Current and recent research projects include:

• Charlie bit my finger! What News Media Can Learn from YouTube?
  The purpose of the research project is to achieve a more profound understanding of workings of YouTube as a community building media.
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• Contemporary Values and Heroes in the Newspapers
  The research aims to clarify the various ways in which national value has been constructed in Estonia, Finland and Russia, and show the role of the newspaper in the development of national public sphere by studying the structures, actors and values in Finnish, Estonian and Russian dailies 1901 – 2009.

• Crisis and Communication: The Role of the Finnish Red Cross in the Organization and Communication of an Acute Crisis
  The main focus of the project is on the crisis communication of the Finnish Red Cross and its operations as an organizer in an acute crisis. The project is closely related to the Crisis and Communication Research Project, where the co-operation of the local and regional authorities and the voluntary rescue service has emerged as an essential section of the study.
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• Cut-and-paste Journalism?
  The study observes the sourcing practices of news media through quantitative and qualitative analysis. The aim is twofold: First, the purpose is to explore the relationship between PR and journalism by establishing the extent to which Finnish journalism depends on public relations for its output and how this is manifested in news content. The second goal is to identify the role played by other media in shaping news content and to track how much the newsrooms derive and circulate material from their rivals.
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• Digital Reputation
  The project’s aims include defining reputation management in digital publicity by building on existing research on reputation risk, organizational communication and management studies and studies on online communication. This multi-discipline approach also introduces psychophysiological measurements and linguistic tools and methods in order to develop a framework for reputational modeling and analysis of digital publicity contents.
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• Election Funding Crisis: Media and Politics at Crossroads?
  The study aims to elucidate the significance of the election funding crisis that started in spring 2008. The objective is to form an overall picture of the election funding crisis and answer the following three questions. First, how has the relationship between journalism and politics developed and how is it developing? Second, to which extent has the crisis affected the credibility of the media and politics in public’s eye? Third, what is the significance of the crisis to the future of journalism?
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• Global Value Networks, Innovation Clusters, and Finnish Firms
  The objective is to explore the Finnish companies’ new competitive options in the context of global innovation clusters and global value networks. The perspective is future-driven. The idea is to examine the drivers of the business value activities in different geographies and in different business segments.
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• IieP - Immigrant inclusion by eParticipation
  As the internet has become accessible to most citizens, it is justified to consider the social media paradigm as a potential instrument of supporting citizens’ more effective social, political and cultural participation in the society. The project IIeP improves social, political and cultural inclusion of immigrants in Estonia, Finland and Sweden.
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• Journalists’ Privilege to Use Confidential Sources
  The project focuses on journalists’ right to use confidential sources without being forced to identify them. The aim of the study is to find the normative justifications of this privilege in law and in ethical codes and evaluate how the use of this right has changed over time. The empirical data consists of recent cases in Finnish journalism. Analysis concentrates on media contents, interviews of key actors and relevant literature.

• Media2
  Media2 research project aims to find out how audiences’ emotional, mental images of media corporations and their brands affect media consumption decisions. In addition, the project will study to what extent the competitive advantage of media corporations can be explained by their emotional reputation when competing on market share and paying customers.
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• Media for Democracy Monitor II
  The project will deliver a country report on Finland for the international, comparative research project Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM). The aim of the MDM project is to develop a social science based monitoring instrument for assessing the contribution of media for democracy in established democracies.
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• OSVI - Participative internal communication supporting work well-being in organisations
  The goal of the OSVI –research project was to study innovative participative internal communication solutions which could be used to create better work well-being in organisations. Project was focused on public sector organisation, the city of Lahti, Finland. Project started in early fall 2009 and will be finalized in the end of 2010.
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• Russia in the Finnish Media
  The project explores from diverse perspectives what kind of image the Finnish media portray of Russia and Russians. This will be examined not only at the level of the media content, but also at the level of journalistic practices, the culture of political and public debate and at the level of citizens.

• The Future of Local Newspapers
  The project examines the local newspapers in the context of broader crisis in the newspaper industry and changes in journalistic cultures. The aim is to achieve a global view of the future prospects of local newspapers in the framework of regional differences and economic conditions, and of the journalistic role of local newspapers in the newspaper industry.

• Towards Engaging Journalism
  Research project Towards Engaging Journalism taps into question: What is “engaging” journalism made of? The three-year project (2009-2011) aims to analyze journalism and its relevance for the audience from the perspective of social networks. The study attempts to shed light on people’s social networks: How and where people discuss public affairs and what is the role of journalism and newspapers in and for these discussions?
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