Violating rule number one

The author of the book Lehtikeisari, Jyrki Hämäläinen, is accused of citing other writers' text without giving them the credit or mentioning his sources. The possible copyright violation by Hämäläinen, who was the editor in chief for a long time at the popular teenage music magazine Suosikki, has already been discussed by journalists and in the culture section of the largest Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, according to journalist Helena Pilke who reviews this book.

Yenayer blogs about the citing situation in French blogs, and apparently, the "rule" of citing isn't well respected there. Those of you who find this topic interesting, worrying or perhaps see it as a fast lane to stardom and celebrity, have a look at the movie Shattered Glass. It presents another angle to the citing principle as the movie is about citing non-existing people, rather than stealing other people's text. I saw it and I liked the story.

Bluff your way to the top

As a warm up for the party we were going to last night, me and my friends played Balderdash. It's a hilarios bluffing game, where you get to be creative and crazy without feeling shameful about it. The more crazy your suggestions are, the more likely you are to win. And I did.
I'm totally sold on board games like these, and now, this is on my wishlist...

Looks like I've missed The political satire tv show

The same seminar, called “The voices of politics in public”, also included the tv-producer Olli Haikka. He’s one of the guys behind Itse valtiaat, an animated political satire tv show. I didn’t take notes here but he also concluded that today, media is more about entertainment, sensations and persons than before.

While listening to him, I realized that I must be the worst consumer society-citizen ever. The show is extremely popular (it airs prime time, Saturday night). According to Haikka, it has about 700 000 viewers every week (a lot in a country of Finland’s size) and the production team is making another movie about the characters, that are Finnish politics, when they were small kids. And I’ve never seen one single episode! Not one. I stick to the Simpsons instead and I like it that way.

Silent democracy, noisy media

Since I use Jürgen Habermas’s notion “public sphere” in my PhD-studies, I went to a seminar at Turun Yliopisto today where the researcher and member of parliament Arja Alho gave a speach on the issue.

Arja Alho was Minister of Finance in Finland in the mid 1990’s but she resigned from this post as a result of the scandal around the so called Sundqvist-deal (in 1997 I think it was). She took a break from politics, took up her studies and got her doctor’s degree in sociology this year. Her thesis is called "Silent democracy, noisy media" where she looks at four Finnish case studies. Two are political decisions and two are political scandals.

Although she’s both a researcher and member of parliament today, she gave the speech as a researcher, based on her dissertation. Unfortunately, she spoke really fast and I didn’t get everything she said, but here are some hasty notes:

• She uses the notion of Jürgen Habermas, "public sphere", in her dissertation. She feels that the Finnish translation "julkinen sfääri" doesn’t quite capture what she means by the notion so she develops it: Public sphere is to her a common theatre for debate and discussion and to which everybody has access. By participating in this public sphere, the citizen can influence political decision making.


• Even though the public sphere is a dream, hard to implement, there are still grounds to at least try to realize it.


• In Finland, the public sphere is almost to a 100 % the media. Sure, there are public places like the square market but people nowadays meet at shopping malls, and not at libraries and saloons.


• She poses two rhetorical questions: Is a representative democracy enough? Can the citizens participate more? She calls for more discussion between the politicians and the citizens.


• According to studies, Finns’ trust in politicians is quite low. Perhaps it’s time for the decision makers to ponder the reasons to this, and to listen to the feedback? It’s time for them to become partners in discussions.


• She gives a brief recap on her first case study, Finland’s entry to the European monetary union in 1995. Alho found that the politicians forced through the decision to become a member of this union in secret. There was no discussion in the public sphere before the decision. The politicians didn’t discuss the union in the public sphere and therefore, the citizens didn’t get any information to base an opinion on.


• Another case study was the privatization of Sonera, a telecommunications company. Apparently, she focused on how the media disclosed that the director of Sonera, and the former minister, Pekka Vennamo had laid his hands on quite a nice sum of stock. Vennamo and the responsible minister resigned.


• In her disseration, she concludes that the political elite in Finland is small. And what’s more, there’s an oligarchy in the oligarchy in the Parliament. Some members of the government don’t have access to information and the communication needed to make a decision.


• Another conclusion is that media is more entertainment-focused today. The media present fairytales about the good and the bad guys in politics, even though political decisions rarely are either good or bad.


• All in all: We have a technocracy rather than democracy, and the media is noisy rather than analytic. When it comes to media, the noisiness is due to the demand on profit. This breeds a poor democracy.

Alho got many questions, can’t remember them all. The essence of her answers is that the starting point for politicians should be to bring arguments to the public sphere. Thus, those citizens who want to can read them, reflect on them and give feedback. Bringing arguments into the public sphere is not done by increasing the information flow but to promote communication and discussion. She wishes that the decision makers would be more of a discussion partner with the citizens who wish to influence on the politics. She calls for interactive reciprocal action.

In another answer, she develops her critique on representative democracy. She says that it is not enough to vote, lean back and see how the 200 representatives do in the next 4 years, and then exchange them if the result is not satisfying. She draws parallels to Ulrich Beck’s notion of “risk society” here.

The Iraqi war is illegal

Well, this is new. The president of Finland, Tarja Halonen, adressed the UN General Assembly last night in New York. In her speech, she critized the US for marching in to Iraq without getting a green light from the UN. Thus, the war is illegal. The remarkable thing here, in the eyes of a Finnish citizen, is that Finland takes a position on the issues of power nations. In my view, this rarely happens.

Link here (go to Speeches and interviews at the top and choose the one from 21.9)

Iranian bloggers are opposed

Mark Glaser reports on the Iranian blogosphere. The fact that Iran's most trusted medium is the internet is interesting, but not surprising.

About meaning

By the end of the 20th century, media studies research was quite lost, according to David Gauntlett in his book web.studies. It didn't know what to say anymore.

"Studies of media texts, such as a 'critical reading' of a film which identified a bunch of 'meanings' the director hadn't intended and which nobody else had noticed, were clearly a waste of time."

I laugh out loud when reading this and I agree to a certain extent. I always recented the school assignments that would have us analyzing what possible meanings an author wanted to convay in a text, or a director in his or her movie. I believe there are as many movies and books as there are readers and spectators. Therefore, trying to figure out a certain meaning that readers and viewers may identify is ok, but not always when the author or director is concerned. I remember wondering in high school, what if the author didn't have an underlying meaning or message, perhaps he or she just wanted to tell an entertaining story and leave the messages and interpretation to the reader? I wonder how the author or director feels when a critical researcher finds a meaning in a text that was not at all the intention of the artist. One must remember that the spectator of a movie interprets it subjectively in his or her own way, al though culture may influence on the interpretation.

I guess my teacher's question is posed incorrectly. Have the kids do assignments on different possible meanings in the audience of a movie if you must, but not those of the director. I doubt there's always underlying meanings with everything.

This makes me think of the novel I just read, The Da Vinci code, by Dan Brown. It was a fascinating read, perhaps not due to the narrative but to its conspiracy craze. The message here is that the painter Da Vinci hid codes and messages in his art. So to pursue the questions of my ex teachers and some critical researchers: what's the meaning of the author here? To rewrite our history (i.e. that the novel is based on facts)? Or is he just telling a fascinationg story (i.e. the novel is pure fiction)? Or did he want to defame the church or raise the interest for art and cryptology? Or, did he just want to cause commotion and earn a living? Well, he certainly did that.

Beauty always comes with dark thoughts

The president of Finland, Tarja Halonen, has twice lately encouraged the Finns to think higher of themselves. Not in the sense to be proud of who we are and where we come from, no problem there I think, but in the sense of believing in ourselves.

She commented on the issue when we were doing quite bad in the Olympics, and now last night in a television interview (in Swedish with Finnish subtitles).

I don't mean to generalize, but the melancholy and sadness is quite present in Finnish mentality. Perhaps it's the climate; in wintertime, the sun climes above the horizon 6 hours per day where I live, and further up north not at all (called kaamos).

Our black, ironic sense of humour is terrific however (those of you who are unfamiliar with it, read Arto Paasilinna!), and I believe this kind of humour is an instanct for survival. But if you feel sad and gloomy, with the attitude that life's hard and then you die, there will hardly be any world championships coming your way. Halonen does have a point there.

Anyways, I feel the melancholy setting in with all its powers now. Today, we take a giant step towards the winter. It's really windy outside, cold and the leaves are turning yeallow and red. It's darker than before and the obligatory flue is plaguing me.

Ususally, I'm no stranger to positive thinking but the fact of having to endure snow, darkness and cold the next six months does get me down. At times like these, I thank heaven for my ability to see beauty in everything. I think photography is a great life saver here. Instead of getting depressed on how hard life is wintertime here, through the camera lins you see how beautiful life really is after all. (Check out these photos by Jef Maion, for example. They make me happy everytime!)

This doesn't stop me though from going to an orgie of melancholy tonight. Nightwish, a band who thinks that beauty always comes with dark thoughts, is giving a concert tonight... I'll give you a sample on Finnish melancholy, but also pride of who we are. The lyrics is of the song Lappi-Lapland This moment is eternity (from the Angels fall first-album back in 1997).

This Moment Is Eternity

Day possesses no key here
Where moon sheds the cold twilight
This moment is eternity

Land of beauty
Cold and cruel
Fjeld chants echoing
Reflecting the melancholy

Trust the wind
Trust the fire
Call for the hermit
The hermit of the night

Land of raven

ICT:s and well-being

[This will be long! It’s a recap of a Finnish study on social relations, well-being and ICT:s]


I got my hands on a very interesting report on the well-being of the citizens in my town Åbo (Turku in Finnish) yesterday. I wrote a news piece on it for the paper. (I wonder if the editor would have approved if I blogged about this yesterday? The study is extensive, rather than deep, so I focus on completely other issues here than in the article. And it was all over the radio yesterday, I presume, but still... I have to ask for their policy.)

One area of well-being is social support and the 2286 citizens who got the questionnaire were asked to answer questions on their social network. The same questions have been asked in 1995 and 1999 so a time series has been made.

It turns out that more feel that they have a close friend they can trust. 7 % of the women and 16 % of the men feel they don’t have such a friend, and that’s a decline since 1999. The stereotype of the Finnish man, living alone and being socially deprived, crumbles. A man with a family feels just as alone (16 %) as the single guy.

The researcher, Jarkko Rasinkangas, found that more women than men have this kind of social support. Retired women though have the highest rate of lack in close friends (14 %). Where as students are concerned, there’s an increase in lack of social support among female students (about 2 % in 1999, and 6 % in 2003).

In general, face to face meetings with close friends outside the household have declined somewhat, compared with ten years ago. This is the case, especially for people working and students. The reasons Rasinkangas suggests are

1. a hectic life style with difficulties to match a busy work with family


2. new means of communication such as mobile phones, e-mail and internet might be a factor that could explain this. It’s possible that the contacts to kin and friends take place to a lesser extent through face to face meetings, and more via phone and internet.


3. the privatization of activities. We tend to stay at home and do things at home more often.

But there’s no need to draw negative conclusions out of this, Rasinkangas concludes. “For instance, the spreading of the new means of communication can on the contrary increase social contacts and broaden the social network, even though the face to face meetings have declined.”

This issue never ceases to intrigue me. In my Master’s, I found that the absolute majority of the students questioned meet their friends about as often as before. 7 % said they socialize even more and a couple said they socialize less. I also asked them whether they keep in contact with friends and family more, as much or less now. Most say there’s no change, but about 40 % say they’re more often in contact with friends now. Especially those who use internet and e-communication largely feel they communicate more now.

But the core question is, is this bad? Is it bad that people communicate via mobile phones and instant messaging? It’s a fact that ICT:s affect our lives but is it a negative, unwanted effect? And when internet and instant messaging for example reach more people, will the face to face meetings decrease even more? And how can we know for sure that the e-mailing is causing the decline in sociability? It struck me when reading this study that the students and the people working, that don’t socialize as much as before, are very busy groups of people. Perhaps they don’t have the time, or the force to do so? Many students in Finland have to work extra at nights to get by financially; perhaps this has something to do with it as well? I asked the students in my survey how they felt that the ICT:s have affected their seeing their friends. 1/5 say there’s been a positive effect, 67 % hadn’t noticed any effects, 12 % had noticed both negative and positive effects and a few percent say they’ve had only negative experiences.

I’ve been thinking about the pocketful of persons in my study who claim they don’t meet friends face to face, but they do use e-mail. What’s the cause and effect (as the Merovingian in Matrix said)? And what about those who say they meet their friends to a lesser extent than before? Out of my material, there’s no knowing what is cause and what is effect. I’m convinced that the risk of someone “seeing” their friends only electronically exists and I’m sure this is the case for some. But the human being is a social being, can he or she really put the need of social contact aside? That would be something worth studying!

Anyways, on with Rasinkangas’s study. He had a look at what people do with their spare time and found that culture is high-rated whereas media is not. People watch less TV, read less newspapers and don’t read as many books as they used to. So what do they do? They go out more, to restaurants and the like, and go more often to the theatre and to concerts.

I also posed this question in my study and the results were: 17 % watches less tv, whereas 3 % watch more (and 80 as much), 15 % don’t read the newspaper as much and 15 % reads it more, and 14 % don’t listen to the radio as much, but 12 % do it more. And many were active in going to the movies, playing cards or participating in a union’s activities. Also the heavy users of internet were active.

Studies like Rasinkangas’s interest me as they look to the whole population (or the one aged between 18-75) and they can compare trends over time. Due to lack of economy and time, I “only” did a survey on university students. And it’s like Rasinkangas say, many of them are heavy users because their studies require them to be so.

There’s no copy of his study on the net, so I can’t link to it. But it’s available at the libraries. The name is Hyvinvointi Turussa- turkulaisten hyvinvoinnin muutosten seurantaa vuosina 1995, 1999 ja 2003. Jarkko Rasinkangas, Turun kaupungin sosiaalikeskuksen julkaisu nro 1A/2004.

Why, oh why?

Today was a fun day at work. Journalists (and authors, apparently) have six “must ask” questions: what, when, who, where, how and why. My favorite has always been “why”. But today, I decided to replace the why with what. Example: I didn’t focus on the question “Why did you do this project?” but rather on “What did you learn from this project?”.

I get different answers, I know, and that’s the point. I figured I wanted to favor a future thinking. One easily focuses on the past and the reasons for something, and forgets about the lessons learned. The “Where do you go from here?” part is often forgotten. And it worked quite well. The persons I interviewed really had to reflect on how to answer as being asked “what can you do to carry this plan into effect” is something completely different from a “why”-question. It demands a plan, an analysis, a look into the future, whereas the “why” is easily instantly answered with memories and experience of something that has already passed.

Women's studies

I was at the book store today and while waiting for my order, I skimmed through the textbooks for the senior high school. I noticed that the textbook of philosophy of (or is it "outlook on" life? My English fails here) life had a chapter on women's rights.

The discovery made me glad as I can't remember that the books I read in sixth form had any such topics.

One could question the need for women's studies in such a equal country such as Finland, but it is needed. This advertising campaign, for example, that's all around town now (see picture). I don't like it. It's a tv channel promoting the new series Nip/tuck, a series about two Miami South Beach plastic surgeons and their lives. But still. Why not just use a photo of the two guys starring the show? As it is now, I get the impression that this body needs some fixing by a plastic surgeon.

And internationally, German discount house Lidl has forced Polish and Czech female employees to wear red headband during their menstruation periods. Why? The workers are allowed to go to the toilets only on scheduled breaks. But women having their period are however, generously enough, allowed to go without asking for special permission and the red headband helps the supervisor to identify who's allowed to go, and who's not.

Exciting night ahead!

There's an exciting night awaiting all hockey fans in Finland tonight. The 2004 World Cup of Hockey title is at stake tonight and Finland is facing Canada in the final. For some, it's bigger than Midsummer and Christmas wrapped in one. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Go Finland!

Update: Canada won over Finland with 3-2. A well-earned victory, according to those who stayed up for the game last night, but Finland fought well.

L'Heure Verte

Absinthe was the drink of the artists' and writers' in the late 19th century. Many were intrigued by it, for example Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Toulouse-Lautrec and Ernest Hemingway.

And as a "by the way", when interviewing a French painter today, I find out that Absinthe is now available at Alko, the independent, entirely State-owned company that has a monopoly in Finland on the retail sale of alcoholic beverages containing over 4.7 per cent of alcohol by volume. Apparently, it hasn't been before, but it has been sold in restaurants though. Well, now the Finns too can have L'Heure Verte at home too.

The tables got turned

I was interviewed by Yle, Finland's national public service broadcasting company, today. They're doing a feature on instant messaging, that I did a study on about a year ago, and my role was to cast light on the phenomena as a researcher.

It was very awkward in two ways. Firstly, I work as a reporter at a newspaper. It's my job to ring people up and ask for a well-founded opinion at once and to ask them to hand in a simple solution to whatever problem or conflict I write about. But I've never had the tables turned. I've never been interviewed by a newspaper or tv. (Al though I did do an outstanding role in a tv-drama on youth and alcohol, made by the local tv-crew in my home village back in the 80's, but that doesn't count here.)

And what happens? I find myself becoming the difficult interviewee, the one that many journalists dread. I demand to know the plot of the feature, what questions will I be asked and point out several times that this and that needs to be emphasized. I was going to demand to see it before it airs, as I'm entitled to, but I forgot.

I guess, and hope, I posed these questions because I know that so much is simplified and generalized in media today. And I don't feel up to making broad statements concerning my research on instant messaging. I was actually planning on giving long answers to make sure that the risk of misunderstanding is as small as possible. But once the reporter removed the microphone from my face, he complemented me for being so brief and concise... Darn it! Occupational injury, or bad habit, I guess. I know the meaning of mediasexy. But it will be interesting to see how the programme turns out. I often wonder how the persons I interview feel about the published article. Do they recognize themselves at all, and did I get all the facts al right? I know some have doubted that we attented the same get-together...

The second issue that made me feel awkward is the medium itself. I was just talking the other day with a friend of mine about the hype of tv. It seems like many would do anything to get to be on the telly. They join reality tv-shows and the like. Visuality is everything, if you've been in the paper of tons better, on tv, you count. I would never ever join Big Brother or any other "voyeristic drama" in the genre. I doubt there's a sum that big that would make me break this promise. And my drive for recognition and fame is not that great.

While writing, a third thing comes to mind regarding why I was a bit nervous on being asked questions and supposed to serve intelligent answers straight up. I know by experience that many believe absolutely everything that's written in the paper. I figure perhaps it's the same thing with tv. Perhaps people think I'm proclaiming some sort of absolute truth. This is not how I want to appear. People can be mistaken, and so can the messanger (the reporter).

I miss a "discussion" outlook, where the media consumer says "Hey, that's one way of looking at it" and develops the thought, contributes with opinions, filling out the blanks and correcting what's wrong. I guess I'm looking for a joint reporting where the readers could contribute to the news as no reporter knows exactly everything, neither does the persons interviewed. And this is where the blog comes in. It'd be great to have a blog run alongside the news making a news reporting at a newspaper.

I hope I'm not coming across as a tired journalist who's looking to deny the responsability to report objectively and correctly. That's not my point. I just feel that one should think independently, and not uncritically accept everything that floats around in the media.

Naive bloggers?

I've blogged this before, in the form of teenagers not always fully realizing the consequences of what they post on the net. Today I found an interesting site on the matter, but this deals with grown-ups, not teenagers. Fernanda Viégas, a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, conducted a survey on blogging and she found a naiveté in how most bloggers think about persistence and how it operates in networked environments such as the net. The bloggers responding to the survey believe in general that they are liable for what they publish online. They were not however concerned about the persistent nature of what they publish, and neither did they believe someone would sue them for things they had blogged. This surprises me, as the bloggers in the study say they've gotten in trouble both with friends and family as well as employers because of their postings.

What's up, Kallio?

Finland's first equivalent to metroblogging was born today. Kallioblogi wants to offer civic journalism right from the streets of Kallio in Helsinki. Even though I live in another town, I’ll stop by often as the site seems well worth reading.

[Via Schizoblog]

Illuminated umbrella

Here's an example of the motto of the times we currently live in, "Be visible, and you exist". Not only does this umbrella keep you dry, but also does it light your way. Thus, it's a great way for you to stand out from the crowd, and to make sure to be seen, thanks to 4 AA batteries and 2 krypton bulbs (the umbrella weighs half a kilo). Unfortunately, it's sold out at Wishingfish.

[Via Pc för alla]

Blogger survey

Research into the psychology of blogging is conducted at the RMIT University in Australia, in the form of a questionnaire. The purpose is to explore the nature of blogging and more traditional, pencil and paper style diary writing. The research questions are: What motivates journal writers? Are there personality differences between people who keep their journals online and those who keep pencil and paper journals?

I like the look of the survey. It is clear and appealing to fill out, and it doesn’t seem to long either. Results are promised as a Christmas present, in December, though only to the participants. This reminds me, by the way, that I should start writing the article on my e-survey I did for my Master’s…