Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: The media thrives off scandals in the digital era which often bring broad publicity to politicians who are involved in them. Also, the increasingly image-centered nature of politics adds to the significance of scandals. The media constructs and frames the political struggle through scandals while gaining economic benefits in form of audience attention. Scandals are seen to function as a test process for normative morals, but broad attention of the press towards them is also criticized. For example, random utterances that happen in social media have a tendency to expand to questionable proportions when a mainstream media covers them. This master’s thesis aims to clarify the birth and development processes of political talk scandal in a digital era context. Also, the investigation examines the role of various journalistic and communication related phenomena that affect on scandals. The change in the conditions, especially in terms of speed where the media operates, is argued to affect the quality of journalism. Media receives criticism over its choices of framing the debate that takes place in the social media. The case under investigation is the so called Armband scandal which took place in Finland in spring 2012. As a result a member of Parliament James Hirvisaari was temporarily suspended from his parliamentary group. The study mixes quantitative and qualitative methods in order to examine the framing of the scandal in Finnish media. In addition, the study examines how the news was sourced. Data in this study is composed of 96 online articles of major Finnish media. Armband scandal is a regular political scandal in terms of structure. It has a breach of a moral norm, a condemnation of a third party, a public criticism and a climax. Examination of the scandal theory reveals that talk scandals do not necessarily require elements of concealment and revelation. Comparative analysis of various media within the case context shows that the tabloid press is most eager to cover various aspects of the scandal: however, their own journalistic input is small. The commercial media uses material that is provided by a cooperative partner organization or a media belonging to the same conglomerate. The role of the first publisher is highlighted in determining the primary interpretative frames. The armband scandal was clearly framed as an internal struggle of The Finns Party. Typical digital era talk scandals appear when the mainstream media reports a debate taking place in social media. However, the scandals do not seem to involve high profile politicians. Therefore it can be argued that the digital era has instigated an expansion of the concept of political agency. Also, in these conditions the responsibility over a publications profile is increasingly in the hands of individual reporters.
Source: Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Author: Heikki Joonas Kolehmainen
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2306451277