Russian-language media landscape in Finland
Cultura Foundation (Cultura-säätiö sr), Helsinki
How they used Delve
A research team at the Cultura Foundation in Helsinki, publishing through the University of Jyväskylä archive, used Delve to code and analyse ten two-hour interviews with Russian-language media makers in Finland, as the qualitative half of the first systematic mapping of that media landscape.
“Laadullinen aineisto koodattiin ja analysoitiin Delve-työkalulla (delvetool.com). Molemmat ohjelmistot täyttävät GDPR:n vaatimukset ja varmistavat ladatun aineiston turvallisen salaamisen ja säilytyksen.”
- Field
- Media studies / minority-language media and diaspora information environments
- Data
- Ten in-depth semi-structured interviews (eight face-to-face, two online, about two hours each) conducted in Russian in May-June 2025 with three media-channel representatives, three individual bloggers, a business account, a group administrator, an NGO account and a community account, alongside a quantitative mapping of Russian-language social media actors in Finland
- Approach
- Quantitative social media mapping and network analysis combined with semi-structured in-depth interviews; the qualitative material was coded and analysed to complement and validate the quantitative findings
- Data types
- Interviews, Social media
Abstract
This report presents the first systematic attempt to map and analyse the Russian‑language media landscape in Finland. Combining quantitative social media mapping, network analysis and qualitative interviews, the study explores who the key actors are, how they operate across platforms, how active they are, and how they connect with one another. By examining both structural characteristics and lived experiences of media creators, the research offers a comprehensive overview of a field that remains largely underexplored. The focus on social media is shaped by structural features of the Russian‑language media field in Finland. Given the limited presence of traditional, institutionalised Russian-language media outlets in the country, social media platforms serve as the primary channel for information dissemination, with the largest number of active actors. Understanding this ecosystem is particularly important in light of the Cultura Foundation’s monitoring studies of Russian speakers in Finland (2022, 2024), which indicate comparatively low levels of trust among Russian‑speaking residents toward Finnish media as a social institution, relative to national data. This research, therefore, continues and complements previous studies by examining not only media consumption and trust, but also the structure and dynamics of the Russian‑language information environment itself.
Citation
Rasa Žakevičiūtė, Danil Lopatkin, Anastasia Prikazchikova, Daria Efimova (2026). Russian-language media landscape in Finland. Jyväskylä University Digital Archive.