Narrating Retake of Finnish Borderland: The Karelian Question in Russian State News

• Main Author: Seppä, Niko
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: VDP::Samfunnsvitenskap: 200::Medievitenskap og journalistikk: 310; karelia*; karelian
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3144975

This thesis conducted a mixed-methods study of the Russian state media representations of the Finnish-Russian borderlands, Karelia. The research first introduced the broad concept of Karelia and contextualised the recent developments in the Russian media landscape. Through a three-layered theoretical framework, the study sought to answer how Karelia was framed, whether there were longitudinal changes in reporting, and whether the newsroom’s coverage included the old political and civic debate, the Karelian question. The quantitative analysis of 202 TASS News Agency news articles from 2012–13 and 2022–23 showed an increase in reporting by around 46 per cent over ten years regarding the number of articles and 73 per cent regarding the text mass. However, the median length of an article grew more minor, as did the publication of article images. The analysis detected eight media frames the author used to comprise dictionaries for the content analysis in the MAXQDA. Dictionaries regarding the Arctic, energy sector, security, nationalism, military, and religion grew over ten years, mainly reflecting the NATO enlargement and Russia’s growing interest in the Arctic region. In qualitative terms, the study found that TASS disseminated the Kremlin-favoured narrators’ worldview while reporting in and about Karelia. The Karelian question-related content was detected in eight articles from 2022–23, amongst them three press reviews. The question was utilised through four media sub-frames reflecting state propaganda. The articles include insinuations of a separatist threat to Karelia’s security emerging from far-right organisations supported by Finns, the US, and NATO. Finns and their like-minded Karelian counterparts were considered suspicious and willing to rematch Vyborg and some other territories Finland ceded in the 1940s. Russia might perform counteracts, such as restricting or blocking the economically significant waterway Saimaa Canal. Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, used a quadruple ...