns party has been represented in relation to the Euro crisis in four Finnish newspapers Helsingin Sanomat, Kauppalehti, Ilta-Sanomat and Kaleva. The sample is based on a comparative study of ten EU-countries directed by Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford and contains eleven two-week periods sieved out from the key moments of the crisis in 2010–2012. The Finnish sample consists of 971 journalistic articles discussing the crisis, but the focus here is on qualitative frame analysis of 59 articles where the Finns party was consid­ered. Even if the Euro crisis was the most popular topic during the Finnish parliamentary elections 2011 where the Finns party gained unexceptional success, in other times the crisis coverage has been dominated by so-called integration positive Euro-elites. Thus, the Finns party’s role has been relatively marginal in the crisis coverage, but there have been significant differences between the papers. Ilta-Sanomat has given the most positive publicity to the party as an EU-critical voice of “the people”, whereas Kaleva has mocked the party as a pointless populist movement. Helsingin Sanomat has been more neutral in its representations.