Finlandisation or media logic? The Estonian–Russian border incident of 2014 in Finnish, Estonian and British press

Abstract

This article examines the construction of the Estonian–Russian border incident of 2014, where an Estonian security officer ended captured by Russian authorities, in Finnish, Estonian and British press. It asks (a) How did the press construct the event and the actors in the reporting of the Kohver case in Finnish, Estonian and British press? What happened? Who did what? Who was responsible? What is the outcome of these constructions? Are there differences in national reporting? (b) Can ‘Finlandisation’ explain the discursive choices in the press constructions? By Finlandisation we refer to a hypothesis about the effects that the proximity of a major power in the context of international tension has on media discourse and culture more broadly. We argue that although the discourse of the Kohver case in Finnish, Estonian and British press could be subsumed under the term ‘Finlandisation’ in the case of the first two countries, a more fruitful approach would be to consider the discursive differences in the framework of the ‘domestication’ of news. This implies that explaining the tone of the news discourse is as much a matter of media logic as it is of underlying and/or implicit ideology.