Populismin merkitsijät : perussuomalaiset 2010-luvun alun pilakuvissa

Authors

• Juha Herkman

Abstract

Article explores the meanings given to populism in the Finnish public debates through analyzing political cartoons linked to the populist Finns Party. The hypothesis is that in Finnish political discourse the Finns Party has signified populism during the twenty-first century. After the unexpected success of 2011 national elections, the party has challenged the Finnish political field with its nationalist conservative, immigration critical and Eurosceptic perspectives. Political cartoons can capture these kinds of political transformations and value confrontations, thus indicating the moral backgrounds of contemporary social imaginaries. In this study 201 (=n) political cartoons from four different cartoonists published in four different papers are analyzed to find out the main caricatures and themes dominating the portrayal of the Finns Party. The analysis indicates that most known party leaders and international and domestic political agenda dominate cartoons and that the Finns Party is not always signifying populism. Nevertheless, the portrayal of party’s populism is very negative, although differences between the cartoonists and the publications are evident. In gen­eral, Finnish political cartoons anchor their criticism to same liberal values than mainstream journal­istic news media, indicating that the signifiers linked to populism are floating – i.e. their meanings are contingent and struggled in the current political conjuncture.