EU FP5: Thematic Network: The Social Problem and Societal Problematisation of Men and Masculinities
FINLAND NATIONAL REPORT ON NEWSPAPER REPRESENTATIONS ON MEN AND MEN’S PRACTICES
WORKPACKAGE 4
Jeff Hearn, Emmi Lattu and Teemu Tallberg
1.Key points
(i)Three papers were surveyed: Helsingin Sanomat (largest circulation national broadsheet), Aamulehti (regional broadsheet with large circulation) and Ilta- Sanomat (largest circulation national tabloid). These newspapers publish many articles on men but this is usually in an apparently agendered or gender-implicit way. There are, for example, many articles on sports, politics and business that are mostly on men, but they do not explicitly discuss gender. There were a small number of articles on men in a gender-explicit way. In some senses a very large proportion of press coverage can be interpreted as being implicitly about men or based on assumptions of how men are or should be.
(ii)The alternative methods of measure of coverage are, in different ways, problematic, whether in terms of number of articles, space coverage, ‘weighted’ coverage, proportion of the whole paper, and so on. This needs to be borne in mind in interpreting the results.
(iii)The proportionate emphasis on men in spatial terms is by far greatest in the afternoon ‘tabloid’ paper, Ilta-Sanomat, except in terms of social exclusion.
(iv)Of the four themes, home and work is relatively strongly represented; this is especially so in terms of proportionate space of coverage, because articles on this theme tend to be longer than on other themes.
(v)Social exclusion is a relatively absent theme in a gendered way, even though all the newspapers wrote generally on social exclusion, for example, unemployment without explicitly discussing gender issues.
(vi)All three newspapers generally wrote about violence in a supposedly gender-neutral way. The fact that men are far more often the perpetrators, and in some respects the victims, of violence was not discussed in any newspaper. Short reports on violent acts or crimes comprised the majority of the articles related to violence. In all three newspapers, violence is the most widely covered of the four themes examined, in which men are reported in a gender-explicit way. This is especially so in the Ilta-Sanomat, particularly if the large amount of picture coverage is included.
(vii)Health issues are not widely reported in Aamulehti and Ilta-Sanomat.
2.The National media and press background and context
2.1 Recent academic gendered studies on media and newspapers
The extent of gender-related studies on the press and the media more generally has been growing in last decades, and this also applies to Finnish studies on men in those fields (for example, Jokinen 2000). While there are specialist gendered studies on newspapers, they themselves form part of the broader studies on gender and the media, which include studies of film, television, advertising, photography, media production and reception of media, and so on. It is not always easy to make a clear separation between gendered studies of the press and these more general gendered studies of the media, which may at least in part address gender representation in the press. For this reason a brief review of some of these latter gendered studies is included.
Yleisradio, YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Company), is participating in a international Screening Gender project which aims to increase diversity in programming (Van Dijck 2000; Gender portrayal in Northern European television 2000; The network has published three videos and a study Who speaks in television? A comparative study of female participation in television programs. The Female- and Male-image Research project of YLE has also produced several publications, for example, Naiset, miehet ja uutiset (Women, men and news) (Sana 1995a) and Nainen viihteenä, Mies viihdyttäjänä – viihtyykö Katsoja? (Woman as entertainment, Man as entertainer - is the Viewer entertained?) (Nikunen et al. 1996). Tiedotustutkimus (Journal of Communication and Media Studies) is published four times a year and is the leading scientific journal on media studies in Finland. There are also other journals, for example, Lähikuva ( which focuses on research studies of various audivisual media, and Filmihullu ( which is a more popular journal on film.There are also a few ongoing projects on gender and media, for example, at Svenska social och kommunal högskolan (Swedish School of Social Science) research projects called Image, Gender and Politics in the Nordic Countries - a Comparative Study, Personporträttet som mediegenre (Photographs of People as Media Genre)and The Portrayal of Women in Nordic and Estonian Print Media (
Recent articles in Tiedotustutkimus on gender and press have discussed, for example, reporting on sexual violence (Mäkelä 2000), gender in newspapers’ sport pages (Pirinen 1999) and men’s magazines (Penttilä 1999). Tiedotustutkimus publishes an annual yearbook on journalism critique. The first doctoral thesis on journalism and gender was published 1997 and it discusses ”what consequenses differences between women and men have for the form and content of journalistic production” (Zilliacus-Tikkanen p. 151). A more recent dissertation is Irma Halonen’s Matka journalismin sukupuolittumisen strategisille alueille (A journey to strategic areas of gendering journalism) was published in 1999. Minna Nikunen has done research on murder suicides and their representations in newspapers (Nikunen 2001). Suomalainen päivälehdistö seksikaupan foorumina (Laukkanen 2000) examined newspapers contact advertisements and marketing strategies used by the sex industry. The study aimed to evaluate the role of the daily press as one of the fora for the sex trade and the amount of income newspapers get from it. The study covered 35 newspapers and their sex service advertisements. Twenty-four of them published sex service advertisements. Annual amount is around 180,000 individual advertisements which makes 47 million Finnish mark profit for the papers. Universities’ departments of journalism and mass communication have and are carrying out several research projects, though at present there are no major research programmes on gender and the media. The University of Tampere is conducting research on racism and ethnic exclusion in media, and images of development cooperation in media in 1990’s. Social Problems in Newspapers (Lagerpetz 1994) discusses how social problems, such as violence and drug use, are represented in the newspapers of the Baltic region.
Overall, much research on gender, media and newspapers, along with cultural studies more generally, has highlighted the deep embeddedness of gender in cultural artifacts, including, for present purposes, newspapers. In one sense, the press provides clear and explicit representations of men – sport, politics and so on; at the same time, assumptions about men, masculinities and men’s practices pervade most, perhaps all, press reporting. When studying journalism or rather mainstream journalism, dominant assumptions about men and gender, such heterosexual assumptions, pervade the texts and can be taken as a starting point in their interpretation and deconstruction. In journalism, as elsewhere in society, there are arenas where heterosexual gender segregation is so transparent that there is no need to specifically emphasise gender. Thus the fact that there are so few articles related explicitly on to men is not surprising but rather the ‘normal situation’ (Halonen 1999). Accordingly, when referring to notions of ‘gender-neutrality’ we do not mean that gender is not present or does not matter. On the contrary, ‘gender-neutrality’ is a taken-for-granted and widespread mode of representation in which the object is represented as if gender is not present or does not matter; this supposed ‘gender-neutrality’ is a form of gendering (Hanmer and Hearn 1999). Similarly, the extensive use of factual styles in news journalistic genre does not mean that such news would be ‘gender-neutral’.
2.2 Newspapers in Finland
In Finland, the consumption of newspapers is one of the largest per capita in the world and the number of newspaper titles, the extent of circulation and coverage are very high. Finnish newspapers are national, provincial, regional or local. There are also Swedish language newspapers, but this report focuses on Finnish language papers. In 1999, 56 daily newspapers (4-7 days a week) were published in Finland. Daily newspapers’ circulation started to decrease during the economic recession in the beginning of 1990’s, but it is still relatively high. They covered 70% of the total newspaper circulation even the number of the titles is around 25% of all newspaper titles. The number of titles of newspapers that appear 1-3 times a week is relatively high, but the circulation is quite small. There are two afternoon tabloids and their sale has increased relatively rapidly in recent years. Afternoon papers are sold on a singly-copy basis whereas delivery of other newspapers is based mainly on subscriptions and as much as 90% of newspaper sales are delivered to the consumer’s door. In 1996, there were 106 free newssheets, but this number may have changed. In 1997, a new kind of free newssheet Metro started to appear in Helsinki and it is freely distributed to commuters and pedestrians.
Finnish newspaper media ownership is strongly integrated. In the 1980’s provincial papers purchased local papers and strengthened their position. In the 1990’s large company fusion have been made and the two biggest media corporations today are Sanoma-WSOY and Alma Media. The tendency to form newspaper chains is likely to continue in the national level as well as in the Nordic level. Integration has meant also closer cooperation in editorial and marketing work. This might mean more homogenous contents of the newspapers in general and at the same more variable content in consumers’ own newspapers. In economic terms newspapers are the most powerful channel of mass media in Finland and the turnover of all the newspapers was around 5.6 billion Finnish marks in 1997. Newspapers are highly dependent on advertising and at present 53% of newspapers’ budget comes from it. This has however decreased from the early 1990’s when it was 70% of the total budget. Daily newspapers’ part of the total media advertising was more than 50% in 1998 and 1999 (Finnish Mass Media 1999).
3.The selection of three newspapers
Three (national) newspapers have been selected for closer analysis as follows: 1 largest circulation ‘serious’/’quality’/’broadsheets’; 1 largest circulation ‘popular’/’yellow’/ ‘tabloid’; 1 other to be chosen at the discretion of the national member.These have been acquired for the whole of May 2001; while the whole of May’s papers may be used, the detailed quantitative analysis is to focus on weeks 19 and 20, that is, from Monday 7th May to Sunday 20th May (as these are the first two full weeks). For our purposes, the week begins on Monday and ends on the following Sunday.
Helsingin Sanomat (HS) is the biggest national daily newspaper in Finland and in the Nordic countries. Its predecessor Päivälehti was founded in 1889 and Helsingin Sanomat in 1904. It is considered a national quality paper and as such it has almost monopoly in Finland. Its weekday circulation in 2000 was 446 972 and on Sundays 517 860. HS is updated every night before 3 a.m. but the provincial areas might however receive a slightly different version. The paper has daily the following sections: national news, city news (mostly on the issues in capital region), economy, foreign affairs, culture, sports and current issues.Additionally, each day, except Mondays, it focuses on special themes; consuming, tourism, cuisine, health and sport, science, cars and traffic, and Sunday supplementary pages. HS publishes on Fridays a weekly supplement Nyt (Now) which gives information on ongoing events, cinemas, theatre, TV etc. Nyt has a more popular culture style than the newspaper itself. Kuukausiliite (Monthly supplement) comes out once a month and includes longer articles and reports. HS website is which Verkkoliite (Web supplement) also includes articles and material published only in the web. HS is also the leading advertiser in Finland with its 500 000 advertisements per year. HS is owned by Sanoma Osakeyhtiö (Ltd.) which publishes newspapers, business newspapers, and runs new media activities and other commercial activities. Sanoma Ltd. is owned by Sanoma WSOY Ltd.
Ilta-Sanomat (IS) is the biggest afternoon paper and second biggest newspaper in Finland and it is also owned by Sanoma Ltd. It is available across the country and sold in 8419 places. The 6 day circulation in 2000 was 214 610 and on weekends 241 478 which means that approximately 824,000 people read it on weekdays and 932,000 on weekends. IS publishes on national news, foreign news, entertainment, sports, and has different kind of special pages, for example, pages addressed specifically to men readers, which could be said to be generally clearly reinforcing dominant binary gender definitions. IS used to publish personal and sexual advertisements, but stopped this in 2001. IS’s web services ( is one of the biggest web services of the media in Finland and around 50 000 people visit it daily. The web version is an independent product and aims to complete the paper version of IS.
Aamulehti (AL) is a regional daily newspaper which is read mostly in Tampere area, in South Central Finland. According to Kansallinen Mediatutkimus (National Media Research) its weekday circulation was 133,779 and on weekends 143,043 in 2000. AL publishes different kinds of supplements, such Allakka (Calendar), Moro (Hello) and special papers a few times per year focusing on specific themes. AL’s webpage is AL is owned by Alma Media Oyj. Alma Media is a fusion of Aamulehti-Yhtymä and MTV-Yhtymä and it owns the commercial TV-channel MTV3.
We used the following guidelines in the process of choosing articles:
- include articles which explicitly discuss masculinity or masculinities.
- include articles which implicitly discuss masculinity or masculinities, that is, those articles whose focus is centrally on the activities of a man or men, even if they do not explicitly make links between the subject and masculinity.
- exclude material where a man or men are mentioned but the focus is not centrally on them. Sport is an area where it could sometimes be difficult to make distinctions e.g. not include an article where (men) footballers are mentioned but where the focus of the
article is on (for instance) the start of the season rather than on those men as players.
4.Quantitative analysis of coverage
This Workpackage 4 focuses on the review of two weeks’ Finnish press output to examine explicit and implicit analyses on men and masculinities, and their problematisation. Helsingin Sanomat, Aamulehti and Ilta-Sanomat were gathered for the whole of May, but the analysis is based on the first two whole weeks of the period, i.e. from May 7-May 20. This material consisted of 40 newspaper issues with supplements, altogether 2540 pages.
The following calculations were made:
a)Average total number of pages per day of each paper, including supplements, during the 2 week period;
b)Average total square centimetres per day of the whole paper, including supplements, during the 2 weeks;
c)Average number of pages per day of each paper, including supplements, devoted to advertising during the 2 weeks;
d)Average total square centimetres per day of the whole paper, including supplements, devoted to advertising during the 2 weeks;
e)For each paper for each day number of articles about men in relation to the 4 themes: Home and Work, Social Exclusion, Violences, Health; in addition an ‘Other’ category for articles on men that do not fit the 4 main themes;
f) For each paper for each day total square centimetres (including title of the article and any pictures attached to the article) of articles about men in relation to the 4 themes: Home and Work, Social Exclusion, Violences, Health; in addition an Other category for article on men that do not fit the 4 main themes.
In comparing the three newspapers with each other, two things have to be taken into consideration: first of all, the papers are of different quantity. They have different total amounts of pages and articles, and their total coverage is different according to their different page sizes. Secondly, the space devoted to advertising varies from (average) 50% in Helsingin Sanomat to 37% in Aamulehti and 21% in Ilta-Sanomat. To overcome these problems of comparison it is necessary to calculate certain ratios and ”weight” area figures, as has been done in Table 5. The following results are based on these ratios and balanced figures unless mentioned otherwise.
The overall coverage of the articles was small (1%-6%). Results of quantitative analysis of each paper and summary of the analysis are shown in Tables 1-4. Calculations based on these analysis (Table 5) show that most of the articles about men are in relation to violences (57%). Home and work (17%), health (14%), social exclusion (5%) and other (6%) figured far more seldom. On the other hand most articles on violences are small in size; home and work articles occupy 36% of all space devoted to men-related articles as violences get 33% (health 20%, social exclusion, 2% and other 9%).
Home and work and health figure most often in the Helsingin Sanomat. This is also the only paper in which articles on social exclusion appeared in relation to men. Violences and other issues are most often written on in afternoon paper Ilta-Sanomat. Still, the area figures (both the original and the balanced) show that Ilta-Sanomat gives within every theme (except social exclusion) more space to men-related issues than the two other newspapers; 54% of the total page area on men is in Ilta-Sanomat (weighted figure 63%). Differences are biggest between Ilta-Sanomat and Aamulehti: in comparison Ilta-Sanomat devotes six times as much space to home and work and over five times as much space to violences as Aamulehti. Mostly this tells about the style of Ilta-Sanomat articles, which use big pictures and spacious graphic design. Comparing the original figures on average the largest articles are health and home and work articles in Ilta-Sanomat; the smallest ones are articles related to men’s violences in Helsingin Sanomat and Aamulehti.