"Finland is Multicultural?” the Finnish Lay Discourse of Multiculturalism Online

Finland is a Nordic country known for its multiculturalist policies (e.g. Saukkonen, 2013). However, in order to evaluate the state of intergroup relations one has to take into account the ways in which multiculturalism and ethno-cultural diversity are discussed and evaluated on the level of everyday life. In this presentation I discuss the results of a study that examined discussions of multiculturalism on a popular Finnish social media channel called Suomi24.fi (Finland24.fi).
In this study the discussion forum is approached as a space that invites people to participate in everyday deliberation regarding ethno-cultural diversity, immigration and politics. The discussions are analyzed as snapshots of the culturally shared ways of making sense of intergroup relations and diversity. The focus of analysis is, thus, on the language use of the posters. More specifically, I present a discursive analysis of discussion threads that were started between June and August of 2015, during a heated public debate in Finland on multiculturalism. This sample allows us to study how multiculturalism is used in the discussions and how the categories of ”immigrants” and ”Finns” as well as their interrelation are constructed by ordinary Finns.
Recent social psychological research on online settings suggests that in virtual environments the expressions of prejudice (Goodman & Rowe, 2014) or overt and extreme racism (Billig, 2001; Hughey & Daniels, 2013) are treated as acceptable and this is what separates face-to-face discourse from online discourse. Based on preliminary observations, Suomi24.fi acts as a forum for reproducing and disseminating overt racism and occasionally for challenging it.
This study contributes to recent calls to study the everyday ways of making sense of multiculturalism and to the discussion concerning the benefits and challenges of multiculturalism.