Producing interactivity : Does media convergence promote interactivity and audience participation?

This study investigates the process of producing interactivity in a converged media environment. The study asks whether more media convergence equals more interactivity. The research object is approached through semi-structured interviews of prominent decision makers within the Finnish media. The main focus of the study are the three big ones of the traditional media, radio, television and the printing press, and their ability to adapt to the changing environment. The study develops theoretical models for the analysis of interactive features and convergence. Case-studies are formed from the interview data and they are evaluated against the models. As a result the cases arc plotted and compared on a four-fold table. The cases are Radio Rock, NRJ, Biu Brother, Television Chat, Olivia and Sanoma News. It is found out that the theoretical models can accurately forecast the results of the case studies. The models are also able to distinguish different aspects of both interactivity and convergence so that a case, which at a first glance seems not to be very interactive is in the end found out to receive second highest scores on the analysis. The highest scores are received by Big Brother and Sanoma News. Through the theory and the analysis of the research data it is found out that the concepts of interactivity and convergence arc intimately intertwined and very hard in many cases to separate from each other. Hence the answer to the main question of this study is yes, convergence does promote interactivity and audience participation. The main theoretical background for the analysis of interactivity follows the work of Came Fleeter, Spiro Kiousis and Sally McMillan. Heeler's six-dimensional definition of interactivity is used as the basis for operationalizing interactivity. The actor-network theory is used as the main theoretical framework to analyze convergence. The definition and operationalization of the actor-network theory into a model of convergence follows the work of Michel Callon. Bruno Latour and especially John Law and Felix Stalder.

Japanese Video Game Localization : A Case Study of Sony's Sairen Series

This thesis is a comparative case study in Japanese video game localization for the video games Sairen, Sairen 2 and Sairen Nyûtoransurêshon, and English-language localized versions of the same games as published in Scandinavia and Australia/New Zealand. All games are developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and published exclusively for Playstation2 and Playstation3 consoles. The fictional world of the Sairen games draws much influence from Japanese history, as well as from popular and contemporary culture, and in doing so caters mainly to a Japanese audience. For localization, i.e. the adaptation of a product to make it accessible to users outside the original market it was intended for in the first place, this is a challenging issue. Video games are media of entertainment, and therefore localization practice must preserve the games’ effects on the players’ emotions. Further, video games are digital products that are comprised of a multitude of distinct elements, some of which are part of the game world, while others regulate the connection between the player as part of the real world and the game as digital medium. As a result, video game localization is also a practice that has to cope with the technical restrictions that are inherent to the medium. The main theory used throughout the thesis is Anthony Pym’s framework for localization studies that considers the user of the localized product as a defining part of the localization process. This concept presupposes that localization is an adaptation that is performed to make a product better suited for use during a specific reception situation. Pym also addresses the factor that certain products may resist distribution into certain reception situations because of their content, and that certain aspects of localization aim to reduce this resistance through significant alterations of the original product. While Pym developed his ideas with mainly regular software in mind, they can also be adapted well to study video games from a localization angle. Since modern video games are highly complex entities that often switch between interactive and non-interactive modes, Pym’s ideas are adapted throughout the thesis to suit the particular elements being studied. Instances analyzed in this thesis include menu screens, video clips, in-game action and websites. The main research questions focus on how the games’ rules influence localization, and how the games’ fictional domain influences localization. Because there are so many peculiarities inherent to the medium of the video game, other theories are introduced as well to complement the research at hand. These include Lawrence Venuti’s discussions of foreiginizing and domesticating translation methods for literary translation, and Jesper Juul’s definition of games. Additionally, knowledge gathered from interviews with video game localization professionals in Japan during September and October 2009 is also utilized for this study. Apart from answering the aforementioned research questions, one of this thesis’ aims is to enrich the still rather small field of game localization studies, and the study of Japanese video games in particular, one of Japan’s most successful cultural exports.

Given and News : Media discourse and the construction of community on national days

National anniversaries such as independence days demand precise coordination in order to make citizens change their routines to forego work and spend the day at rest or at festivities that provide social focus and spectacle. The complex social construction of national days is taken for granted and operates as a given in the news media, which are the main agents responsible for coordinating these planned disruptions of normal routines. This study examines the language used in the news to construct the rather unnatural idea of national days and to align people in observing them. The data for the study consist of news stories about the Fourth of July in the New York Times, sampled over 150 years and are supplemented by material from other sources and other countries. The study is multidimensional, applying concepts from pragmatics (speech acts, politeness, information structure), systemic functional linguistics (the interpersonal metafunction and the Appraisal framework) and cognitive linguistics (frames, metaphor) as well as journalism and communications to arrive at an interdisciplinary understanding of how resources for meaning are used by writers and readers of the news stories. The analysis shows that on national anniversaries, nations tend to be metaphorized as persons having birthdays, to whom politeness should be shown. The face of the nation is to be respected in the sense of identifying the nation's interests as one's own (positive face) and speaking of citizen responsibilities rather than rights (negative face). Resources are available for both positive and negative evaluations of events and participants and the newspaper deftly changes footings (Goffman 1981) to demonstrate the required politeness while also heteroglossically allowing for a certain amount of disattention and even protest - within limits, for state holidays are almost never construed as Bakhtinian festivals, as they tend to reaffirm the hierarchy rather than invert it. Celebrations are evaluated mainly for impressiveness, and for the essentially contested quality of appropriateness, which covers norms of predictability, size, audience response, aesthetics, and explicit reference to the past. Events may also be negatively evaluated as dull ("banal") or inauthentic ("hoopla"). Audiences are evaluated chiefly in terms of their enthusiasm, or production of appropriate displays for emotional response, for national days are supposed to be occasions of flooding-out of nationalistic feeling. By making these evaluations, the newspaper reinforces its powerful position as an independent critic, while at the same time playing an active role in the construction and reproduction of emotional order embodied in "the nation's birthday." As an occasion for mobilization and demonstrations of power, national days may be seen to stand to war in the relation of play to fighting (Bateson 1955). Evidence from the newspaper's coverage of recent conflicts is adduced to support this analysis. In the course of the investigation, methods are developed for analyzing large collections of newspaper content, particularly topical soft news and feature materials that have hitherto been considered less influential and worthy of study than so-called hard news. In his work on evaluation in newspaper stories, White (1998) proposed that the classic hard news story is focused on an event that threatens the social order, but news of holidays and celebrations in general does not fit this pattern, in fact its central event is a reproduction of the social order. Thus in the system of news values (Galtung and Ruge 1965), national holiday news draws on "ground" news values such as continuity and predictability rather than "figure" news values such as negativity and surprise. It is argued that this ground helps form a necessary space for hard news to be seen as important, similar to the way in which the information structure of language is seen to rely on the regular alternation of given and new information (Chafe 1994).

Teatterinjohtamisen dramaturgiaa : Keskeiset tehtävät, arjen ongelmat ja rakenteelliset muutostarpeet

DRAMATURGY OF THEATRE MANAGEMENT Essential tasks, everyday problems and the need for structural changes Theatre justifies its existence only through high quality performances. Maintaining the artistic level and organizing performances are the primary tasks of a manager, even though in everyday life this often seems to be overshadowed by all the other tasks of a manager s work. How does a theatre manager design strategies and make everyday decisions if aims are to have artistically meaningful performances, financial success and a socially healthy ensemble, when not only artistic work or leadership of an organization are to be taken into consideration, but also a manpower-based art institution with long traditions? What does theatre management consist of and what kind of dramaturgical movement happens in it? Based on interviews carried out in five different city theatres in Finland in the years 2004-2008, incident stories were written within a continuous comparison theory frame. Social constructionism within a dramaturgic framework enabled versatile dialog on a manager s work and problem areas. The result is an interpretative study, where instead of common regularities, many details are collected that can be taken into consideration when similar situations occur. Based on the interviews and historical data, four factors that influence a manager s work were chosen: ownership, media, work community and programme. Within theatre management, the central problems were 1) the inconsistent use of theatre resources and problems in corporate governance caused by the administrative models; 2) the theatre s image, based on the image of its manager, as presented by the media and its influence on the wellbeing of the staff; 3) unsolved problems between the staff left behind by the previous managers and problems related to casting; 4) knowledge of the audience. These points influence how the manager plans the artistic programme and divides the resources. The theatre manager s job description has remained quite the same since the early days of Kaarlo Bergbom. In the future, special attention should be placed on why managers face fairly similar problems decade after decade. Reducing these problems partly depends on whether structural improvements are made to a theatre s close network of owners, financers and labour unions. During this study clear evidence was seen that structural changes are necessary in the production of performances and in the creation of a more versatile programme. In this process, different kinds of co-operation, experiments, development projects, continuing education and international relations have special importance, especially if the aim is to make it possible for all citizens of Finland to enjoy a vibrant and revitalized theatre.

Kirurgisen operaation teatteri : Teatterillinen kuva ja ihmismuodon esitettävyys avantgardistisen väkivallan näkökulmasta

Dissertation considers the birth of modernist and avant-gardist authorship as a reaction against mass society and massculture. Radical avant-gardism is studied as figurative violence done against the human form. The main argument claims avant-gardist authorship to be an act of masculine autogenesis. This act demands human form to be worked to an elementary state of disarticulateness, then to be reformed to the model of the artist's own psychophysical and idiosyncratic vision and experience. This work is connected to concrete mass, mass of pigment, charcoal, film, or flesh. This mass of the figure is worked to create a likeness in the nervous system of the spectator. The act of violence against the human figure is intended to shock the spectator. This shock is also a state of emotional and perceptional massification. I use theatrical image as heuristic tool and performance analysis, connecting figure and spectator into a larger image, which is constituted by relationships of mimesis, where figure presents the likeness of the spectator and spectator the likeness of the figure. Likeness is considered as both gestural - social mimetic - and sensuous - kinesthetically mimetic. Through this kind of construction one can describe and contextualize the process of violent autogenesis using particular images as case studies. Avant-gardist author is the author of theatrical image, not particular figure, and through act of massification the nervous system of the spectator is also part of this image. This is the most radical form and ideology of avant-gardist and modernist authorship or imagerial will to power. I construct a model of gestural-mimic performer to explicate the nature of violence done for human form in specific works, in Mann's novella Death in Venice, in Schiele's and Artaud's selfportaits, in Francis Bacon's paintings, in Beckett's shortplat NOT I, in Orlan's chirurgical performance Operation Omnipresense, in Cindy Sherman's Film/Stills, in Diamanda Galás's recording Vena Cava and in Hitchcock's Psycho. Masspsychology constructed a phobic picture of human form's plasticity and capability to be constituted by influencies coming both inside and outside - childhood, atavistic organic memories, urban field of nervous impulses, unconsciousness, capitalist (image)market and democratic masspolitics. Violence is then antimimetic and antitheatrical, a paradoxical situation, considering that massmedias and massaudiences created an enormous fascination about possibilities of theatrical and hypnotic influence in artistic elites. The problem was how to use theatrical image without coming as author under influence. In this work one possible answer is provided: by destructing the gestural-mimetic performer, by eliminating representations of mimic body techniques from the performer of human (a painted figure, a photographed figure, a filmed figure or an acted figure, audiovisual or vocal) figure. This work I call the chirurgical operation, which also indicates co-option with medical portraitures or medico-cultural diagnoses of human form. Destruction of the autonomy of the performer was a parallel process to constructing the new mass media audience as passive, plastic, feminine. The process created an image of a new kind of autotelic masculine author-hero, freed from human form in its bourgeois, aristocratic, classical and popular versions.

Mediated music makers : Constructing author images in popular music

The subject of the thesis is the mediated construction of author images in popular music. In the study, the construction of images is treated as a process in which artists, the media and the members of the audience participate. The notions of presented, mediated and compiled author images are used in explaining the mediation process and the various authorial roles of the agents involved. In order to explore the issue more closely, I analyse the author images of a group of popular music artists representing the genres of rock, pop and electronic dance music. The analysed material consists mostly of written media texts through which the artists authorial roles and creative responsibilities are discussed. Theoretically speaking, the starting points for the examination lie in cultural studies and discourse analysis. Even though author images may be conceived as intertextual constructions, the artist is usually presented as a recognizable figure whose purpose is to give the music its public face. This study does not, then, deal with musical authors as such, but rather with their public images and mediated constructions. Because of the author-based functioning of popular music culture and the idea of the artist s individual creative power, the collective and social processes involved in the making of popular music are often superseded by the belief in a single, originating authorship. In addition to the collective practices of music making, the roles of the media and the marketing machinery complicate attempts to clarify the sharing of authorial contributions. As the case studies demonstrate, the differences between the examined author images are connected with a number of themes ranging from issues of auteurism and stardom to the use of masked imagery and the blending of authorial voices. Also the emergence of new music technologies has affected not only the ways in which music is made, but also how the artist s authorial status and artistic identity is understood. In the study at hand, the author images of auteurs, stars, DJs and sampling artists are discussed alongside such varied topics as collective authorship, evaluative hierarchies, visual promotion and generic conventions. Taken altogether, the examined case studies shed light on the functioning of popular music culture and the ways in which musical authorship is (re)defined.

War and Revolution in St. Petersburg : Modernist Links in the Poetry of Edith Södergran and Anna Andreevna Akhmatova

Important modernists in their own countries, Anna Akhmatova and Edith Södergran are compared in this dissertation as poets whose poetry reflects the climactic events of the early twentieth century in Finland and Russia. A comparatist, biographical and historical approach is used to uncover the circumstances surrounding these events. First the poets’ early works are reviewed and their contemporaries are mentioned to provide a poetic context. Then a brief review of Finnish and Russian history situates them historically. Next, the rich literary diversity of St. Petersburg’s Silver Age is presented and the work of the poets is viewed in context before their poetry is compared, as the First World War, October Revolution and subsequent Finnish Civil War impact their writing. While biography is not the primary focus, it becomes important as inevitably the writers’ lives are changed by cataclysmic events and the textual analysis of the poems in Swedish, Russian and English shows the impact of war on their poetry. These two poets have not been compared before in a critical review in English and this work contributes to needed work in English. They share certain common modernist traits: attention to the word, an intimate, unconventional voice, and a concern with audience. In addition, they both reject formal traditions while they adopt new forms and use modern, outside influences such as art, architecture and philosophy as subject matter and a lens through which to focus their poetry. While it may seem that Anna Akhmatova was the most socially aware poet, because of the censorship she endured under Stalin, my research has revealed that actually Edith Södergran showed the most social consciousness. Thus, a contrast of the poets’ themes reveals these differences in their approaches. Both poets articulated a vibrant response to war and revolution becoming modernists in the process. In their final works created in the years before their deaths, they reveal the solace they found in nature as well as final mentions of the violent events of their youth. Keywords: St. Petersburg, Modernism, Symbolism, Acmeism, Silver Age, Finland-Swedish literature

Lausunta taiteena ja tapahtumana : Tekstikeskeisyys, esittäjäkeskeisyys ja lausunnan positiot lausuntaa koskevan kirjallisen aineiston ja teatterintutkimuksen viitekehyksessä

The research is analyzing the Finnish tradition on poetry elocution both from the discource analytical and theatrical and view point. The main questions are, whether there still is a fixed position for elocution in the field of art or are we dealing with just one form of thearte? -- The art of elocution has been considered as an independent art form, sometimes even in opposition to theatre, which has been regarded as a very physical and emotional art form by the elocutionists themselves. The self-image of the Finnish elocution art has been born and firmly sustained from the notion that elocution is linked to literature. Elocution as an art form has been seen as "pure" and humbly serving literature and poetry. The main function of an elocutionist has been to understand and vocally express the meanings found in a poem to larger audience. -- This function has changed over the time. There have been a transition from the traditonal text-centeredness to performer-centeredness, even to performance-centeredness as a new wave of theatrical elements and methods have reached the circle of elocution. New forms of poetry performances, such as poetry reading and poetry slam are new challenges to elocution as it must reconsider it´s traditional function in a new artistic and cultural context.

Vapaa-ajan vieton luonnonvarojen kulutus

This thesis studies the use of natural resources for leisure time activities. The method used is Material Input per Service Unit (MIPS method). Leisure time has an increasing effect on the material flows of households, and that way has a bigger pressure on the environment. The most popular way of spending spare time in Finland is to watch TV and to listen to music or radio. Regardless of these, this thesis takes a closer look at boating, playing a musical instrument and visiting a theatre and tries to quantify their material flows. MIPS calculations of this thesis are case-studies and do not tell the whole truth about the hobbies. The aim was to have an overview about the magnitude of the activities. In the boating calculations, inside the system boundaries there are the boat itself, transport of the boat, outboard motor, gasoline consumption of the outboard motor, travelling to and from the harbour, and the harbour infrastructure. Calculations of playing a music instrument consider the instrument itself, music school and its maintenance, and travelling to the school. In the case of theatre the included things are theatre house and its maintenance, decor and costumes of the plays, transport of the decor, and travelling of the audience. The results of this thesis suggest that the biggest material flow of boating comes from travelling to and from the harbour and from the harbour infrastructure. The gasoline consumption of the outboard motor also makes a difference. One hour of boating with a rowing boat consumes 1 kg of abiotic materials. Boating with an outboard motorboat consumes astonishing 113 kg of abiotic resources. Visiting a music lesson for one hour consumes 9 kg of abiotic resources when travelling there by bus. One hour in a theatre play consumes 17 kg of abiotic materials when travelling by bus. Transport has a significant role on the resource consumption of leisure time activities.

Luke, The Friend of Sinners

I examine the portrayal of Jesus as a friend of toll collectors and sinners in the Third Gospel. I aim at a comprehensive view on the Lukan sinner texts, combining questions of the origin and development of these texts with the questions of Luke s theological message, of how the text functions as literature, and of the social-historical setting(s) behind the texts. Within New Testament scholarship researchers on the historical Jesus mostly still hold that a special mission to toll collectors and sinners was central in Jesus public activity. Within Lukan studies, M. Goulder, J. Kiilunen and D. Neale have claimed that this picture is due to Luke s theological vision and the liberties he took as an author. Their view is disputed by other Lukan scholars. I discuss methods which scholars have used to isolate the typical language of Luke s alleged written sources, or to argue for the source-free creation by Luke himself. I claim that the analysis of Luke s language does not help us to the origin of the Lukan pericopes. I examine the possibility of free creativity on Luke s part in the light of the invention technique used in ancient historiography. Invention was an essential part of all ancient historical writing and therefore quite probably Luke used it, too. Possibly Luke had access to special traditions, but the nature of oral tradition does not allow reconstruction. I analyze Luke 5:1-11; 5:27-32; 7:36-50; 15:1-32; 18:9-14; 19:1-10; 23:39-43. In most of these some underlying special tradition is possible though far from certain. It becomes evident that Luke s reshaping was so thorough that the pericopes as they now stand are decidedly Lukan creations. This is indicated by the characteristic Lukan story-telling style as well as by the strongly unified Lukan theology of the pericopes. Luke s sinners and Pharisees do not fit in the social-historical context of Jesus day. The story-world is one of polarized right and wrong. That Jesus is the Christ, representative of God, is an intrinsic part of the story-world. Luke wrote a theological drama inspired by tradition. He persuaded his audience to identify as (repenting) sinners. Luke's motive was that he saw the sinners in Jesus' company as forerunners of Gentile Christianity.

The Catholic Internet discussion on cloning : A study in cognitive rhetoric

This work combines the cognitive theory of folk-theoretical thought with the classical Aristotelian theory of artistic proof in rhetoric. The first half of the work discusses the common ground shared by the elements of artistic proof (logos, pathos, ethos) and the elements of folk-theoretical thought (naïve physics, folk biology, folk psychology, naïve sociology). Combining rhetoric with the cognitive theory of folk-theoretical thought creates a new point of view for argumentation analysis. The logos of an argument can be understood as the inferential relations established between the different parts of an argument. Consequently, within this study the analysis of logos is to be viewed as the analysis of the inferential folk-theoretical elements that make the suggested factual states-of-things appear plausible within given argumentative structures. The pathos of an argumentative structure can be understood as determining the quality of the argumentation in question in the sense that emotive elements play a great part in what can be called a distinction between good and deceptive rhetoric. In the context of this study the analysis of pathos is to be viewed as the analysis of the emotive content of argumentative structures and of whether they aim at facilitating surface- or deep cognitive elaboration of the suggested matters. The ethos of an argumentative structure means both the speaker-presentation and audience-construct that can be discerned within a body of argumentation. In the context of this study, the analysis of ethos is to be understood as the analysis of mutually manifest cognitive environments in the context of argumentation. The theory is used to analyse Catholic Internet discussion concerning cloning. The discussion is divided into six themes: Human Dignity, Sacred Family, Exploitation / Dehumanisation, Playing God, Monsters and Horror Scenarios and Ensoulment. Each theme is analysed for both the rhetorical and the cognitive elements that can be seen creating persuasive force within the argumentative structures presented. It is apparent that the Catholic voices on the Internet extensively oppose cloning. The voices utilise rhetoric that is aggressive and pejorative more often than not. Furthermore, deceptive rhetoric (in the sense presented above) plays a great part in argumentative structures of the Catholic voices. The theory of folk-theoretical thought can be seen as a useful tool for analysing the possible reasons why the Catholic speakers think about cloning and choose to present cloning in their argumentation as they do. The logos utilized in the argumentative structures presented can usually be viewed as based on folk-theoretical inference concerning biology and psychology. The structures of pathos utilized generally appear to aim at generating fear appeal in the assumed audiences, often incorporating counter-intuitive elements. The ethos utilised in the arguments generally revolves around Christian mythology and issues of social responsibility. These structures can also be viewed from the point of view of folk psychology and naïve sociological assumptions.

Power and Authority. Birgitta of Sweden and her Revelations

In the High Middle Ages female saints were customarily noble virgins. Thus, as a wife and a mother of eight children, the Swedish noble lady Birgitta (1302/3 1373) was an atypical candidate for sanctity. However, in 1391 she was canonized only 18 years after her death and became a role model for many late medieval women, who were mothers and widows. The dissertation Power and Authority Birgitta of Sweden and Her Revelations investigates how Birgitta went about establishing her power and authority during the first ten years of her career as a living saint, in 1340 1349. It is written from the perspectives of gender, authority, and power. The sources consist of approximately seven hundred revelations, hagiographical texts and other medieval documents. This work concentrates on the interaction between Birgitta and her audience. During her lifetime Birgitta was already regarded as a holy woman, as a living saint. A living saint could be given no formal papal or other recognition, for one could never be certain about his or her future activities. Thus, the living saint needed an audience for whom to perform signs of sanctity. In this study particular attention is paid to situations within which the power relations between the living saint and her audience can be traced and are open to critical analysis. Situations of conflict that arose in Birgitta s life are especially fruitful for this purpose. During the Middle Ages, institutional power and authority were exclusively in the hands of secular male leaders and churchmen. In this work it is argued, however, that Birgitta used different kinds of power than men. It is evident that she exercized influence on lay people as well as on secular and clerical authorities. The second, third, and fourth chapter of this study examine the beginning of Birgitta s career as a visionary, what factors and influences lay behind it, and what kind of roles they played in establishing her religious authority. The fifth, sixth, and seventh chapter concentrate on Birgitta s exercising of power in specific situations during her time in Sweden until she left on a pilgrimage to Rome in 1349. The central question is how she exercised power with different people. As a result, this book will offer a narrative of Birgitta s social interactions in Sweden seen from the perspectives of power and authority. Along with the concept of power, authority is a key issue. By definition, one who has power also has authority but a person who does not have official power can, nevertheless, have authority. Authority in action is defined here as meaning that a person was listened to. Birgitta acted both in situations of open conflict and where no conflict was evident. Her strategies included, for example, inducement, encouragement and flattery. In order to make people do as she felt was right she also threatened them openly with divine wrath. Sometimes she even used both positive persuasion and threats. Birgitta s power seems very similar to that of priests and ascetics. Common to all of them was that their power demanded interaction with other people and audiences. Because Birgitta did not have power and authority ex officio she had to persuade people to believe in her powers. She did this because she was convinced of her mission and sought to make people change their lives. In so doing, she moved from the domestic field to the public fields of religion and politics.

Slogans of Change : Three Outlooks on Finnish Television

The study Slogans of Change. Three Outlooks on Finnish Television Contents is concerned with alleged changes of television contents during the 1990s and 2000s, such as dumbing down, tabloidisation, entertainisation , and the like. Specifically, the focus is on the ways these changes might manifest in Finnish television. The aim of the study has been threefold: 1. To operationalise public and academic discussions about changes via specific slogans emerging from the debates; 2. Consequently, to study the slogans empirically and reflect on the findings with earlier research, including studies on institutional and audience-related aspects; 3. Finally, to suggest what the findings might mean regarding discussions about television s role, and what kinds of slogans or concepts might best serve future discussions and research. The empirical outlooks presented in this study offer analyses with three different sets of opposing slogans of change. The outlooks also follow three different traditions of the study of television. The first outlook focuses on quantity, as it gives a longitudinal (1993-2004), macro-level view on programme structures. The methodological approach is derived from media economic and policy studies. The claims that frame the analysis are convergence versus diversification of programme structures. The second outlook provides quantitative and qualitative views on the characteristics and quality  the term signifying essence as well as worth  of Finnish television journalism during sample weeks from the years 2002 and 2003. This outlook follows the traditions of quantitative content analysis found in journalism studies coupled with descriptive qualitative content analyses. The slogans reflected in this section are the lightening or widening of journalism. The third outlook narrows down the material and focuses at a micro-level on form; that is, communicative conventions in a small array of selected programmes in 1993, 2000 and during 2002-2004. The analyses have been inspired by the method of conversation analysis of verbal interaction, and coupled with qualitative close readings, with the focus of different communicative situations in the programmes. The catchphrases employed in this part are emotainment versus democratainment, coupled with more specific claims of discursive hybridisation and conversationalisation. The findings depict that, empirically, changes in Finnish television contents are not clear linear trends and cannot easily be moulded into neat slogans. The quantitative outlook on programme output during 1993-2004 depicts a tendency towards differentiation of channels, paving the way for the multi-channel digital system. The change in programme structures, however, is not dramatic on the level of total output. The second outlook suggests that the dualistic concepts, such as the pair information-entertainment, are not sufficient in understanding the array and changes of programmes that could be called journalism. The outlook on communicative conventions highlights hybridisation in the manner of television talk and its relation to broader debates on contents. Despite the three dissimilar empirical approaches, unifying aspects emerge. The outlooks suggest, albeit in different ways, tendencies toward distinction and polarisation. This study proposes that in order to facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the changes in television contents, dualistic slogans should be replaced with a multi-dimensional understanding of the concept of diversity.

Näkökulmia eurooppalaiseen sosiaalipolitiikkaan : malli, väestö, resurssit ja kommunikaatio

The study analyses European social policy as a political project that proceeds under the guidance of the European Commission. In the name of modernisation, the project aims to build a new idea for the welfare state. To understand the project, it is necessary to distance oneself from both the juridical competence of the European Union and the traditional national welfare state models. The question is about sharing problems, as well as solutions to them: it is the creation and sharing of common views, concepts and images that play a key role in European integration. Drawing on texts and speeches produced by the European Commission, the study throws light on the development of European social policy during the first years of the 2000s. The study "freeze-frames" the welfare debate having its starting points in the nation states in the name of the entity of Europe. The first article approaches the European social model as a story in itself, a preparatory, persuasive narrative that concerns the management of change. The article shows how the audience can be motivated to work towards a set target by using discursive elements in a persuasive manner: the function of a persuasive story is to convince the target audience of the appropriateness of the chosen direction and to shape their identity so that they are favourably disposed to the desired political targets. This is a kind of "intermediate state" where the story, despite its inner contradictions and inaccuracies, succeeds in appearing as an almost self-evident path towards a modern social policy that Europe is currently seen to be in need of. The second article outlines the European social model as a question of governance. Health as a sector of social policy is detached from the old political order, which was based on the welfare state, and is closely linked to economy. At the same time the population is primarily seen as an economic resource. The Commission is working towards a "Europe of Health" that grapples with the problem of governance with the help of the "healthisation" of society, healthy citizenship and health economics. The way the Commission speaks is guided by the Union's powerful interest to act as "Europe" in the field of welfare policy. At the same time, the traditional separateness of health policy is effaced in order to be able to make health policy reforms a part of the Union's wider modernisation targets. The third article then shows the European social policy as its own area of governance. The article uses an approach based on critical discourse analysis in examining the classification systems and presentation styles adopted by Commission communications, as well as the identities that they help build. In analysing the "new start" of the Lisbon strategy from the perspective of social policy, the article shows how the emphasis has shifted from the persuasive arguments for change with necessary common European targets in the early stages of the strategy towards the implementation of reforms: from a narrative to a vision and from a diagnosis to healing. The phase of global competition represents "the modern" with which European society with its culture and ways of life now has to be matched. The Lisbon strategy is a way to direct this societal change, thus building a modern European social policy. The fourth article describes how the Commission uses its communications policy to build practices and techniques of governance and how it persuades citizens to participate in the creation of a European project of change. This also requires a new kind of agency: agents for whom accountability and responsibilities mean integration into and commitment to European society. Accountability is shaped into a decisive factor in implementing the European Union's strategy of change. As such it will displace hierarchical confrontations and emphasise common action with a view to modernising Europe. However, the Union's discourse cannot be described as being a political language that would genuinely rouse and convince the audience at the level of everyday life. Keywords: European social policy, EU policy, European social model, European Commission, modernisation of welfare, welfare state, communications, discoursiveness.

Ryhmärajoja ja hierarkioita : etnografinen tutkimus peruskoulun yläasteen liikunnanopetuksesta

This study examines gender as a dimension of group divisions and differences in physical education (PE) lessons at school. The aim is to look at those structures and practices which direct the ways the girls and the boys move their bodies at secondary school in 2000’s while growing up to become women and men. Theoretically, the goal is to clarify how the social is inscribed to the bodies in the context of physical education lessons at school. This ethnographic study was conducted in the physical education lessons of 7th graders (13-14-year-olds) by observing the everyday life in five PE groups and by interviewing pupils (N=27) and their teachers (N=2). This method has given the researcher “a sense of the game”; an embodied experience of the feel for the game of the studied phenomenon. The access to the contextual “positions of expertise” does not seem to be socially and materially equally distributed in physical education. In PE the criteria of inclusion and exclusion were intertwined with physical skills and friendships, these hierarchies becoming visible in the situations of team choice in PE lessons. Not all families have possibilities to enable their children to participate in expensive leisure sports activities. Therefore the family’s societal position is in relation to the construction of leisure time activities. The access to certain possibilities demands time and money. In Finland the physical education is mainly carried out in differentiated groups for girls and boys. In physical education, the gender-differentiated groups, and partially the different practices of these groups activate, and on the other hand suppress, situations of gender related borderwork. In this research, both pupils and PE teachers repeatedly mentioned the naturality of the differences while speaking about gender. The differences were also restored to gender. I apply Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical view to the social situations, ethnographic fieldwork and interviews. My central statement is that in ethnography the audience has access to the backstage of the researcher since reporting does not follow the traditional division to the public and the private.