Room: Pinni B4113 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
The afterlife of parliamentary storytelling in social media: The portability of narrative features in the Finnish border security debate
Politicians tell stories in parliaments and increasingly on social media. However, little is known about the traffic of stories between these entirely different narrative environments. This presentation studies political narratives by examining both the uses of narrative features in the parliamentary debate and their afterlife on social media. Narratives have been argued as being increasingly important in political speech and public meaning-making in general, and a storytelling boom is recognized as characteristic of our time. Sharing compelling stories on social media has become an essential tool for politicians to communicate with the public. In this presentation, we extend the study of parliamentary narratives outside the institutional context by studying the sequences of plenary speeches that Finnish MPs share on Instagram. We examine how Finnish parliamentary narratives travel onto social media and are adapted to video posts on MPs’ Instagram accounts. Political meaning-making and persuasion take place both in plenary sessions and on social media platforms. However, when narratives originally used in parliamentary speeches are shared on social media, they enter a different context of story construction. Although divergent from the trending political content, these rather long, hardly edited videos offer a peculiarly illuminating case for examining how parliamentary and social media storytelling interact.
This talk is part of Research Centre Narrare’s Narrative Studies Seminar, which is open for all interested participants. 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
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
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
24.3. Minna Harjula & Heikki Kokko: OTUDEM-hanke: Yhteiskuntahistoria 2020-luvun turvallistamispolitiikan vastakertomuksena
Room: Pinni B4117
14.4. Teemu Ikonen: Audionarratologia ja äänikielitaide
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
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
19.5. Sanna Turoma: Venäläinen imperialismi ja eurooppalaisen kolonialismin kritiikki: Nikolai Trubetzkoyn euraasialaisnarratiivit
Room: Pinni B4113
Updates and further information will be published on Narrare’s webpage.