Eesti ja eestlaste kujutamine Helsingin Sanomates aastatel 2006 ja 2009
Date
2010
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The Image of Estonia and Estonians in Helsingin Sanomat in 2006 and 2009
The goal of this bachelor’s thesis was to find out what and how was written about Estonia and
Estonians in newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in 2006 and 2009.
Thesis’ theoretical basis was social space and representation and stereotypes. Social space in this
thesis was in the context of what kind of image has been created through one of the most read
newspapers in Finland. I wanted to find out what kind of picture will form through HS. The part of
representation and stereotypes for example showed the meaning of language and culture for this
research. Language made it possible to both read and analyse the articles. The cultural aspect comes
from the fact, that the author is familiar both Finnish and Estonian cultures. The relevance of
stereotypes in this thesis is how people see some nationalities and countries with a help of certain
stereotypes, whether acknowledging that or not. In this case it is done by both the readers of HS, but
more or less by the authors of the articles of HS.
Review of relationship between Finland and Estonia gave thesis a background. When characterising
countries relations it came clear, that the countries have a long shared history in both national and
personal level. That helped seeing why this research and its theme could be essential and
interesting.
The review of Helsingin Sanomat was important because you couldn’t assume, that the newspaper
would be known and familiar by all the Estonians.
When comparing this thesis to the earlier researches it came clear, that the research done five years
ago by Katri Sipilä was similar with this thesis, but there were found some differences too. First
difference was in the time period and the second from the fact, that Sipilä concentrated on paper
version of HS and this thesis concentrated on the online version. Use of online articles in this thesis
turned out to be useful to find various aspects. For example in the year 2006 HS still used same
articles in their paper version and online version.
Use of the quantitative content analysis turned out to be useful in this thesis. That was the most
effective way to analyse such big amount of articles, that existed for this research. Especially the
decoding instruction helped a lot while doing the analysis. The author finds that the decoding
instruction could have been even more extensive. Maybe through that it could have been possible to
find even more accurate and clearer results. At the same time it could have changed the research
more unclear.
While doing the qualitative content analysis it helped a lot, that the quantitative content analysis had
done a lot of needed pre-work. It made the qualitative content analysis and finding the discourses a
lot easier. While finding the discourses the most helpful thing among other criteria was, that the
articles were already familiar to the author, thanks to the quantitative content analysis. Author
already had some kind of overview of the articles, so the research didn’t has to start from zero.
There became a preparatory picture of Estonia and Estonians in HS after the quantitative content
analysis. Some parts of decoding instruction’s results didn’t directly give much to the research
except for basic statistics. It for example came clear, that there are lots of articles in the theme of
Estonia and Estonians and the perspective was mostly from the angle of Finland and Finnish
people. That was seen for example in spatial context and the subjects of the article. It was also
found in the results, that Estonia is close and important to Finland.
The results of the discourse analysis gave deepened the image of Estonia and Estonians. The found
discourses gave a picture, where it was possible to see the co-operation between Finland and
Estonia – in sickness and in health. It was also found that the relationship between the two countries
is not without conflicts: bad behaviour of Finnish tourists in Tallinn, Estonian workers in Finland
taking the Finnish jobs and the criticism against the neighbour country by both Estonians and
Finnish. Those were the problems that were found while doing the analysis.
There wasn’t found any big difference between the two years. Although economic crisis and other
things effected the results, both years had certain themes similar. The relationship between Finland
and Estonia is definitely close and both of the countries has a lot of interest towards the other.