Pirita Juppi tutki väitöskirjassaan eläinoikeusliikkeen suomalaisessa sanomalehdistössä saamaa julkisuutta.This study explores the media coverage of the Finnish animal rights movement. The focus is on the contesting representations constructed in various discourses by various participants of newspaper texts. The data consists of 1204 news and other journalistic items collected from nine Finnish national and regional newspapers between 1995 and 2000. The study draws on different disciplines, such as media studies, sociology and political science. The methodological approach combines quantitative and qualitative methods within the framework of critical discourse analysis. The quantitative content analysis shows that several participants have participated in defining the animal rights movement. Police officials are the predominant definer of the movement. Other prominent participants are animal rights activist themselves, fur farmers and the juridical system. Journalists also have a very significant role in defining and representing the movement, not only in editorial items, but also in news texts.Using discourse analysis seven discourses constructing differing representations of animal rights movement could be distinguished. Demonizing, trivializing and criminalizing discourses were predominant, whereas patronizing, legitimizing, exoticizing and politicizing discourses were relatively uncommon. Therefore the movement was most of the time stigmatized as a threat to society, as vandalism or as criminality.The discursive struggle resulted in an intense and emotional mass-mediated social reaction, which can be interpreted as a moral panic. To counter the symbolic threat posed by the radical movement the boundaries and the moral order of the community were reinforced symbolically by defining activists as “others”, opposed to “us”, or legitimate society. ...

eläintenoikeusliikkeet eläinaktivismi eläimet eläinsuojelu protestiliikkeet yhteiskunnalliset liikkeet radikalismi julkisuus julkisuuskuva lehdistökirjoittelu sanomalehdet julkinen keskustelu oikeudet