Pantti, Mervi and Nelimarkka, Matti and Nikunen, Kaarina and Titley, Gavan (2019) The meanings of racism: Public discourses about racism in Finnish news media and online discussion forums. European Journal of Communication, 34 (5). pp. 503-519. ISSN 0267-3231

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Abstract

Understandings of racism are produced and circulated in contemporary networked media forms, contributing new opportunities to both extend and challenge racializing discourses, images and frameworks. This study investigated how the concept of racism is used in Finnish public debate by employing a computational text analysis technique to derive topics related to racism from a large corpus of news media content and online discussion forum comments. Our findings show that discourses about racism are different in legacy media and online platform regarding both their prominence and framings. While social media produce various discourses of ‘reverse racism’, news media connects racism to historical and international contexts. We conclude that what racism is understood to be is not only an intensely political process but also one shaped by the type of media platform, specificities of Finnish language and national ideological battles.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	News media, racism, social media, topic model;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > School of English, Media & Theatre Studies > Media Studies
Item ID:	13905
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323119874253
Depositing User:	Gavan Titley
Date Deposited:	01 Feb 2021 14:04
Journal or Publication Title:	European Journal of Communication
Publisher:	Sage
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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