Jenni Hokka

The dissertation explores seven television series produced by Channel 2 of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE TV2) between the 1960s and 1990s. These fictional television shows, are analysed as cultural spaces in which conventions and discourses practice politics of belonging. The theoretical framework builds on the Nira Yuval-Davis’s theory of belonging and on Judith Butler’s theory on performativity. The politics of belonging promoted by the television series are examined from three different perspectives: belonging to 1) class, 2) gender and 3) welfare society. The work identifies four different narratives highlighted by the examined series. The first one discusses the collapse of welfare society. The second specifies how social classes react to the modernization process. The third explores marriage as a site of struggle between genders. Finally, the fourth narrative, visible especially in the television critiques, highlights how “common people” have been both categorized and instructed through the decades. By exploring the selected television series as cultural sites in which performative practices are reiterated, the work at hand discusses the changing cultural role of television series during the decades. At the same time, the fictional television material opens an entirely new perspective to the theories of belonging.

In this article, I examine the changes in the television production culture using Finnish multiplatform serial Uusi Päivä [New Day] as a case study. UP is an internationally early example of a multiplatform serial, and its research illustrates the development of this new kind of content production. The rise of multiplatform serials has enabled a more holistic immersion in the world of serial for the fans, but it has also transformed the way serials are made. 

The research uses production studies approach and focuses on how people produce culture in certain kinds of organisations and communities, while constituting and reconstituting the ways of working and work identities that characterise the community. The study is based on both ethnographic observation and narrative analysis of research interviews that were conducted in 2015. 

My research shows that the series' original idea of transmedial storytelling was not realized in the early years of the series the way it was supposed to. There were several reasons for this: the tight schedule of the production, the different goals and different professional identities of the screenwriters and the online team in relation to the audience/users, as well as the scheduling and organisational separation of these worker groups. Creating multi-platform content was initially a challenge for creators, as it required them to change their professional identity from storytellers for television audience to multi-media content producers for users. However, at the end of my research period, there was a shift in the attitude of TV serial creators towards transmediality, when the content production of the online team was better integrated into television production from an organisational point of view.

Particularly since the 1990s, there has been an active discussion on inclusive design and on the possibility of designing products that would be suitable for every kind of user. Wearable technology products that need to be in close contact with the user's skin to function must be a good fit for the user's body. As wearable technology has transitioned from a specialty of the "quantify-yourself" movement to a widespread, everyday item, the Jenni Hokka works as a specialist in research methods at the Doctoral School at Tampere University. This research is part of a project undertaken while affiliated at Aalto University in which she scrutinized design

Datafication is a social and political process that has mainly been led by powerful commercial interests leaving the citizens of datafied societies as mere bystanders. How could a datafied society become a welfare data society—a society that takes care of all citizens’ rights and wellbeing by providing them sufficient means to cope with a datafied everyday life? In this chapter, I claim that in a data society the rights and wellbeing of citizens are strengthened through education: by increasing the level of digital and data infrastructure literacy. While regulations such as the GDPR are much needed, they are only effective if citizens understand how to use the rights they grant them. Our workshops with users showed that on average, people are capable of forming a considered opinion on fair data-gathering practices. Furthermore, they were able to discuss and even develop new ideas based on how they would like data gathering to be organised and regulated after being introduced to data collection in practice. Basic education in European countries has already made efforts to improve digital literacy, but education on digital literacy and especially data infrastructure literacy should also reach older generations. In this chapter, I propose that public service media should also play a significant role in strengthening citizenship through education in a datafied society as demonstrated by the Finnish public broadcasting company YLE who has already taken on that role. The results from our cooperation with YLE Learning show that public service media (PSM) already possesses inventive means through which different kinds of users can be reached. Still, more controlled cooperation is needed among different public institutions and European PSM to increase the general level of data infrastructure literacy.

How and why the social limits of racist speech have become obscure and ‘outdated’ for a YouTube star PewDiePie and his over 100 million fans? How have the policies of YouTube affected the general understanding of the limits of racist discourse in the digital media context? In this article, I argue that the case of PewDiePie shows how YouTube exercises a neoliberalist understanding of freedom of speech. In my analysis, I contextualise PewDiePie’s own comments and YouTube’s publications into the history of Internet culture and introduce the development of YouTube into a neoliberalist sphere. I illustrate how neoliberal ideology is now implemented on three levels on YouTube: through creating an illusion of intimacy between a creator and his/her fans, through the promise of equal opportunity on YouTube and through a neoliberalist interpretation of the marketplace-of-ideas principle. The analysis reveals how YouTube’s policies and practices as ideological choices contribute to the normalisation of racism on social media.

The paper explores how visual affective practice is used to spread and bolster a nationalist, extremist and racist ethos on the public Facebook page of the anti-immigrant group, Soldiers of Odin. Affective practice refers to a particular sensibility of political discourse, shaped by social formations and digital technologies — the contexts in which political groups or communities gather, discuss and act. The study shows how visual affective practice and sharing and responding to images fortify moral claims, sense exclusionary solidarity and promote white nationalist masculinity which legitimizes racist practices of “soldiering.” By examining both the representations and their reactions (emoticons), the study demonstrates how ideas and values are collectively strengthened through affective sharing and are supported by platform
infrastructures. Most importantly, it demonstrates that instead of considering the affect of protecting the nation as a natural result of “authentic” gut feeling, we should understand the ways it is purposefully and collectively produced and circulated.

In our article, we investigate the affective economy of national-populist image circulation on Facebook. This is highly relevant, since social media has been an essential area for the spread of national-populist ideology. In our research, we analyse image circulation as affective practice, combining qualitative and quantitative methods. We use computational data analysis methods to examine visual big data: image fingerprints and reverse image search engines to track down the routes of thousands of circulated images as well as make discourse-historical analysis on the images that have gained most attention among supporters. Our research demonstrates that these existing tools allow social science research to make theory-solid approaches to understand the role of image circulation in creating and sustaining national and transnational networks on social media, and show how national-populist thinking is spread through images that catalyse and mobilise affects – fear, anger and resentment – thus creating an effective affective economy.

With the advent of popular social media platforms, news journalism has been forced to re-evaluate its relation to its audience. This applies also for public service media (PSM) that increasingly has to prove its utility through audience ratings. This ethnographic study explores a particular project, the development of ‘concept bible’ for the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE’s online news; it is an attempt to solve these challenges through new journalistic practices. The study introduces the concept of ‘nuanced universality’, which means that audience groups’ different kinds of needs are taken into account on news production in order to strengthen all people’s ability to be part of society. On a more general level, the article claims that despite its commercial origins, audience segmentation can be transformed into a method that helps revise PSM principles into practices suitable for the digital media environment.

The scale and form of social media services provided by public service companies have been under heated discussion for the last decade. In this article I approach this issue from the perspective of creative labour. How do workers perceive public service values and their applicability to social media? How are workers adapting their practices from broadcasting to narrowcasting? The article builds on José van Dijk and Thomas Poell’s idea of social media logics. This analytical prism is used to analyse a specific case study, a Finnish multiplatform serial Uusi Päivä (2010- ). The analysis shows that social media logic modifies the conditions of public service media. Reaching the users as well as producing spreadable content is a significant challenge for public service companies, as their main operating principles still mostly date back to the time of mass media logics. Yet, the workers also see great possibilities in creating new kinds of public service through social media.

In October 2010 one of Finland’s four national TV channels aired a panel discussion dealing with gay and lesbian rights in society. A great number of people publicly expressed their views on same-sex marriages. A vast number of resignations from the Church were a result and they were discussed, particularly in the online discussion forums, but also in newspaper articles and in letters to the editor. The public discussion spread rapidly, especially through the social media.

Resignations from the Church are often perceived as a clear sign of the decline of religious beliefs and practices, which is an integral aspect of the secularization process. But lately the whole notion of a secularization of society has been questioned and a growing number of researchers have stated that the concepts of resacralization, desecularization, or a resurgence of religion would actually better describe the current situation than the theory of secularization. The aim of this article is to examine whether the concept of secularization still has some explanatory power at least in the Nordic countries. Another aim is to contemplate what kind of knowledge this special case has to offer when rethinking secularization.

The dissertation explores seven television series produced by Channel 2 of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE TV2) between the 1960s and 1990s. These fictional television shows, are analysed as cultural spaces in which conventions and discourses practice politics of belonging. The theoretical framework builds on the Nira Yuval-Davis’s theory of belonging and on Judith Butler’s theory on performativity. The politics of belonging promoted by the television series are examined from three different perspectives: belonging to 1) class, 2) gender and 3) welfare society. The work identifies four different narratives highlighted by the examined series. The first one discusses the collapse of welfare society. The second specifies how social classes react to the modernization process. The third explores marriage as a site of struggle between genders. Finally, the fourth narrative, visible especially in the television critiques, highlights how “common people” have been both categorized and instructed through the decades. By exploring the selected television series as cultural sites in which performative practices are reiterated, the work at hand discusses the changing cultural role of television series during the decades. At the same time, the fictional television material opens an entirely new perspective to the theories of belonging.