The Yellowsphere: Glocalisation of the Yellow Vests in Finland

Project: Research project

Project Details

Description (abstract)

The Yellow Vests movement started in France in November 2018 and spread all over the world. These different movements have often been grouped under the same - somehow vague - Yellow Vests banner - with the assumption that they are echoing with each other, however they also have roots that are purely national making them more glocalised than globalised. This project departs from the view that this movement is merely exported as such but on the contrary forms a much larger, diverse and sometimes contradictory constellation of mobilisations.
A Yellow Vest movement developed in Finland with streets demonstrations and especially online activism - bearing some resemblance with its French counterpart while being strongly rooted in its own national context. This project is set out to investigate how and why the Yellow Vests movement was spread and adapted to Finland. To what extent the ‘crisis’ narratives on the Yellow Vests are domesticated from France to Finland? How do Finnish grassroot Yellow Vests mobilize themselves - online and offline - and what is the role played by social media and countermedia in this mobilization?

Funded by the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation (2019-20) and the Finnish Cultural Foundation (2021-22).

Video presentation of the project at the "Science Club" organised at the University of Helsinki:
https://youtu.be/Zfb9uGbLij8
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date04/09/201901/05/2022