Room Pinni B4117 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076) at 3.15 pm (EET)
News about future turmoil: how a hypothetical war is narrated on Finnish news-media websites
In this presentation, I take a look at narratives proliferating in Finnish news-media regarding the security future of Finland, Nato, and “the West” in an age of uncertainty and geopolitical turmoil. A corpus of more than 200 future-oriented texts published since Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrates an emerging journalistic practice of crafting future narratives to disseminate understandable knowledge of the future. Most of the texts included in the corpus narrate some aspect(s) of an imagined future invasion of Finland by Russia.
Future narratives constitute a crucial instrument that affords communicating about the future in a comprehensible way. However, the narrative form also brings with it notable difficulties in this regard. The future is multivalent, changeable, and ultimately unknowable. Because the narrative form is oriented toward retrospective meaning-making, it easily obliterates such qualities in whatever it depicts. In journalistic contexts, this dynamic can present significant challenges when it comes to adhering to epistemic and ethical standards. In the presentation I show how these challenges are (or are not) navigated in contemporary engagement-driven online news-media.
This talk is part of Research Centre Narrere’s Narrative Studies Seminar. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Sessions consist of introductory presentations by researchers from different career-stages and different fields studying narratives at Tampere University (up to 20 min), and general discussion.
Narrare Seminar – Spring 2026 Programme:
17.2. Markus Laukkanen: News about future turmoil: how a hypothetical war is narrated on Finnish news-media websites
Room: Pinni B4117
Room: Pinni B4117
3.3. Nanna Numento: From Speculation to Speculative Agency: The Intertwining of Speculative Worldbuilding and Interactive Game Mechanics in Digital Fantasy RPGs
Room: Pinni B4117
Room: Pinni B4117
10.3. Annika Valtonen: Master Narratives and the ‘Ideal Immigrant Subject’: A Multimodal Narrative Positioning Approach (co-authored with Dorien Van De Mieroop & Melisa Stevanovic)
Room: Pinni B4117
Room: Pinni B4117
24.3. Minna Harjula & Heikki Kokko: OTUDEM-hanke: Yhteiskuntahistoria 2020-luvun turvallistamispolitiikan vastakertomuksena
Room: Pinni B4117
Room: Pinni B4117
14.4. Teemu Ikonen: Audionarratologia ja äänikielitaide
Room: Pinni B4113
Room: Pinni B4113
5.5. Sari Kivistö et al.: The research group “Suffering and Meliorism in Literature and the Philosophy of Literature” within the Centre of Excellence on Meliorist Philosophy of Suffering (MePhiS)
Room: Pinni B4113
Room: Pinni B4113
28.4. Nanny Jolma & Anna Kuutsa: The afterlife of parliamentary storytelling in social media: The portability of narrative features in the Finnish border security debate
Room: Pinni B4113
Room: Pinni B4113
19.5. Sanna Turoma: Venäläinen imperialismi ja eurooppalaisen kolonialismin kritiikki: Nikolai Trubetzkoyn euraasialaisnarratiivit
Room: Pinni B4113
Room: Pinni B4113
Updates and further information will be published on Narrare’s webpage.