Counter-Ideology Populism : The Finns Party’s Counter-Democratic, Counter-Cosmopolitan, Counter-Finlandization Platform, as told by Suomen Uutiset

Abstract: Nationalist populist movements are on the rise across Europe. In Finland, the Finns Party became the primary oppositional movement against mainstream politics after their birth in 1995. The party political platform has been defined by nationalism, social conservatism, and populism. One of their main communication outlets is their online news website Suomen Uutiset, which publishes ordinary news alongside party communication. It is an important outreach tool, especially in a nation with many internet users. This thesis sets out to produce a reading of the Finns Party’s online news website SuomenUutiset.fi, and select material from the immigration critical internet forum Hommaforum.org. The analysis of this empirical material will demonstrate the underlying sociopolitical ideologies inform news publishing online for a political platform. The aim is to understand how the Finns Party utilizes media in communicating its policy and winning over the public. The theoretical framework draws on the work of globalization and cosmopolitanism researchers such as Ulrich Beck, David Held, Anthony Giddens, and Zygmunt Bauman. Counter-democracy by Pierre Rosanvallon is drawn upon too, along with theories on Finlandization, the public spheres, new media, echo chambers, and news media sensationalism. The research is conducted as an open content analysis of a case study, with a guiding methodology of Flyvbjerg’s phronetic research. The reading has been informed by a novel theoretical framework, combining concepts of counter-democracy, counter-cosmopolitanism, and counter-Finlandization under the umbrella term counter-ideology. The analysis shows the validity of this informing background ideology to be present across SuomenUutiset.fi coverage. What it has discovered is the intricate working of the counter-ideology informing the background of Finns Party politics. This research further proposes a way for understanding other similar cases located in similar contexts. The theoretical framework is recommended as an approach for researching populist politics in Europe, ones focused on resisting the European Union.