Inari Sakki

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at University of Helsinki

This edited volume explores the evolving role of visual and multimodal expressions in spreading hate ideologies within digital communication. In digital spaces, hate speech is increasingly conveyed through memes, images, and videos, blending textual and pictorial elements to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and other exclusionary narratives. While hi...

Inspired by previous research showing how populist radical right‐wing parties capitalise discussions around nation, this article examines Finnish lay citizens' understanding of nationhood in the context of rising right‐wing populism. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with voters of a populist party ( N = 25) and using the photo‐elicitation method, thi...

Research on gender, sexuality and the populist radical right has revealed the contradictory positions of such parties and politicians regarding gender issues. However, less is known about the perspective of laypeople on these matters. This study focuses on supporters of a radical right populist message and analyses how prejudice is constructed in p...

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelemme fasistista estetiikkaa osana Pohjoismaisen Vastarintaliikkeen Suomen osaston retoriikkaa. Keskitymme tarkastelemaan internetmeemejä Pohjoismaisen Vastarintaliikkeen viestinnässä uutena ja myös liikkeen sisällä mielipiteitä jakaneena suostuttelun välineenä. Retoriikan näkökulmasta pureudumme fasismin estetiikan histo...

Sosiaalinen konstruktionismi herättää kiivasta keskustelua tutkimuksen tekemisen tavoista ja tutkimustiedon luonteesta. Se on sateenvarjokäsite, jonka alle mahtuu monenlaisia, ristiriitaisiakin oletuksia ja painotuksia. Sosiaalisen konstruktionismin eri versioita yhdistää kriittinen suhtautuminen itsestäänselvyyksiin ja lähtökohta, jonka mukaan sos...

When someone violates a social norm, others may think that some sanction would be appropriate. We examine how the experience of emotions like anger and disgust relate to the judged appropriateness of sanctions, in a pre-registered analysis of data from a large-scale study in 56 societies. Across the world, we find that individuals who experience an...

The emergence of COVID-19 dramatically changed social behavior across societies and contexts. Here we study whether social norms also changed. Specifically, we study this question for cultural tightness (the degree to which societies generally have strong norms), specific social norms (e.g. stealing, hand washing), and norms about enforcement, usin...

Previous studies on environmental issues in right‐wing populism have mostly focused on political actors and their argumentation. In contrast, this study examines environmental populist discourse from the perspective of laypeople in Finland. We used interviews (n = 25) to analyse affective–discursive practices in environmental talk, identifying four...

In the 21st century, populist leaders have created and shaped narratives of threatened nations to foster a sense of shared victimhood and increase electoral appeal. However, an intriguing question has emerged: What roles do these outlined populist discourses of a threatened nation and shared victimhood play in the identity work of populist supporte...

Marine Le Pen and Riikka Purra are the front-figures of right-wing populist parties in France and Finland. Known for their patriarchal and anti-feminist agendas, these movements remain dominated by men. However, the number of women, including political leaders, in far right and populist movements is growing. Thus, there is a call for research that...

The present manuscript examines the way young Europeans represent Europe’s history. A study conducted in 11 European countries (N = 1406 students in social sciences) shows that the characters considered most important in the history of Europe are mostly men linked either to WW2, authoritarianism, or conquests and empires. Although these appear late...

Despite the importance of naturalized representations for explaining, creating and recreating social reality, little empirical research has examined the resistance to and change in naturalized representations in talk. By approaching populism as a naturalized representation, this article examines the dialogical construction of populism in 55 Finnish...

The social media have become an increasingly important vehicle for populist mobilization and persuasion. In this study, we explore how populism as a flexible ideology becomes articulated and reconstructed in times of international political turmoil. More precisely, we focus on the multimodal construction of right-wing populist ideology in the polit...

Increasing expression of antagonism toward immigrants has turned immigration into one of the most polarizing issues in many countries, among them Finland, dividing people into those who favor and those who oppose immigration. But while affective polarization of the kind exemplified by widespread responses to immigration has recently received increa...

This study examines how news images of refugees in the context of the war in Ukraine mobilize intergroup relations. A visual rhetorical analysis is used to examine the rhetorical strategies employed in news images of Ukrainian refugees in a mainstream Finnish national newspaper from February 25 to May 31, 2022. The data consisted of 465 images. The...

Discussions on the body frequently foreground in empirical studies of social representations. However, there is scarce theoretical literature within social representations theory focusing on embodied social representation. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of embodied, sensory experiences as part of social representation. More prec...

Marine Le Pen managed to mobilise a substantial share of the votes in the French 2022 presidential elections, ending up second after the winner Emmanuel Macron. This study aims to increase our understanding of the political appeal and mobilisation of women in far-right movements by exploring the identity management strategies Marine Le Pen deployed...

The role of women in populist and radical right‐wing parties is a topic that has gained increased scholarly attention. The aim of this article is to add to this literature by analysing how a female right‐wing populist leader becomes positioned in online interactions in the hybrid media system. In doing so, the study seeks to make a twofold contribu...

Since the beginning of the COVID‐19 pandemic, there have been widespread conversations about the origins of the virus and who to blame for it. This article focuses on the online hate directed at Chinese and Asian people during the pandemic. Taking a critical discursive psychological approach, we analysed seven online threads related to COVID‐19 and...

The present study explores how the polarized political discussion on climate change is used to construct as a humorous misogynist message in a Finnish far-right political campaign video from 2021. Applying a multimodal analytical approach, the study explores the ways in which humor and irony are mobilized in the video through intertextual cues and...

In the present chapter, we will elaborate on the schematic narrative template concept (Wertsch, 2002, 2008a) in the context of history education. We will follow Wertsch’s original formulation and understand narratives as sociocultural tools that are functional for the group sharing them. However, we also suggest, following Philpott’s (2014) idea, t...

This chapter examines the construction of meanings related to hate-speech in a talk show broadcast on Finnish television in 2016, and its reception—rejection, acceptance and re-construction—by social media users. The analytical approach relies on critical discursive psychology and investigates the dialogical construction of interpretative repertoir...

This article draws from a social representations approach (SRA) to present a qualitative inquiry of identity construction in interaction and as part of the social context. We argue that the concept of positioning, inherent to our understanding of SRA, provides a bridge between social representations and identities. Focusing on societally marginalis...

This research examines online misogynist discourse related to the Finnish prime minister (PM) Sanna Marin's image published in Trendi magazine in October 2020. The affective‐discursive analysis of online commentaries resulted in the identification of four affective‐discursive practices: an immoral woman, incompetent woman, calculating woman and inf...

This study examines how Otherness is constructed visually in newspaper photographs of the refugee crisis. This visual rhetoric analysis examines the form, content, and function of images and explores the rhetorical strategies deployed in visualizations of the refugee crisis in a mainstream Finnish national newspaper from 2015 to 2016. The data cons...

Using a multimodal discursive approach, this study explores how the COVID-19 pandemic is constructed and used in press reportage to mobilize intergroup relations and national identities. We examine how press reporting about the development of COVID-19 in Sweden is cast as a matter of nationalism and national stereotyping in the Finnish press. The d...

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriatene...

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriatene...

This research set out to examine how ancient myths, Bible stories, and romantic visual imagery were used as discursive devices in the populist communication of the 2019 Finns Party election video. This study draws from systematic functional multimodal discourse analysis and its concepts of intersemiotic texture, co-contextualization, and re-context...

This study examines newspaper photographs related to the COVID‐19 pandemic in Finland. Drawing on social representations theory and positioning theory, we explore social representations and identities related to COVID‐19 in mass media using a visual rhetoric analysis. More specifically, we focus on how newspaper photographs construct subjects' posi...

This chapter discusses how populist radical right politicians utilise political blogs for political communication and persuasion. Applying a critical discursive and visual rhetorical analytical approach on a case example of a Finnish populist radical right-wing political blog, the chapter shows that use of digital and visual communicative tools all...

Concerned about a lack of legitimacy, European Union (EU) institutions have increasingly engaged in memory politics to enhance European identity. Yet, memory of the EU is still closely connected to the collective identity formation of nation‐states, especially in the field of education, the focus of this study. Inspired by this dilemma, the present...

The present study focuses on memory work in school textbook illustrations of the Finnish Civil War (1918). A thematic narrative analysis shows how the content and meanings conveyed through visual narratives have developed in the past century. Besides changes in specific narrative, the interpretation of the functions of themes shows a gradual change...

This research examines the mobilization of populist rhetoric of the 2019 Finns Party election video. By focusing on both the FP’s election video (production) and Youtube users’ comments (reception), we examine the constructions and uses of social categories and humour as well as responses to their rhetorical deployment among like‐minded supporters...

National celebrations are one of the ways by which nations attempt to maintain connectedness with the past and strengthen national identities. Centenary celebrations, in particular, make identity questions visible and bring them to the centre of public debate and, thus, provide an opportunity to examine question such as ‘where do we come from’ and...

This study focuses on the role of Internet memes in the communication of two far-right groups in Finland. The material consists of 426 memes posted by Finland First and the Soldiers of Odin between the years 2015 and 2017 on Facebook. Multimodal discourse analysis was applied to understand the contents, forms, and rhetorical functions communicated...

This study investigates the role of advertising and visual rhetoric in political persuasion. Analysis of Finnish dairy product video advertisements from 2010–2016 focuses on those that exploit time as the main reference framework. A better understanding of how advertising is used as a tool of political persuasion is sought by exploring the followin...

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelemme historian opettajien käsityksiä Suomen historian arkaluontoisista ja marginaalisista aiheista, sekä sitä, miten opettajat ratkovat näihin aiheisiin liittyviä kysymyksiä työssään. Empiirinen aineisto on kerätty haastatteluin ja kyselyllä vuosina 2015–2016. Opettajien vastausten analysoinnissa ja tulkinnassa hyödynnet...

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelemme historian opettajien käsityksiä Suomen historian arkaluontoisista ja marginaalisista aiheista, sekä sitä, miten opettajat ratkovat näihin aiheisiin liittyviä kysymyksiä työssään. Empiirinen aineisto on kerätty haastatteluin ja kyselyllä vuosina 2015–2016. Opettajien vastausten analysoinnissa ja tulkinnassa hyödynnet...

The present study examines current social representations associated with the origins of the Great War, a major event that has profoundly affected Europe. A survey conducted in 20 European countries (N = 1906 students in social sciences) shows a high consensus: The outbreak of the war is attributed to the warring nations' leaders while the responsi...

The present study examines current social representations associated with the origins of the Great War, a major event that has profoundly affected Europe. A survey conducted in 20 European countries (N = 1906 students in social sciences) shows a high consensus: The outbreak of the war is attributed to the warring nations’ leaders while the responsi...

In spite of the importance of the topic, there are few comparative studies of the aims of history teaching, even in Europe. Domain-specific epistemic beliefs are relevant for understanding the teaching and learning of history and the development of deliberative thought. We studied epistemic beliefs in the context of the general aims of history teac...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the social representations of polydrug use in the Finnish mainstream media. Social representations are shared ways of talking about socially relevant issues and have ramifications on both individual and socio-political levels. Design/methodology/approach The social representations theory and the “Wha...

History teaching is a contested field in school and often used for political machinations by marginally democratic and even democratic governments. This chapter investigates the role of identities, political interests and perspective on representations of historical events in school teaching. It is concluded that history teachers are well advised t...

Taking a (critical) discursive psychological approach, the present study explores the identity management of the Finnish and Swedish Prime Ministers (PM) in relation to the “refugee crisis” and their countries' asylum policies. By taking a longitudinal approach and analysing the PMs' accounts of the “refugee crisis” from 1‐year period, we focused o...

ENGLISH SUMMARY Jenni Savonen & Pekka Hakkarainen & Kati Kataja & Inari Sakki & Christoffer Tigerstedt: Social representations of polydrug use. An analysis of articles in a Finnish newspaper 1990–2016 (Päihteiden sekakäytön sosiaaliset representaatiot Helsingin Sanomissa 1990–2016) In this article we study the social representations of polydrug use...

This article focuses on nationalist political rhetoric in two historical periods in Finland. We analysed the rhetorical changes and continuities in anticommunist newspaper articles from the past (1930s) and in anti-Islam blogs in the present (2010s). We identified two similar discourses in the political rhetoric of both eras, each discourse constru...

The present study addresses antecedents and consequences of collective victimhood in the context of World War I (WWI) across 15 European nations (N = 2423 social science students). Using multilevel analysis, we find evidence that collective victimhood is still present a hundred years after the onset of the war and can be predicted by WWI-related ob...

Political blogs have come to constitute important channels for expressing nationalist and anti-immigration political views. The new forms that this rhetoric – comprised of an intricate intermingling of verbal, digital, (audio-)visual and communicative elements – may take, entail challenges for qualitative research. In this paper we propose a way fo...

The present study addresses antecedents and consequences of collective victimhood in the context of World War I (WWI) across 15 European nations (N = 2423 social science students). Using multilevel analysis, we find evidence that collective victimhood is still present a hundred years after the onset of the war and can be predicted by WWI-related ob...

This study focuses on the connection between social representations of history and collective memory from the perspective of elementary concepts of social representations theory: anchoring, objectification and naturalization. The aims of the study are to arrive at a conceptual clarity of this connection and demonstrate how to apply basic concepts o...

This study focuses on visual collective memory, a topic that has long been neglected in the social sciences and particularly in social psychological research on social representations of history. It explores the contents and meanings of images in the construction of Finnish national history. Through examination of official history writing, a better...

Individuals with an immigrant or other ethnic minority background have begun to find their political home in the populist radical right and anti-immigration party, the Sweden Democrats. This study delves into this paradoxical matter by exploring how these politicians discursively account for their ethnic minority belonging in relation to their anti...

This article provides a comparative study of the discursive construction and use of Otherness among anti-immigration populist radical right politicians in Sweden and Finland. Based on rhetorical and critical discursive psychology, our analyses of discourse within nine political blogs identified three distinct representations of Otherness. These rep...

Schools play a pivotal role in the formation of identities and in the political socialization of youth. This study explores the social representations of European integration in French and English school textbooks and shows how the social representations are discursively used to construct national and European identities. By analysing the history a...

Women's participation in politics is low throughout the world – also in Cameroon. In this article we examine young Cameroonians perceptions of women politicians. To analyse Cameroonians perceptions of women in politics from a perspective of change we took social representations theory (SRT) as our theoretical starting point. All together 45 Angloph...

Sosiaalipsykologian klassisia kysymyksiä ovat yksilön ja yhteiskunnan suhde sekä tieteellisen tiedon ja arkiajattelun yhteys. Miten ryhmien välisiä suhteita voidaan parantaa ja konflikteja ehkäistä? Perustuuko moraali enemmän tunteisiin vai järkeen? Tämä teos käsittelee kuudessatoista luvussa ja 34 kirjoittajan voimin sosiaalipsykologian suuria kys...

Social representations of European integration in the school textbooks of five European countries (France, England, Germany, Finland and Sweden) are analyzed. By analyzing the history and civics textbooks of major educational publishers and by presenting a double content analysis of textbooks of five European countries, this study aims to demonstra...

This chapter deals with young and educated Cameroonians' perceptions on human rights, with a special focus on gender. The human rights situation in Cameroon has repeatedly been criticized by various committees of the United Nations as well as by the annual reports of Amnesty International. Women's marginalized position has been challenged only rela...

Social representations are at the heart of communal psychology for several reasons: they are people’s understanding of the topical issues and their contexts, because by definition they are the everyday theories that people form of new and threatening issues. The theory of social representations acknowledges the interconnections between perception,...

Social representations of human and peoples' rights were studied among Cameroonian university students (N = 666) with a questionnaire based on the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and Duties. The respondents were asked how important and how well realized they regarded the 39 human and peoples' righ...

Cameroonian university students (N = 666) assessed whether certain different societal positions that the law grants to women and men (the husband chooses the marital home, the husband wields parental power, a married woman cannot freely engage in trade, the husband administers his wife's personal property) and certain cultural practices (female gen...

The economic, political and social face of Europe has been changing rapidly in the past decades. These changes are unique in the history of Europe, but not without challenges for the nation states. The support for the European integration varies among the countries. In order to understand why certain developments or changes are perceived as threate...