Vainikka, V., Vainikka, J. T., & Prokkola, E. K. (2025). Geopolitics of mobile masses: refugee and tourist metaphors in Finnish-Russian bordertown media.

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Julkaisun nimiGeopolitics of mobile masses: refugee and tourist metaphors in Finnish-Russian bordertown media.
KirjoittajatVainikka, V., Vainikka, J. T., & Prokkola, E. K.
JulkaisijaTourism Geographies
ISBN/DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2328608
Julkaisupäivä13.3.2024
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Abstract

This paper examines the discourses on mobile others as objects of massification or likened to natural forces. By creating a dialogue between theories of crowds/masses and popular geopolitics, we examine how a local media frames the actual, imagined and absent border crossings of refugees and tourists when a voluminous mobile group disappears in tandem with an emerging unease about a new mobile group. We focus on the freesheet Imatralainen, published in a South Karelian Finnish-Russian bordertown that has been a tourist destination since the late eighteenth century but where invisible geopolitical tension is part of everyday life. Our discourse analysis shows that from the Crimean crisis to the migrant ‘crisis’ (2014–2016), local media have frequently portrayed Russian tourists and non-European migrants via a natural force rhetoric while viewing both refugees and tourists as potential resources or burdens. The mobility of others can represent itself as an external threat, and it can be taken as a perspectival threatscape that opens space for geopolitical issues amplified or transformed through the idea of masses and crowds into potential local issues. The article contributes to tourism geographies and the geopolitics of mobilities literature by evaluating the potential of classical crowd theories for understanding how threatscapes relating to the refugee-tourist nexus are made and manipulated by linguistic collectivisation, silencing and dehumanisation. We argue that more attention should be given to the role of the local in shaping the popular geopolitics of mobilities that construct, sustain and fabricate discourses of ‘otherness’ and massification.

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Kääntä, L., Koskela, M., Syrjälä, H. & Salmela, E. (2024). “We Need to Build Carbon-Neutral Houses” – Discourses of Responsible Expertise in Finnish Professional Media.

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Julkaisun nimi“We Need to Build Carbon-Neutral Houses” – Discourses of Responsible Expertise in Finnish Professional Media
KirjoittajatLiisa Kääntä, Merja Koskela, Henna Syrjälä, Eveliina Salmela
JulkaisijaEnvironmental Communication
ISBN/DOIDOI:10.1080/17524032.2024.2327064
Julkaisupäivä13.3.2024
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Abstract

In this study, we explore how expertise and responsibility are discursively intertwined in professional media. Based on quotations from building and real-estate industry professionals in news texts concerning sustainable building and housing, we identified three responsibility-related discourses: responsibility as a strategic professional vision, responsibility as techno-material expertise, and responsibility as a communal and societal orientation. These discourses of responsible expertise are important for voicing professional perspectives and emphasizing corporate social responsibility (CSR). In the sustainability transition, industry professionals are balancing between organizational and industry-level motives, between utility perspectives for “us” and “others,” and between managing impressions of doing good for the industry and for citizens or society at large. Through and with journalism, these professionals disseminate both individual and organizational expertise to the public in order to “make the industry and the whole society better and more sustainable.”

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