Sounds for Change: Music as a Means of Contention in the Environmental Movement in Finland in the 21st Century research project examines music and sound as a means of contention.The study is interested in the roles, tasks and meanings given to music and sound in today’s environmental movement. Research data will be collected by observing the activities of the movement in demonstrations, actions and information channels/environments. Data will also be collected through a questionnaire and interviews. The study focuses on Finland, but it will also pay attention to the Finnish environmental movement’s transnational connection to Estonia.
You can participate in the study if you are 15 years old or older and have played music or sung at the events, demonstrations or actions of the climate or environmental movement. You can participate even if you are not a professional musician; it is enough that you have been involved by singing or playing music.
You can participate in the study either by replying to the questionnaire or taking part in an interview. If you wish to participate in the study:
The researcher may invite you to an interview even if you have not replied to the questionnaire. In this case, they will contact you directly.
If more people sign up for the study than can be accommodated for the interviews, not all of them can necessarily be interviewed.
Apart from the project website, the questionnaire is also distributed in other information channels.
Participation in this research is voluntary, meaning that participants choose to either respond to the survey questionnaire or take part in an interview. Everyone who participates in the study is aware that they are part of a research project. Individual activists will not be observed without their knowledge during demonstrations or through the movement’s social media channels, for example.
An exception to this is made for public performances in which activists act under their real names, which may be mentioned in the study. Examples of such public appearances include musicians’ performances at movement events or participation in panel discussions as invited speakers.
You have the right to decline participation even if the researcher contacts you and invites you to join. You may also withdraw from the study at any time without giving a reason by notifying the researcher in charge. Withdrawing from the study will not have any negative consequences for you.
If you decide to withdraw from the study, the data collected from you prior to your withdrawal may still be used as part of the research data to ensure the success of the study. You will receive further information about how your data will be handled after your withdrawal from the researcher in charge.
The research will be conducted securely, and participation is safe. The safety of participants is ensured by processing personal data securely and making sure that individual participants cannot be identified in research publications.
The collected interview data will be processed by anonymising and pseudonymising the data, that is, by removing or modifying information that could reveal participants’ identities.
Pseudonymisation means that strong identifiers such as names, ages and places of birth are removed or altered so that interviewees cannot be identified without additional information. This may involve replacing identifiers with alternatives (e.g. using a pseudonym such as ‘Anna’) or codes (e.g. ‘N15’). Data may also be generalised (e.g. changing ‘works as a composer’ to ‘is a music professional’).
Anonymisation means that all identifiable information is blurred, grouped or structured in such a way that respondents cannot be identified from the data after anonymisation.
After processing, all original identifiable data such as interview recordings will be destroyed.
Unprocessed data will be treated confidentially and will not be disclosed to anyone outside the research group.
The research questionnaire is hosted on a secure server (RedCap) provided by the University of Helsinki. The interview data will also be processed in a secure environment provided by the University of Helsinki (Umpio).
Sometimes professionals in the fields of music and other arts engage in activism as part of their artistic work. For professionals, a full anonymisation of everything related to their work may not always be desirable. For this reason, it is possible to discuss with professionals how the data concerning them will be handled. In such cases, decisions about the level of disclosure of data will be made with the participant. You can contact the researcher for more information about participating as a professional.
The survey questions focus on background information related to playing and singing, participation in the activities of the climate and environmental movements, general activism, performing music at movement events, demonstrations and actions, the roles of music and sound in the movement, as well as participants’ perceptions and views on the movement’s musical culture.
The interviews will explore these topics in more depth. Interviewees will have the opportunity to influence the course of their interview by bringing up issues they find important regarding the musical culture of the climate and environmental movement.
The interviews will be conducted in person either at the University of Helsinki or in another suitable and quiet location. The interviews may be held individually or in group discussions, typically lasting between 20 and 90 minutes. Group interviews may take longer than this.
The interviews will be recorded. After the interview, the audio files will be transferred to a secure server (Umpio), where they will be transcribed into readable text. After transcription, the audio files will be destroyed. The transcripts will be processed through anonymisation and pseudonymisation so that individual respondents cannot be identified from the text. In addition to the researcher in charge, a research assistant working in the project will also process the data.
Processed data may be disclosed to research partners for research purposes. After the project ends, the processed data will be archived in the Finnish Social Science Data Archive or another appropriate archive, where it will be available for future research.
An ethical review has been conducted for this study. You may contact the researcher in charge for more information about the study’s ethical principles.
The research results will be published in academic articles, popular science texts, on the project’s website, in podcasts and in other research publications. In addition, scientific presentations will be held, and the research may be used for educational purposes. All publications and communications will follow the anonymisation principles described above, and no participants will be identifiable from these publications unless explicitly agreed otherwise with them.
This research is funded by the Academy of Finland (grant number 362852). No financial compensation will be provided to participants for taking part in the study.