Mihin menet, Nato-Suomi?: Suomen geopoliittisen tulevaisuuden tarinallistaminen uutismediassa Ukrainan sodan aikana

Abstract

After the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Finnish news media has been rife with narrative texts that anticipate potential threats Russia may pose to Finland's security in the future. Such future narratives, which storify future geopolitical relations between Finland, Russia, and the ”West,” give meanings to decision-making and fears experienced in the present in the light of imagined futures. In this article, we apply an analytical framework from narrative theory to explore what kinds of relations these future narratives describe between Finland, the ”East” and the ”West” and what kind of a picture they convey of Finland's geopolitical agency and options. This way, we provide novel theoretical insight into the usage of storytelling as an epistemic tool for scoping out possible futures in news media. We also open critical discussion on what impact the storification of menacing future imaginaries may have on the atmosphere of the public discourse it prompts and delimits.