This final HEPP seminar of 2024 was part of a doctoral course on Sexual Contract and Social Contract theory. The seminar and course revolved around the late Carole Pateman's book of feminist critique, The Sexual Contract, and the political theory surrounding the Social Contract that is central to the CO3 project. You can see the full list of speakers and presentations on the event page here.
It was funded by the CO3 project, which is funded by the European Commission through Horizon Europe.
HEPP visiting researcher Giorgos Venizelos presented his latest research "the Anti-Populist Logic of Pro-Vax Discourse". Giorgos is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellow at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Cyprus. You can read a full abstract for his talk on the even page here.
This special HEPP seminar on a Friday afternoon featured a visitor from Hungary, Dr. Zoltán Ádám. He gave a fascinating presentation on how Fidesz has changed higher education during their time in power. You can see the full abstract and details of the event here.
This visit was funded by the CO3 project, which is funded by the European Commission through Horizon Europe.
This seminar featured two ongoing projects from HEPPsters near and far. Kinga Polynczuk-Alenius gave a remote presentation on her latest project on journalism and democracy, and Emmi Lounela presented her article in progress on incels and nostalgia. Both got good feedback to put towards future drafts of their work.
HEPPsters Lani and Zea each gave a presentation aiming to prep people for the big election the next day. Lani distilled her 30+ years of following American politics into a talk on the background elements of the scene that even the most clued in foreign observers might not have known about. Zea discussed the campaign through the lens of Banana Populism, a theory of humorous, visual populism that she and Lani have been building with co-authors Sophie Schmalenberger and Mike Cole for several years now. Afterwards, everyone had a great discussion ... and we only spent a bit of time trying to guess the outcome of the election.
HEPP was very happy to welcome several members of the Rajapinta group, a research association focused on digital social sciences. This seminar featured three presentations by HEPP and Rajapinta members broadly on the role of social media and influencers in democratic elections in 2024, the so-called "super year of elections." The 2024 US presidential election featured heavily, as it was right around the corner at the time of the seminar:
𝗥𝗲𝗯𝗲𝗸𝗮𝗵 𝗥𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗶, 𝗧𝗮𝗻𝗷𝗮 𝗦𝗶𝗵𝘃𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗻 & 𝗡𝘂𝗽𝗽𝘂 𝗣𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗮 (𝗦𝗬𝗡𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗔, 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗩𝗮𝗮𝘀𝗮): 𝗘𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗿𝗮 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 - 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀
𝗘𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗮 𝗣𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗻 (𝗛𝗘𝗣𝗣, 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗛𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶): 𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁
𝗢𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗿 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗴 (𝗝𝗼𝗵𝗻 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘀): 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗠𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗠𝗲 𝗗𝗼: 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮, 𝗘𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗮𝘆𝗹𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝘄𝗶𝗳𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰 𝗘𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
This seminar featured HEPP affiliated researchers from the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH).
Emilia Palonen and Tomi Toivio presented more reflections on audio-visual campaigning during the 2024 European Parliament elections. This research represents a collaboration between numerous projects: the Pledge Horizon project, the Mores Horizon project, the CO3 Horizon project, and the Endure Trans-Atlantic Partnership project. You can read more about the event here.
Despite some challenges with overlapping room bookings, we had a productive and interesting seminar in which Dayei Oh presented a research proposal for her next post-doc and Fiza Vasudeva visited us from maternity leave to discuss her chapter on anti-populism and the status quo bias through the case of I.N.D.I.A.
HEPP visiting doctoral researcher Olena Siden gave a presentation on the relationship between the Kremlin and the French far-right in preparation for her trip to a conference on conspiracy theories.
HEPP doctoral researchers Aleksander Alekseev, Ilana Hartikainen, and Katinka Linnamäki presented their progress on their dissertations, each of which focuses on some aspect of politics in Central Eastern Europe. They also cover the whole Visegrad Four group - Alex writes mostly on Poland, Lani covers the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and Katinka writes about Hungary. Visiting professor Libora Oates-Indruchová acted as the discussant for these three presentations.
Charles Postel, professor of history at San Francisco State University, presented on the two vice presidential candidates in the US elections and the surprising confluence of their claims to represented neglected rural America. Read more about Postel and the event here.
Emilia Palonen, Tomi Toivio, and others involved with the massive social media data gathering effort during the run-up to the 2024 European Parliament elections presented some initial reflections on the full dataset. The Helsinki team led this effort as a part of the Pledge project, funded by the European Commission through Horizon Europe.
Visiting doctoral researcher Daniel Šárovec from Metropolitan University in Prague gave a presentation on the intricacies of Czech and Slovak politics and later took part in a HEPPsplaining event on initial reactions to the 2024 European Parliament elections. You can find the event page here.
HEPP was thrilled to welcome performative populism theorist Maria Esperanza Casullo for a series of guest talks, including one at the HEPP seminar. She presented on populist bodily performances and the new right in Latin America. Read more about her talks here.
On 13th of May Virpi and Maria presented their work on comparing the crisis response of companies on crowdfunding platforms during COVID-19 and Ukraine-Russia War. The research explored the crisis-related imagery, portrayal of companies' role in the crisis and comparing the similarities and differences between the contexts of COVID-19 and war in Ukraine.
Second presentation on 13th of May was by the Endure project, involving Juha Koljonen, Mateusz Karolak, Aniela Partyga and Kleber Carrilho presenting some findings related to social media discussions about COVID-19 during the pandemic. This presentation focussed on the masks as a signifier and how masks were discussed and handled in their national contexts of Finland, Poland and Brazil over time.
In early April we had a presentation by Juha Koljonen and Virpi Salojärvi about emotional narratives in protest movements. The study specifically focussed on the #DeniedMyVote movement in 2019 EP Elections. This movement was based on the UK's 2019 EP vote ahead of Brexit where many citizens were unable to vote. The goal was to explore the emotional narratives between the ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ surrounding the movement. Research was done by collecting social media data based on the aforementioned hashtag #DeniedMyVote and analysed this collected mass data with methods such as sentiment & emotion analysis.
On 25th of March Szilvia and Fiza presented their work on a manuscript about nationalism and nationalisation of academia from a comparative perspective in India and Hungary. This presentation explored some similarities about the nationalism and strategies of autocratization in Hungary and India, especially in respect to how they affect academia. This comparison is seen in the presentation through lenses of various discourses such as religion, history and gender identity. This conflict between the autocratization and academia is seen through examples in both Hungary and India where the respective regimes are both building parallel institutions to match the academic elite or occupy the existing academic institutions to transform them.
On 18th of March, Dayei Oh presented two research proposals.
First research proposal was about civic religion and populism in Korean presidential speeches. Idea of civic religion in her study is based on the idea that the focus of religion is society even when concepts (such as God etc.) are conventional. This proposed study wants to see changes and similarities in the symbols used in construction of Korean civil religion.
Second proposal was about ideological diversity in public discourse about climate change. This research aims to take discourses surrounding UN Climate Change Conferences over many years and finding various ideological groups through the use of topic modelling. Expectation is to find ideological multimodality beyond just climate change science advocates and denialists.
After the two presentations by Dayei Oh, we had another presentation from Candela Potente from Princeton University and previously having worked as Postdoctoral Researcher at Aalto University. Her work is about psychoanalysis and epistemology of translation. In her work psychoanalysis is presented as a transnational movement in which it transforms based on the context theory and practice. Additionally the role of translation is seen as the primary element of psychoanalysis because to interpret psyche you already need to translate it - from patient’s psyche to discourse.
On 4th of March HEPP Seminar and HSSH met with Rajapinta to hear about the the work of Rajapinta with a combined onsite and online audience of more than 50 people. This seminar consisted of various presentations by the Rajapinta team: Viljami Vaarala, Salla-Maria Laaksonen, Aleksi Knuutila and Nuppu Pelevina.
The topics and themes of this event included such as emerging public spheres in the form of podcasts, extremism in Finnish social media focusing especially on YouTube, trying work with online misinformation with mass data gathering and competing social media narratives about War in Ukraine with examples taken from Brazilian social media.
On 26th of February HEPP met with Antti Gronow, Tuomas Ylä-Anttila and Arttu Malkamäki for midday lunch before the HEPP seminar.
In the seminar Antti Gronow presented his team’s COMPON research project. COMPON (Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks) being a long running research project started in the US in 2007 with the goal to gather information about climate change organisation’s policy actors in multiple different countries. While the original project managed to gather the multinational data, the comparative research was not managed to be researched until it was picked by Antti Gronow and Tuomas Ylä-Anttila. This data has now been used in various studies related to interorganisational coordination, collaboration and advocacy.
Further discussion between participants involved in-depth discussion about various elements of quantitative research such as topic modelling and sentiment analysis.
On 12th of February Emilia Palonen & Kleber Carrilho shared with the HEPP Seminar about the progress with ongoing multimodal analysis project on EP2024 elections and associated pilot studies about the Finnish presidential elections. This research focuses on audiovisual analysis of online video content.
Pilot of the Finnish presidential elections held two rounds of studies. The first round of study was an experimental study conducted with researchers using a custom operating system to run made up profiles on Instagram and TikTok with varied backgrounds. The second study was an interpretive study utilising volunteer students that would log and record daily their social media activity.
Second pilot is being done on Portuguese elections ahead of EP2024 elections managed by Kleber.
On 5th of February, the HEPP seminar started at 2pm by celebrating Finnish national day Runeberg’s day (commemorating the Finnish national poet) by having some coffee and seasonal Runeberg’s pastries. This short event was followed by the one presentation we had on that day by Emilia Palonen and Alexander Alekseev discussing their draft of a book chapter on qualitative approaches to populism. In this seminar the presenters discussed the role of qualitative research and its discursive approaches to populism. They highlighted the role of discourse in populism studies focusing on two most prominent approaches to populism examplified by the works of Ernesto Laclau and Ruth Wodak.
On 29th of January we resumed our HEPP seminar after the holidays and our first presenter, Olena Siden, shared her work on exploring metaphors about the Ukrainian War in French context. Her presentation focused on recurring metaphors on topics including ones such as ‘Independence of France’, ‘War as a catastrophe’ and ‘War in Europe’. Discussion brought up interesting points about the nature of metaphors in the context of linguistics and political science.
On 29th of January our second presentation of the session and the year in the HEPP seminar, we had Alexander Alekseev presenting his work on the concept of freedom in the discourse of Polish Law and Justice party. This presentation discussed the success of Law and Justice as a populist radical right party, focusing on the analysis of topics and discursive strategies in the context of 2019 European elections. Subsequent discussion was about different dimensions of the concept of freedom in populist discourse.
This week, the HEPP seminar opens with Katinka Linnamäki’s talk on “Gender in the hegemonic articulations of the Hungarian Fidesz-KDNP government” where she aims to bring three published papers into a coherent story. Departing from the illiberal political shift in Hungary under Viktor Orbán and underlying populist logic, Katinka studies gender ideology in populist and issue-based discourses with a post-foundational approach. According to her analysis of visual materials, Orbán as a populist leader perfoms a hegemonic masculinity while positioning himself as one among “the people”. In addition, gender order is often portrayed in several spaces such as sports and households by populists when describing “the people”, and familialism is prevalent in social politics of the Hungarian government (often associated with nationalism) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Katinka’s analysis sparked a discussion on masculinity portrayed by politicians through sports and some suggestions on how the overall argument can be presented with a coherent narrative and situated in a global populism context.
In the second half of our session, Zea Szebeni and Ilana Kartikainen shared their ongoing work “Banana populism”: Appeeling to the people, exploring visual cultural markers as populists’ tools for mobilization.”. They started collecting quirky populist visual contents during the pandemic to bridge the gap in researching such visual materials and gradually developed the analysis based on Laclau and Moffitt’s theoretical works. Introducing the term “banana populism” as an analytical lens to how everyday private life is incorporated in the public and political sphere, their paper focuses on the role of these visual cues in anchoring populist identity – resonating with “the people” and setting them apart from “the elite” — and underscores their ubiquity in various movements as a global phenomenon.
On 20th November, HEPP welcomed Giorgos Venizelos during his visit to Helsinki and reserved our seminar session for the talk and discussion on his latest book “Populism in Power: Discourse and Performativity in SYRIZA and Donald Trump”. It is a comprehensive intellectual outcome of Giorgos’ doctoral research, aiming to explore what it means for populism once becomes in power in terms of institutional and policy (in)compatibility. Based on impressive ethnographical data from multiple channels (mass media, online platforms, direct interviews, and fieldwork), the analysis underscores how populist movements continue their discourse and performativity, framing themselves as the underdog despite being in government. More specifically, populists reinvent themselves into master frames combined with new frames from political conjunctures. The following discussion touched upon challenges in their paradoxical framing attempts and different outcomes depending on local contexts, specific populist frames on democracy and election-related arguments, and different approaches to populism from the style or core signifiers of populist discourses.
On 13th November, Feeza Vasudeva started HEPP seminar with her talk on “Revisiting the populist moments in postcolonial India”, enriching our horizon with observations beyond the global north. Her empirical study focuses on political articulations by two prominent figures Narendra Modi and Indira Gandhi, particularly their constructions of “the people” with both populist and nationalist characteristics. While Gandhi gained remarkable electoral success with a coalition of the poor, religious and ethnic minorities, her populist discourse proved unstable without any clear antagonistic entities to continually reinforce the coalition. Modi started out criticizing the Congress and the Muslim minority that he believes to be favoured by it, and eventually boiled down narratives on Hindu nationalism. Feeza’s analysis underscores significant theoretical implications for the contingency of populist politics and suggests historical conditions as a meaningful variable in understanding how populist discourses emerge from a broader discursive field. In addition, she introduced a project plan on “Resentment Affective Memory and Right-Wing Politics in India” which explores “internet Hindus” and how they collectively reconstruct history into an affective memory regime that further steers right-wing nationalistic populism.
Under the working title “Duelling visions of the past in populist conspiracy theories about immigration”, Ilana Hartikainen presented her progress in studying Czech right-wing populist Tomio Okamura’s articulations of Great Replacement Theory (GRT). Ilana breaks down GRT narrative into elements of fantasmatic logic with beatific fantasy about the homogenous Czech fullness of a golden past in contrast with the horrific fantasy of violent, dangerous migrants as the result of EU decision-making power. The following discussion touched upon how Okamura posits his racial background in his political discourses, pointing out the process of radicalizing others’ past, and suggested considering several additional elements such as economy, gender or technology.
The last presentation is a collaboration of Kleber Carrilho and Emilia Palonen on “Bolsonarism vs. science: political influence on official Twitter communication in Brazil during the pandemic”. Using a large dataset of tweets related to Brazilian Ministry of Health and topic modeling, their analysis captured the pivotal moments of the narrative during different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic and highlighted divergences between scientific-bureaucratic and political leadership discourses. Plans for further research including investigating the activity of bots in the hashtag and broader landscape, and comparative study with other contexts such as Finland, Germany and Poland as a part of the larger ENDURE project.
On 6th November, two paper drafts by HEPPsters and colleagues are presented in our seminar touching on crucial populists’ repetoires about democracy and representation of “Other”. Alexander Alekseev introduced his latest work under the title The (Changing) Concept of Democracy in (Transforming) European Populist Radical Right Discourses: The Case of the Polish Law and Justice shedding light on the discursive struggle over the notion of democracy. It is a longitudinal discourse analysis with rich observations of Jarosław Kaczyński’s discourse during 2007-2023 when his party Polish Law and Justice (PiS) stayed in power and opposition at different points. The study shows Kaczyński/PiS’s emphasis on democracy as a populist mobilisation device with inconsistent associations as their position changes while opening discussions on bridging the Laclaudian approach, hegemony, contested concepts and their rhetorical role.
In the second half, Dayei Oh shared her work with Line Nyhagen (Sociology, Loughborough) on Moral Outrage, Paranoia, and Distrust: Populist Affective Repertoires in the Construction of the Other in American and Irish Abortion Discourse on Twitter. The focal point of this research is the discursive psychological analysis of affective repertoires in the "Us vs Them" dynamic in online abortion discourse. With over 6000 tweets, the researchers identified three affective repertoires underlying discourse on the Other as a part of abortion politics and suggested a historical contingency in abortion discourse. Their cross-country analysis of the US case (2020) and Ireland case (2018) sparks thoughts on the complex psychological facets of moralisation of politics and conspiratorial-populist communications. The research concludes with alternative affective repertoires for "Us-Them" dynamics, encouraging more collaborative intergroup negotiations in the two countries.
On 30th October, Kinga Polynczuk-Alenius and Ilana Hartikainen introduced a paper co-authored with Annastiina Kallius with the working title “Infrastructure of unreality: Conspiracy theories, media, and illiberalism in Central Eastern Europe”. The study approaches both illiberalism and conspiracy theories through an epistemic lens, asking how media infrastructures in more or less illiberal systems propagate conspiracy theories differently. Four case studies in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic highlight nuanced differences in how state-sponsored conspiracy theories about forced migration spread in local state/non-state media. The following discussion dived into epistemic implications of (il)liberalism, possible scope and essence of conspiracy, as well as comparative methods.
In the later half, Zea Szebeni presented her ongoing work “The truth shall prevail!”: Sense-making and Navigating Alternative Epistemologies in Facebook Comments about the Bucha Massacre. Starting with the question how people react and make sense of (dis)information, the study investigates two most commented Facebook posts on the Bucha Massacre from the pro-Russian and fact-checking media in the first year since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Zea identified several elements interplaying to establish truth or narratives: the geopolitical dichotomy of Russia - the West, historical context and collective memory, external epistemic authorities and the commenters’ agency. Her analysis sparked discussions on schemes and frames as sense-making approaches, perceived authenticity and trustworthiness, and how to operationalize studied concepts.
HEPP Seminar Series moved to a new home on Monday 23rd October and Alina Mozolevska shared her ongoing research on digital popular art and visual narratives in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Drawing from a data set of 950 digital artworks by Ukrainian artists and illustrators on Instagram, her work is a rich description and analysis of prominent wartime visual discourse. Alina provided an overview of the discourse landscape, which encompasses diverse topics such as anxiety, traumatic experience, collective identity and victimhood, and representations of enemy and wartime reality, etc. Article series or book publication has emerged as suggestions for delivering the research findings. Our discussion also touched on possibilities for further analysis, with attention to the war progress as context, audience responses, and multiple perspectives on the Russian side and the international community.
The HEPP seminar on 16th Oct was in fully hybrid mode with discussions on spiritual movements in Finland and methodologies for social media studies. 3 HEPP affiliated researchers Zea Szebeni, Ilana Hartikainen and Emilia Lounela introduced their project idea on contemporary spirituality in the Finnish and global context, nostalgic narratives and gender ideals. It sparked conversations on how to develop a multifaceted theoretical basis for this emerging societal phenomenon, and its political implications. We considered possible deliverables such as book/article publications, and panels or events to inform and engage the public. HEPP also welcomed Olena Siden from Ukraine as our guest this week to give us a glance on her research interests, particularly social media communication by French politicians on the war in Ukraine. Current changes with X (formerly Twitter) have negatively affected data access for research purposes, while directing attention to other growing platforms such as Instagram and TikTok and the methodology developments on multimodality research.
The HEPP seminar on 9.10 started with Erfan Fatehi’s talk - From Fear to Compassion: Populist Performances and Syria's Displacement in Turkey's 2023 Elections. His current study focuses on a dual populist landscape surrounding the Syrian refugee issue, where two key politicians Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu presented contrasting emotional narratives: one with compassion, moral obligation, and the Turkish historical-cultural identity; and the other about national resources, sovereignty concerns and societal implications. The intriguing case opens up theoretical considerations on the diverse capacity of populism which encompasses both inclusion and exclusion, emotional appeals ranging from compassion to fear. We further discussed how different theoretical lens such as Janus-faced populism and bipolar hegemony illuminate this context and how to mitigation potential limitations in observations/data selection.
The following presentation is Dayei Oh’s latest work on “Strategic secularisation in the fight for the God-given right to life: Epistemic contestations of personhood in the American Christian nationalist movement”. Using content analysis on the published materials on the pro-life movement Personhood Alliance’s website, she explores different epistemic modes and argumentative contexts in play, as arguments can be legitimatized through different sources of epistemology including Christian doctrines, science, social traditions, etc. The study underscores several pro-life discourse elements such as the concept of foetal personhood, motherhood, real meaning of democracy versus judicial tyranny, pro-life martyrdom, abortionist conspiracy theory and so forth… Further theoretical implications can arise from strategic connections and disconnections within this narrative system (for example, how abortion is separated from healthcare while Christian morality is translated into secular, American values).
On 25th September, HEPP welcomed Professor Adrienne Russell from the University of Washington to share insights on her latest book The Mediated Climate: How Journalists, Big Tech and Activists are Vying for our Environment and Media Futures. Within the context of emerging climate concerns and the large shift in climate change responses in the United States, the book sheds light on different facets of the contemporary information environment including climate journalism, the platform problem, activism and advocacy. Though limited to progressive, niche climate news outlets, Adrienne’s findings provided compelling evidence of less denialism and dismissive tone towards activists, along with the growing collaboration and conscientiousness about meaning-making processes on climate change. On another front, the book presents two major challenges - online noise and incivility - disrupting climate conversations, raising questions about negative freedom, and the advantage and responsibility of platformers. Following the presentation, we together dived deeper into various stances and motivations of climate journalists including neutrality, objectivity, impact focus, and engagement. Negative freedom sparked another discussion on monitoring and regulating disinformation on platforms, and factors guiding the formulation of screening criteria.
During the second half of the seminar, HEPP’s PI Emilia Palonen presented a series of our ongoing works under the title “Populist logic and politics in the populist culture: what is in the form?” HEPP approaches populism in rather broad, addressing its ubiquity in political movements transcending traditional political left-right boundaries and extending into multiple aspects of culture, gender, religion... (a.k.a “Populism on the loose”). Our model of polarisation underscores the “bi-polar hegemony” logic in the struggle of an underdog/fringe “us” against the mainstream “frontier”, and how such heuristic devices are fueled by affects built upon polarisation knowledge. As more cultural/social elements are embedded into hegemonic articulations, and multimodality comes into play in today's hybrid media environment, theoretical resources and tools are required to investigate and address these complex phenomena effectively.
On 18th of September HEPP invited Oleh Brovko from West University of Timisoara to discuss his research proposal about democracy under martial law in Ukraine under the title of “Direct Democracy in Shadow of War, Martial Law in Ukraine.” Oleh’s research intends to look into the democratic transformations in Ukraine during the war and conflict over the coming years. Specific interest of this research would be the development of democracy in the municipal and local institutions in contrast to the Ukrainian central government.
Next we had one of our HEPPsters, Dayei Oh, present their work (in collaboration with Dr. Shin from University of Helsinki as well) about feminism in South Korea under title “From unveiling gender inequalities to sensationalising gender wars: Historical shift in Korean press discourse on feminism using topic modelling, 1990-2022 .” This research looked into South Korean liberal and conservative press discourse on feminism and gender using topic modelling. Research shows historical changes and partisan disparities in how feminism and women’s rights issues have been reported in South Korea over the course of three decades.
On 28th of August HEPP Seminar came back from the summer holidays. Restarting the weekly season we had Taneli Viitahuhta from University of Jyväskylä talking about his draft for paper “Cynical Soberness or Mild Lunacy? Adorno on Radical Right, Late Capitalism, and Mimetic Language.” This paper approaches understanding far-right rhetoric through Adorno’s concepts of “Cynical soberness” and “Mild Lunacy”. Especially are highlighted ideas about various elements of unconscious influence of far-right and fascist language and psychology.
Second presentation of the day by Emilia Lounela was about the idea of incels (involuntary celibacy), how it manifests on the internet as a form of culture, community and identity under the title of “Interviewing current and former incels: Experiences, life events and world views.” The presentation gave some insight into understanding incels and incel communities but was mainly focussed on the methodological aspect due to the limited number of interviews conducted so far. Due to the nature of incel identity and communities people willing to be interviewed have been scarce. Emilia noted that her being a woman also made it much more difficult to get in contact with potential participants.
On September 11th, the HEPP Seminar Series, Ilana Hartikainen, a doctoral researcher affiliated with HEPP, presented her article titled "Fear and Loathing in Czechia: Great Replacement Theory as Horrific Fantasy in Tomio Okamura’s Facebook Communication." Her research delves into the relationship between populism and conspiracy theories, focusing on their performative 'us-building' mechanism. Central to her case study is Great Replacement theory (GRT), which posits that immigrants from Muslim-majority countries will replace European host societies' workforce and threaten their values. The following discussion highlighted shifting narratives of belonging, and regional adaptations of international issues, while raising questions about ethnicity and the agency migrants are granted in conspiracy narratives.
In the second presentation, Laura Horsmanheimo, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Helsinki, outlined her research plan proposal on sex work in contemporary society. Laura's unique approach considered spatial politics in various worksites and the agency of sex workers, aiming to examine precarity, vulnerability, and resistance in sex work. Her methodology involving creative practices garnered interest, and the discussion touched on topics like heteronormativity, legal frameworks, and feminist perspectives in the sex work debate.
Lastly, the HEPP researchers discussed their proposal for a Kone Foundation grant under the working title "Tribalist Tendencies: Dissecting Knowledge, Identity, and Mobilization in Varied Democratic Landscapes (DIVIDE)." This project aims to explore tribalism's role in politics, both online and offline, and 'tribalist epistemology' as a foundational concept. The discussion revolved around harmonizing the project within an interdisciplinary and internationally diverse research group, involving researchers Niko Pyrhönen, Rūta Kazlauskaitė, Sabine Volk, Tuukka Brunila, Ilana Hartikainen, Eemil Mitikka, Mikko Salmela, and Zea Szebeni.