Eurokriisin politisoituminen suomalaisissa sanomalehdissä

The paper analyses how Finnish newspapers politicized the Euro Crisis in 2010–2012. By politicization we refer to the ways papers introduce alternative interpretations, solutions and public actors to the Crisis. The sample of the analysis consists of 971 journalistic articles discussing the Euro Crisis and was collected from Helsingin Sanomat, Kauppalehti, Kaleva and Ilta-Sanomat. The study is part of the comparative research project “The Euro Crisis, Media Coverage, and Perceptions of Europe within the EU” directed by the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford. According to our analysis the Finnish newspapers discussed the Crisis mainly from an economic point of view. Therefore they politicized the Crisis primarily by introducing economic-political interpretations of the causes of and responses to the crisis. The dominant views in the press closely followed those of the European decision-making elite, and alternative views were uncommon. The infrequency of economic policy alternatives in the public discussion is primarily explained by the public unanimity of European decision-makers’ and their position as favored sources of the press. Also economists enjoyed a significant role as news sources, and they slightly diversified the public discussion on the Crisis. The role of local politicians and representatives of civic society was significantly smaller. The general newspapers echoed European policy-makers the most intimately, whereas the economic and the afternoon paper manifested a little more variety in their approaches. However, in general Finnish newspapers discussed the Crisis very uniformly and thus politicized it rather poorly.