Protecting the future ‘Us’: a rhetoric-performative multimodal analysis of the polarising far-right YouTube campaign videos in Finland

Abstract

The far right is active on social media, including YouTube for its outreach, community-building and mainstreaming of radical content. This article compares campaign videos of two distinct Finnish far-right parties. It develops a rhetoric-performative and multimodal analysis of audiovisual material and unveils how the contemporary Finnish far right articulates and performs affectively ‘us’ through counterhegemonic articulation on YouTube with connection to nostalgia, national war myths and misogyny. The analysis widens from the visual to the audio-visual dimension which enables the exploration of the formation of diverse signifiers and affective interpretations. Political actors refer to nationalist ideas in a way that can create and mainstream far-right ideology building on shared myths and even spread violent thoughts. Our analysis highlights the importance of spatial and temporal signifiers in the far-right meaning-making process.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors report no competing interests to declare. The authors contributed equally to the paper. We thank for funding the European Commission for Horizon Programme Grant Number 201904639 DeRadicalisation in Europe and Beyond (D.Rad) and the Academy of Finland Grant Number 320275 Whirl of Knowledge: Cultural Populism and Polarisation in Contemporary Europe in Media and Society Programme. Also thanks to the D.Rad colleagues, the editors and the anonymous referees of this special issue for their comments.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Academy of Finland [grant number 320275]; Horizon 2020 Framework Programme [grant number 959198].

Notes on contributors

Virpi Salojärvi

Virpi Salojärvi is an Assistant Professor in the School of Marketing and Communication at the University of Vaasa and University Researcher at the Helsinki Hub on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation (HEPP), the University of Helsinki. She is a work package leader in the Academy of Finland – funded project Whirl of Knowledge: Cultural Populism in European Polarised Politics and Societies (2019–2022).

Emilia Palonen

Emilia Palonen (PhD Essex) is a Research Programme Director in Datafication and a Senior University Lecturer in Political Science at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. She leads the Helsinki Hub on Emotions Populism and Polarisation (HEPP) and is PI of many of its projects and works partly at the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH).

Laura Horsmanheimo

Laura Horsmanheimo is doctoral candidate in the Gender Studies doctoral programme at the University of Helsinki, where she studies politics and communications. She also worked as a research assistant and has been co-authoring country reports on Finland for the Horizon 2020 project (De)Radicalisation in Europe and Beyond, affiliated with the Helsinki Hub on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation.

Roosa-Maria Kylli

Roosa-Maria Kylli wrote her Masters’ dissertation on the Finnish far right in political science and communication studies at the University of Helsinki. Kylli has worked as a research assistant at the Helsinki Hub on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation co-authoring country reports on Finland for the Horizon 2020 project (De)Radicalisation in Europe and Beyond.