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The Centre for Sociology of Democracy studies democracy in modern societies. Our projects deal with democracy from different perspectives and with different methods.

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Recent News & Blog Posts

Topic modeling for frame analysis: A study of media debates on climate change in India and USA

In their article, Tuukka Ylä-Anttila, Veikko Eranti and Anna Kukkonen examine media debates on climate change in India and the United States.

Going Overboard: How Ironic Group Style Becomes Political on an Anonymous Imageboard

A mixed-methods study by Tuukka Ylä-Anttila, Veikko Eranti and Sam Hardwick investigates politics on Overboard, a Finnish imageboard.

Social Media and the Emergence, Establishment and Transformation of the Right-Wing Populist Finns Party

In his article, Tuukka Ylä-Anttila assesses the significance of social media for the Finns Party and the related anti-immigration movement from 2007 to the present day, in light of theories on the relationship of populism and social media.

Call for Papers open for special issue on “Education and Climate Activism: Youth democratic practices and imaginations towards a common world”

The Educação, Sociedade & Culturas journal (ESC – Education, Society and Cultures) has released a call for papers for a special issue to be published in 2022, “Education and Climate Activism: Youth democratic practices and imaginations towards a common world” with guest editors Carla Malafaia (ImagiDem, University of Porto), Maria Fernandes-Jesus (University of Sussex) and Eeva Luhtakallio (ImagiDem, University of Helsinki).

Karine Clément: Le rond-point de Saint-Avold

The book is the result of a co-writing process between Karine Clement of ImagiDem and dozens of yellow vests from the roundabout of Saint-Avold, where she has conducted her fieldwork since November 2018.

Suomalaisissa USA-vaalianalyyseissa unohdetaan kansalaisyhteiskunta

Demokratia ei ole yksilölaji, vaikka kaikilla äänestäjillä onkin vain yksi ääni. Yhdysvaltain presidentinvaalien tulokseen iso vaikutus oli myös kansalaistoiminnalla, kuten Black Lives Matter -mielenosoituksilla ja vapaaehtoisilla, jotka auttoivat ihmisiä rekisteröitymään äänestäjiksi.

The actions of Extinction Rebellion Finland showcase new visual forms of politicisation

Images play an increasingly large role in social participation. Protests, demands and even entire processes of politicisation may take a purely visual form. In this text, we analyse paired photographs that went viral immediately after the civil disobedience actions of Extinction Rebellion Finland as a form of politicisation. Images are a powerful means of communication – indeed, it is revealing that the social commentary in Finland has revolved intensely around a handful of smartphone snapshots.

Eeva Luhtakallio on visual politics at Politiikkaradio

ImagiDem’s PI Professor Eeva Luhtakallio discussed images as tools of political participation and topical environmental activism in Finland in YLE Politiikkaradio podcast.

ImagiDem members and advisors at kick-off

ImagiDem mini kick-off: Visual participation of young Europeans – snapshots from France, Finland and Portugal

On 24 September 2020 ImagiDem’s kick-off seminar discussed how the increasing emphasis on visual forms of communication affects young people’s societal participation and the way in which they construct democracy. The seminar featured short presentations of visual participation from three European countries: France, Finland and Portugal. The event was streamed online.

POSTPONED: Visual Studies Lab Masterclass: How to study the visual in social media?

The planned Masterclass on visual analysis at the University of Helsinki has been postponed.

Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year 2022 award to Eeva Luhtakallio and ImagiDem

What are the next walls to fall in science and society? Led by this question, the brightest minds from the international scientific community submitted their groundbreaking projects for the prestigious Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year 2022.

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Eeva Luhtakallio, Professor of Sociology at the University of Helsinki, was awarded one of the Falling Walls Global Call Winners 2022 in the Social Science and humanities category.  Luhtakallio leads the Centre for Sociology of Democracy as well as the ERC funded project ”Imagi(ni)ng Democracy: Young Europeans becoming citizens by visual participation”. The Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year 2022 in Social Sciences and Humanities was selected by a distinguished Jury chaired by Björn Wittrock.

ImagiDem – Imagi(ni)ng Democracy: European youth becoming citizens by visual participation

The public sphere today is increasingly dominated by visual content. The visual dimension of political participation is the key to understanding current youth’s political action: on social media and offline in their action groups they build arguments, mobilize, and politicize through and by repertoires of visual participation. ImagiDem analyzes and conceptualizes visual participation of young Europeans to formulate an updated understanding of the public sphere and democratic practices. ImagiDem uses a radical methodological strategy: it merges ethnography with AI and supervised learning based computational tools, using the outcome to compare multiple field sites and visual big data from Finland, France, Germany and Portugal. The data is produced and processed through unique cocreation and cooperative analysis by researchers from the respective fields. ImagiDem’s theoretical ambition lies in introducing visual participation to pragmatic sociological understanding of building the common.

Read more:
“Discover this year’s Falling Walls Winners”: https://falling-walls.com/science-summit/science-summit-winners-2022/

Heini