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To investigate how the process of peripheralisation usurps internationalisation experiences within the global higher education centres, this article draws on two separate case studies, one conducted in Finland and the other in the UK. In both contexts, Anglophone hegemony plays an important role, but in different manners. In the Finnish case, conflating internationalisation with Englishisation results in both domestic and international students and staff having to continuously grapple with language use in their daily lives. In the UK context, international students in English-speaking universities encounter asymmetric power relations with the locals, which they try to overcome through identity negotiation over digital and physical spaces. Both cases show that creating a liveable international university necessitates structural changes that would build on already existing agentic engagements of international students and staff.

Purpose. In brand activism, a brand promotes contested socio-political causes to highlight its values. Brand activism also alienates those consumers who disagree with the cause, who might, consequently, target the brand with critical, negative, or even aggressive actions. This paper studies the triggers and strategies of consumers’ anti-brand actions given in response to brand activism. Design/methodology/approach. Qualitative content analysis and multiple correspondence analysis were used to study consumer responses directed at a chocolate brand’s campaign that advocated civilized online conversions and opposed hate speech, a politically heated topic. 1,615 messages were collected from social media platforms. Findings. Field infringement, political accusations and questioned impact of the campaign triggered consumers to turn against the campaign. Strategies to undermine it included boycotting, discrediting the brand, and trapping. Trapping—creatively using technological affordances to create harm to the brand—was typically triggered by political associations. Originality. Political anti-brand actions are distinct from the previously identified functional and ethical anti-brand actions, and they are non-instrumental by nature. Practices that are native to social media are central to political anti-brand actions, and social media platforms contribute to how such disappointment is articulated and acted upon. Research limitations. Findings relate to the critical responses regarding one campaign only. Practical implications. By understanding the political discussion around the chosen cause, including the opponents’ typical triggers and strategies, brand activism can more credibly advocate for contested social causes and communicate brand values. Purpose In brand activism, a brand promotes contested sociopolitical causes to highlight its values. Brand activism also alienates those consumers who disagree with the cause, who might, consequently, target the brand with critical, negative or even aggressive actions. This paper aims to study the triggers and strategies of consumers' antibrand actions given in response to brand activism. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative content analysis and multiple correspondence analysis were used to study consumer responses directed at a chocolate brand's campaign that advocated civilized online conversions and opposed hate speech, a politically heated topic. In total, 1,615 messages were collected from social media platforms. Findings Field infringement, political accusations and questioned impact of the campaign triggered consumers to turn against the campaign. Strategies to undermine it included boycotting, discrediting the brand and trapping. Trapping - creatively using technological affordances to create harm to the brand - was typically triggered by political associations. Research limitations/implications Findings relate to the critical responses regarding one campaign only. Practical implications By understanding the political discussion around the chosen cause, including the opponents' typical triggers and strategies, brand activism can more credibly advocate for contested social causes and communicate brand values. Originality/value Political antibrand actions are distinct from the previously identified functional and ethical antibrand actions, and they are noninstrumental by nature. Practices that are native to social media are central to political antibrand actions, and social media platforms contribute to how such disappointment is articulated and acted upon.

The repair industry, consumer expenditure on repair and the number of repair businesses have been steadily decreasing in many European countries over the last 20-40 years. Our study focuses on consumer repair as a practice, with an emphasis on the interactions between propensity to repair, experience of repair and societal rules and structures that affect repair decisions in different phases of product lifetimes. Moreover, exploring the consumer repair process enables a nuanced understanding of the different paths leading to self-repair, profes-sional repair or non-repair decisions. Drawing on past repair and non-repair experiences (n = 98) of young adults residing in Finland, we develop a consumer repair process model reflective of the individual perceptions, but also of the structural problems that enable or impede repair in the Finnish context. Further, we complement this data with semi-structured interviews of selected repair industry actors and representatives of the educational sector (n = 9), discussing interventions to encourage repair in business, legal and educational systems. The results highlight the role of consumer experience of repair and its situatedness in the shared cultural context, suggesting implications for institutionalizing experience of repair in primary education and other societal activities in order to enhance consumers' propensity to repair. As a conclusion, we suggest that shifting societal perceptions and rhetoric around repair requires innovative solutions involving actors across production and consumption sys-tems. While not all countries have a strong repair cafe ' culture, explicit municipal collaboration with businesses and educators for repair can lead to the development of new services and spaces for systematically embedding repair in the society. These perspectives from the Finnish settings might be particularly informative coming from a country highly involved in the circular economy.

In the Global North, meat consumption is both an integral part of everyday diets and under increasing pressure to be reduced, owing to its various harmful effects. There has been much research on the issues that forestall less meat-dominated diets. Based on interview and participant observation data of consumers with a wide variety of meat relations in Finland, this article extends these discussions by framing the issue as navigating contentious relations of care. This enables a two-fold contribution. First, the article brings together previously disconnected research on these themes and makes explicit the benefits of studying meat consumption through care. Second, it demonstrates how this approach contributes an understanding of the persistence of meat on our plates, by showing how contentious care relations within meat consumption are navigated through moderation: varying degrees of engagement with care, defined by distances and realignments as well as disconnections in the processes of caring.

During public health crises, public organizations face a variety of strategic communication challenges, and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is an extreme example. In Finland, the Prime Minister’s Office initiated a communication campaign that utilized social media influencers to communicate timely instructions regarding the pandemic. However, it is uncertain how social media influencers adapt to briefings of public organizations given that they typically work with brands that align with their own interests and expertise, which rarely is epidemiology. We use the two-step flow of communication model and social influence theory to analyze research data that consisted of 96 Instagram posts, 108 Instagram Stories and 1097 comments. Qualitative content analysis was used to see how the influencers communicated about the pandemic and how their followers reacted. The results suggest that the influencers tried to adapt the messages to their own style, and, instead of committing to the wordings of the campaign, they shared general guidelines and, with their own example, showed how to behave during the pandemic. Their participation in the campaign helped affect social norms during the time of the crisis, which in the case of public health communication is a substantial, strategic goal. During public health crises, public organizations face a variety of strategic communication challenges, and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is an extreme example. In Finland, the Prime Minister’s Office initiated a communication campaign that utilized social media influencers to communicate timely instructions regarding the pandemic. However, it is uncertain how social media influencers adapt to briefings of public organizations given that they typically work with brands that align with their own interests and expertise, which rarely is epidemiology. We use the two-step flow of communication model and social influence theory to analyze research data that consisted of 96 Instagram posts, 108 Instagram Stories and 1097 comments. Qualitative content analysis was used to see how the influencers communicated about the pandemic and how their followers reacted. The results suggest that the influencers tried to adapt the messages to their own style, and, instead of committing to the wordings of the campaign, they shared general guidelines and, with their own example, showed how to behave during the pandemic. Their participation in the campaign helped affect social norms during the time of the crisis, which in the case of public health communication is a substantial, strategic goal.

Non-technical summaryThe industrial food system is widely considered to be unsustainable due to its undesired climate and health effects. One proposed alternative to these problems is a more local system of food provisioning. This means involving individuals, households, and communities in growing and acquiring edibles, like vegetables and other food stuff. This study based on a literature review found that food self-provisioning practitioners are mainly driven by health concerns and less by reasoning linked to the environment, like climate change adaptation and mitigation. We propose that the potential of food self-provisioning is underutilised in developing the sustainability of food systems. Technical summaryIn this article, we review and analyse the literature and concept of 'food self-provisioning' in order to understand its potential as a response to contemporary challenges. The focus of the study is on investigating the meanings related to environmental problems, particularly climate change, and issues of health. Firstly, we show how food self-provisioning is conceptualised vis-a-vis health and the environment; and secondly, what the (potential) implications of food self-provisioning to interlinked human and non-human health and beyond are. Based on the conducted literature review (n = 44), meanings of food self-provisioning are found to connect primarily to issues of human health and only secondarily to environmental questions, and even more marginally to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Our analysis cuts across the scales of households, communities, cities, and regions, including their diverse geographies, and hereby also comments on the questions of multilevel organising of self-provisioning, and what the notion of 'self' implies in this context. Social media summaryThe potential of food self-provisioning is underutilised in developing the sustainability of food systems.

This chapter reflects on responsible science with an eye toward concrete research practice. To this end, we briefly introduce the RRI paradigm (Responsible Research and Innovation) and then highlight seven EU research projects in the context of a transnational COST Action project. This COST Action will investigate how placemaking activities, like public art, civil urban design, and local knowledge production, reshape and reinvent public space, and improve citizens’ involvement in urban planning and urban design, especially in the context of heritage sites. The chapter introduces heritage case studies that either contrast, differentiate, and add to existing knowledge and practices in placemaking through specific initiatives, or enable the establishment of common ground within a wider constellation of societal actors and both, as we see, contribute in different ways to responsible research. We analyze how the four criteria of RRI, namely anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion, and responsiveness are considered and implemented, and the extent to which digital tools are supportive. Obviously, coproduction of knowledge is not sufficient when we call for responsible science in the narrow sense, hence the development of common ground also appears necessary.

The circular economy is a production and consumption model which seeks to use materials and products for as long as possible, whilst keeping waste to a minimum. This study aims to understand the characteristics of the emerging Finnish circular economy marketplace. A network analysis was used on a sample of 41 exemplary cases in Finland, taken from the circular economy business case collection published by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra. The coding process led to the identification of 79 nodes and 577 connections between them which are depicted in this study as a network visualisation. Similarities were found between organisation's age and size, with large older organisations and established small and medium sized organisations excelling in optimising product life cycles and reducing overconsumption and new micro sized organisations thriving in managing resource flow and retrieving and recycling materials to put back into the system. Thus, organisations seeking to expand into or transform their operations in line with the circular economy may find the optimal circular economy activity dependent on their size, with large organisations shown to be thriving in repair and redesign activities, small and medium sized organisations in rent and reuse activities and micro sized organisations with retrieve and recycling activities.

This article examines the branding of the new Tampere University in Finland and the reactions it evoked in Finnish social media and news media between 2018–2020. The merger of the University of Tampere and Tampere University of Technology into a new foundation-based university provoked considerable public debate and sparked uproar over the communication style and practices of the university’s new management. The main reason for the outcry was that the new governance model of the university ignored the traditional democratic way of running a university. Our article contributes to the growing literature on public relations communication in higher education by focusing on promotional culture and the role of the changing media landscape in university branding. We analyze how and why the brand messages were contested and transformed into memes and satirical commentaries on social media. When the university’s management tried to restrain this subversive play with legal sanctions, the issue escalated into the news media. Our qualitative analysis demonstrates the possible repercussions of a quasi-corporate style of communication on the credibility of the university as a higher education institution in a hybrid media environment.

Local authorities increasingly employ digital platforms to facilitate public engagement in participatory budgeting processes. This creates opportunities for and challenges in synthesizing citizens’ voices online in an iterated cycle, requiring a systematic tool to monitor democratic quality and produce formative feedback. In this paper, we demonstrate how cases of online deliberation can be compared longitudinally by using six Big Data-based, automated indicators of deliberative quality. Longitudinal comparison is a way of setting a reference point that helps practitioners, designers, and researchers of participatory processes to interpret analytics and evaluative findings in a meaningful way. By comparing the two rounds of OmaStadi, we found that the levels of participation remain low but that the continuity and responsiveness of online deliberation developed positively.

Public sector organisations have traditionally used mass media and their own communication channels to communicate urgent matters to citizens. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced these organisations to look for new communication approaches. In Finland, several public-sector organisations collaborated with social media influencers (SMIs) to maximise their efforts in communicating about the measures needed to constrain the spread of the virus. Using a multiple-case study design, this chapter scrutinises four public-sector organisations and their collaboration with SMIs during the pandemic in 2020. We found that public organisations turned to SMIs through influencer marketing and influencer public relations to approach citizens in a personalised and emotional way to create a sense of community. This finding suggests expanding the previous categorisations of public communication campaigns and examining not only the purposes of the campaigns (behaviour change—policy change) but also their main appeal to citizens (information-centric—emotion-centric). While the campaigns appeared as efforts towards controlling the risks of the prevailing pandemic, they also appeared to entail possible risks. peerReviewed

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Nonhuman communicators are challenging the prevailing conceptualizations of technology-mediated team communication. Slackbot is a social bot that can be configured to respond to trigger words and, thus, take part in discussions on the platform. A set of 84 bot-related communication episodes were identified from a journalistic team's Slack messages (N=45,940) and analyzed utilizing both qualitative content analysis and interaction process analysis (IPA). This integrated mixed-methods analysis revealed novel insights into the micro-level dynamics of human-machine communication in organizational teams. In response to Slackbot's greetings, acclamations, work-related messages, and relational messages, we identified how the team members respond to the bot, discuss it, and summon it to appear on the platform. Further, the IPA revealed that the bot-related communication episodes are shaped by the bot's responses toward more socioemotional and personal functions. Findings suggest that a team-configured social bot can manifest and facilitate relational team communication. Lay Summary New communication technologies not only support but also take part in organizational team communication, challenging how we see the agency of these technologies. This paper examines Slackbot, a bot that "participates" in team discussions based on the use of triggering words that are configured by the team members. We used integrated mixed methods to study a set of Slackbot interactions with team members. Specifically, we examined how team members summon, interact with, and discuss the bot based on the bot's greetings, acclamations, relational comments, and work-related messages. We found that Slackbot changes the nature of the team interaction. The analysis showed that when the bot participates in the discussion thread, it becomes more relational and less task focused. These findings suggest that a social bot can facilitate relational communication and provide assets that support organizational teamwork.

This article examines how the inhabitants of a culturally diverse suburban estate in Finland strive for meaningful encounters in their lives. The focus is on Kontula, a residential working-class district on the eastern periphery of Helsinki, which has become a powerful symbol of the ills of contemporary urbanity—poverty and social problems, as well as rootlessness and the failed integration of the immigrant populations—in the vernacular geography and media representations of the city. I studied how everyday mobility in an increasingly segregated city is related to a range of qualities of sociocultural encounters, both within the immediate neighbourhood and across other urban areas. I argue that for many marginalised inhabitants, agency predominantly emphasises striving for normality, not a challenge to the system. This is why it is so rarely recognised. Themes such as common decency, meaningful activity and equal encounter are much more typical aims of everyday practises than those focussing on changing the conditions. The contexts explored range from the familiar and neighbourly surroundings characterised by high degree of cultural intimacy and effortlessness to spaces with unfamiliar expectations and very different cultural codes. How do people living on the stigmatised periphery establish sense of belonging in a segregated city? How is it possible retain a sense of decency and dignity in unpredictable circumstances? During my long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the area, I concentrated on the qualities of encounters and senses of agency. These are interweaved with the inhabitants' everyday life, realised in their movement across the city and vary considerably in different contexts, reproducing the quotidian urbanity of Helsinki.

Scholars of critical algorithmic studies, including those from geography, anthropology, Science and Technology Studies and communication studies, have begun to consider how algorithmic devices and platforms facilitate democratic practices. In this article, I draw on a comparative ethnography of two alternative open-source algorithmic platforms – Decide Madrid and vTaiwan – to consider how they are dynamically constituted by differing algorithmic–human relationships. I compare how different algorithmic–human relationships empower citizens to influence political decision-making through proposing, commenting, and voting on the urban issues that should receive political resources in Taipei and Madrid. I argue that algorithmic empowerment is an emerging process in which algorithmic–human relationships orient away from limitations and towards conditions of plurality, actionality, and power decentralisation. This argument frames algorithmic empowerment as bringing about empowering conditions that allow (underrepresented) individuals to shape policy-making and consider plural perspectives for political change and action, not as an outcome-driven, binary assessment (i.e. yes/no). This article contributes a novel, situated, and comparative conceptualisation of algorithmic empowerment that moves beyond technological determinism and universalism.

In this article, we study how people define, negotiate, and perform autonomy in relation to digital technologies, specifically in connection with behavioral insurance policies that involve forms of data tracking and health services. The article builds on focus group discussions, which we treat as a dynamic site of ethico-political deliberation to test ideas, talk about boundaries of acceptable control, and envision future scenarios. The ethico-political deliberations assess the legitimacy and usability of new behavioral tools. Concern over the nature and limits of autonomy is activated when people discuss how wellbeing-related decisions are delegated to algorithmically controlled systems. We argue for appreciating autonomy as a relational and ambiguous notion that is sensed and enacted in collaborations with devices in the form of distributed autonomy. Moreover, as reflected by the experiences of the insured, “autonomy” cannot be analyzed solely in the form transmitted by the liberal tradition; that is, as a clear-cut entity that can simply be “had”, “exerted”, or “controlled”. Consequently, research, ethical considerations, and governance initiatives should pay attention to how values are “done” in the affect-laden technologically mediated relations and practices. publishedVersion

Consumer credit has become an important element of the economy despite the negative effects: Over-indebtedness has wide-ranging repercussions affecting consumers and society as a whole. We analysed the debt judgements (N = 4,095) of Finnish district courts from 2014 to 2016, as well as administrative data on debtors. Our focus was on the position of consumers on the credit market and their consumption-related problem debts, namely instant loans, extensive consumer credit, and credit-card as well as distance-selling indebtedness. Regarding the four credit products, first we considered the average amount of outstanding debt and then we looked at the sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the debtors. The results revealed that the average outstanding debt (€) varied according to the credit product and that the highest average amount originated from extensive consumer credit. Instant loans and distance-selling indebtedness caused debt problems especially among low-income young adults, adverse selection seemingly being one factor behind instant-loan-related debts. Extensive consumer credit and credit-card indebtedness were behind debt judgements against older consumers with a good socioeconomic position and numerous previous loans. This is a moral-hazard situation whereby borrowers may have more information about their total amounts of debt than the lenders. We suggest that, in many cases, debt problems reflect an abundant supply of consumer credit, which seems to foster asymmetric information, the consumer’s position and competence to act in the credit market, as well as various overall risk factors. The findings highlight the need to strengthen consumers’ financial skills and for loan products that meet the needs of low-credit-rated consumers. Moreover, lenders should act responsibly in the current credit market.

Globalisation has a major impact on the levels and distribution of wealth. The financial markets are highly integrated, and valuations of financial assets follow international patterns, which has contributed to large increases in financial wealth over the past 25 years. Nonetheless, this has not led to an equally large increase in property income because the rates of return have decreased during the same era. Moreover, changes in functional income distribution (capital/labour shares) have not been fully transmitted to the distribution of primary income between households because other institutional sectors – particularly the government sector – hold considerable amounts of financial assets. At least in the short term, the decrease in rates of return seems to contradict claims that, due to an increase in both financial and inherited wealth, we are entering an era of increasing income inequality. In this article, the link between financial wealth and pre-tax household income distribution is scrutinised for three European countries using a conceptually fully consistent macro framework. First, national balance sheets are combined with the related income flows. After this, income flows that are not property income but are considered part of national income (e.g., wages and salaries) are added, the national income flows are broken down by institutional sector and the household sector income flows separated. Finally, distributional household micro data are used to break down the aggregate household sector income flows by income decile. The article utilises this framework to analyse the evolution of rates of return and capital and labour shares as well as how the property income flows created by financial wealth have affected household primary income distribution. Globalisation has a major impact on the levels and distribution of wealth. The financial markets are highly integrated, and valuations of financial assets follow international patterns, which has contributed to large increases in financial wealth over the past 25 years. Nonetheless, this has not led to an equally large increase in property income because the rates of return have decreased during the same era. Moreover, changes in functional income distribution (capital/labour shares) have not been fully transmitted to the distribution of primary income between households because other institutional sectors – particularly the government sector – hold considerable amounts of financial assets. At least in the short term, the decrease in rates of return seems to contradict claims that, due to an increase in both financial and inherited wealth, we are entering an era of increasing income inequality. In this article, the link between financial wealth and pre-tax household income distribution is scrutinised for three European countries using a conceptually fully consistent macro framework. First, national balance sheets are combined with the related income flows. After this, income flows that are not property income but are considered part of national income (e.g., wages and salaries) are added, the national income flows are broken down by institutional sector and the household sector income flows separated. Finally, distributional household micro data are used to break down the aggregate household sector income flows by income decile. The article utilises this framework to analyse the evolution of rates of return and capital and labour shares as well as how the property income flows created by financial wealth have affected household primary income distribution.

In this paper, we compare wages and labor market conditions of individuals engaged in online platform work and in traditional occupations by exploiting individual-level survey data on crowdworkers belonging to the largest micro-task marketplaces, focusing on evidence from the United States and Europe. To match similar individuals, survey responses of crowdworkers from the US and EU have been harmonised with the American Working Conditions Survey (AWCS) and the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS). Our findings indicate that traditional workers retain a significant premium in their earnings with respect to online platform workers, and that those differences are not affected by the observed and unobserved ability of individuals. This holds true also taking into account similar levels of routine intensity and abstractness in their jobs, as well as the time spent working. Moreover, labour force in crowdworking arrangements appears to suffer from high levels of under-utilisation, with crowdworkers being more likely to be left wanting for more work than comparable individuals.

This viewpoint exemplifies how advances in computational text analysis allow for analysing novel data for transitions studies. Applying the specific technique of topic modelling to plenary talks related to energy in the Finnish parliament during 2008–2020 illustrates how the approach can be of use to transitions studies. In particular, it aids in exploring the dynamics of diverging perspectives, such as by right-wing populists and the greens, on outlooks for energy transitions. We sketch how computational text analysis can further contribute to transitions studies.

The last few decades have been accompanied by disruptive changes to the structure of employment which have led to deterioration in demand for middle-skill occupations, a process known as job polarisation. As the demand for middle-skill workers shrinks, expectations about households’ income through their lifetime horizon are adjusted. It is unclear whether these expectations can loop back into the credit system, and affect the lending b ehaviour of credit institutions, or whether this process impacts on the households’ self-assessment of their opportunities to borrow money. In this paper, we study how the process of job polarisation affects credit demand and supply, studying its relationship with credit constraint and credit quality

Decades of techno-economic energy policymaking and research have meant evidence from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH)—including critical reflections on what changing a society’s relation to energy (efficiency) even means—have been underutilised. In particular, (i) the SSH have too often been sidelined and/or narrowly pigeonholed by policymakers, funders, and other decision-makers when driving research agendas, and (ii) the setting of SSH-focused research agendas has not historically embedded inclusive and deliberative processes. The aim of this paper is to address these gaps through the production of a research agenda outlining future SSH research priorities for energy efficiency. A Horizon Scanning exercise was run, which sought to identify 100 priority SSH questions for energy efficiency research. This exercise included 152 researchers with prior SSH expertise on energy efficiency, who together spanned 62 (sub-)disciplines of SSH, 23 countries, and a full range of career stages. The resultant questions were inductively clustered into seven themes as follows: (1) Citizenship, engagement and knowledge exchange in relation to energy efficiency; (2) Energy efficiency in relation to equity, justice, poverty and vulnerability; (3) Energy efficiency in relation to everyday life and practices of energy consumption and production; (4) Framing, defining and measuring energy efficiency; (5) Governance, policy and political issues around energy efficiency; (6) Roles of economic systems, supply chains and financial mechanisms in improving energy efficiency; and (7) The interactions, unintended consequences and rebound effects of energy efficiency interventions. Given the consistent centrality of energy efficiency in policy programmes, this paper highlights that well-developed SSH approaches are ready to be mobilised to contribute to the development, and/or to understand the implications, of energy efficiency measures and governance solutions. Implicitly, it also emphasises the heterogeneity of SSH policy evidence that can be produced. The agenda will be of use for both (1) those new to the energy-SSH field (including policyworkers), for learnings on the capabilities and capacities of energy-SSH, and (2) established energy-SSH researchers, for insights on the collectively held futures of energy-SSH research.

To mitigate climate change, large GHG emission reductions need to be made in several sectors of the consumer society. This calls for policy instruments that guide citizens in adapting their behavior. In Finland, a mid-range climate strategy is set for each governmental period to reach GHG emission reductions. For the renewal of the strategy, the Ministry of the Environment organized a citizen survey in 2021 to gain better understanding on how citizens perceive the impact of selected policy instruments and what kinds of actions citizens imagine taking to reduce their consumption. More than 18.000 citizens replied to the survey. This research analyses the perceptions of citizens in how different policy instruments related to food target respondents in different residential areas. The responses are examined for urban, peri-urban and rural areas to find out whether there are differences in how respondents in different spatial context perceive the impact of the policy instruments. The analysis reveals that there are small but statistically significant differences in results depending on the area of residence. People living in rural areas consider themselves to be more impacted by most policies than the urban residents. Responses to open-ended questions are analyzed to find out how people imagine how they could increase the share of plant-based food in their diets and reduce food loss and whether there is a difference in responses between urban and rural responses. Suggestions for future policy design for food consumption are made based on the findings.

Urban population ageing has significant implications for city centres catering for an increasing number of older consumers. To guide world cities on taking action in response to population ageing, the World Health Organization (WHO) has addressed the universal features of the age-friendly city. This study applies the WHO guideline to the context of shopping. With an emphasis on older consumers, the perceptions of the city centre as a physical and social shopping environment are studied. Using a qualitative content analysis, older consumers’ perceptions (focus-group participants aged 64–94) are analysed based on the age-friendly city features. The perceptions are compared with those of younger consumers (qualitative-survey respondents aged 21–41). The study confirms the significance of older city shoppers, and suggests their needs and wants should be taken into account in urban development projects. The older consumers differ from younger consumers in their city-shopping behaviour and perceptions in many respects. The age groups highlighted the same themes, but mainly with dissimilar content. This indicates that measures to develop a city centre friendlier to older consumers also benefit their younger counterparts, but for different reasons. It is necessary to understand this disparity to create a city-centre shopping environment that is friendly for different ages. The study offers new perspectives on responding to the challenges that consumer ageing poses to Western cities.

Although social capital is a relational concept, existing studies have focused less on measuring social relations. This article fills the gap by reviewing recent studies that used network measures grouped into three types according to the measurement level. The first group defined social capital as an individual asset and used node-level measures to explain personal benefits. The second group defined social capital as a collective asset and used graph-level measures to describe collective properties. The third group used subgraph-level measures to explain the development of social capital. This article offers a link between the concepts and measures of social capital.

This study examines motivations, definitions, methods and challenges of evaluating the social impacts of smart city technologies and services. It outlines concepts of social impact assessment and discusses how social impact has been included in smart city evaluation frameworks. Thematic analysis is used to investigate how social impact is addressed in eight smart city projects that prioritise human-centred design across a variety of contexts and development phases, from design research and prototyping to completed and speculative projects. These projects are notable for their emphasis on human, organisational and natural stakeholders; inclusion, participation and empowerment; new methods of citizen engagement; and relationships between sustainability and social impact. At the same time, there are gaps in the evaluation of social impact in both the smart city indexes and the eight projects. Based on our analysis, we contend that more coherent, consistent and analytical approaches are needed to build narratives of change and to comprehend impacts before, during and after smart city projects. We propose criteria for social impact evaluation in smart cities and identify new directions for research. This is of interest for smart city developers, researchers, funders and policymakers establishing protocols and frameworks for evaluation, particularly as smart city concepts and complex technologies evolve in the context of equitable and sustainable development.

One of the megatrends that affects consumers' preferences is a growing interest in health, well-being and self-care. This study explores consumer perceptions of a health-enhancing nature-based substance. Based on a survey data (N = 944) collected among national and international students in Finland, we examined factors that affect young adults' willingness to try products containing the substance. The results showed a relatively high willingness to try the products, particularly among female and non-Finnish respondents. Relationship to nature and beliefs related to the health benefits or risks of soil microbes influenced willingness to try products. The results highlight the importance of accounting for consumer perceptions in the innovation process.

The article identifies consumer perspectives related to the activities that facilitate circular economy transitions across major consumption domains. Building on insights from surveys on the circular economy, we review consumer perspectives in the key consumption domains of food, housing, and transport, as well as consumer electronics. Our focus is on the responsibility for organizing the reuse of products and services, the preferred procedures for extending the lifespan of products and services, and the ways to acquire products and services. Analyzing responses from a representative survey of the population in Finland in 2018 (n=1555), we argue that consumers’ perspectives vary significantly across the domains examined. The responsibility for reuse is attributed mainly to consumers themselves, particularly in housing and consumer electronics. Personal activities are also highlighted in the extension of product and service lifespans in the domains of consumer electronics and transportation. As for acquisitions, the respondents overwhelmingly favored ownership over services or sharing. Further, statistically significant differences due to gender, age, education, income level, and household size were observed. The results indicate that domain-specific strategies to promote circularity that consider consumers’ backgrounds are likely to attract a better response from consumers than an all-encompassing approach.

In urban studies and in energy policy there is much debate about the relationship between energy demand and the density of residential areas, measured in units such as those of population/ha or population/km2. A different approach is presented in this paper. Rather than evaluating the relative merits of compact or sprawling urban forms, the focus is on the spatial configuration of the infrastructures, appliances and systems of provision on which city life depends. An interview-based study of households living in the same extremely ‘dense’ neighbourhood in Hanoi, Vietnam, shows how practices of cooling, laundering and cooking (and the energy demands associated with these practices) are shaped by material arrangements that exist within the home and that also stretch far beyond. The conclusion that supply and demand are constituted across multiple spatial scales has practical implications for urban design, and for how the relation between energy demand and density is defined and understood. Practice relevance Energy demand is a consequence of how social practices are distributed and organised across space and time. By contrast, metrics of density can be counter-productive and tend to obscure potentially crucial questions regarding the constitution and the transformation of energy demand. A practical approach is presented to conceptualise relations between material arrangements and energy demands at different scales: from the layout of the home to more extensive infrastructures and systems of provision. The implications of these ideas can influence debates about urban density and design by focusing attention on infrastructures, appliances and the layout of the spaces that influence how they are actually used, and for the practices they accommodate and enable.

Although researchers have discussed big data for years, they have thus far has scarcely touched on directly selling and monetizing data assets. This aspect has particular relevance given recent concerns about data privacy and security and the simultaneous explosion in the use of data for marketing and service-development purposes. In this paper, we describe an empirical study on companies’ initiatives about selling and monetizing data. We categorize the relevant business models based on several customer-refinement and scalability dimensions. We found several constraints (organization type, business type, data characteristics, privacy, and security) that companies should address to move from internally using data and supporting existing customers to generating new business through selling data. Based on the findings, we propose ways for practitioners to benefit from the data. For researchers, we provide directions for future studies that include developing strategies that foster compliance between companies’ aspirations and consumer/societal restrictions and that facilitate data-based innovation and revenue generation.

The fourth sector has traditionally been described as encompassing families, households, neighbours, and friends, however, competing definitions have recently begun to emerge. Three different strands can be observed in the fourth-sector literature. The first strand centres on the notion of one-to-one aid. The second strand centres on self-organizing civic activism. The third strand focuses on hybrid organizations. In this paper we will analyse the main commonalities and differences in the understanding of the fourth sector. Our conclusion is that despite differences, there is enough ‘family resemblance’ between the three different streams of fourth-sector discussion to warrant a synthetic reflection of the governance issues related to this novel phenomenon. As a result of that analysis, we distinguish five specific governance issues that are related to 1) the ability of the public sector to work upon shared values, 2) the empowering nature of self-organizing, 3) the need for new operational rules under the ‘sharing economy’, 4) the transitory but structuration-oriented nature of fourth-sector processes and 5) the notion that fourth-sector involvement does not necessarily improve the quality of participation.

In this study, we critically examine the ongoing adoption of various posthumanist influences into the fields of marketing and consumer research from a theological perspective. By conducting a theological-historical assessment, we propose that it is not posthuman notions of human/technology relations, nor their broader context in the emerging non-representational paradigms, that mark radically new disruptions in the continuing restructuring of the disciplines of marketing and consumer research. Instead, we argue that what is taking place is an implicit adherence to a contemporary form of age-old Christian dogma. As a radical conjecture, we thus propose that an identification of certain similarities between Christian dogma and the grounds for various posthumanist frameworks suggest that posthuman thought may well herald the global dissemination of a far more elusive, authoritarian, and hegemonic system than that which posthumanists typically claim to have abandoned. Consequently, we elaborate on implications to developments in marketing thought.

This article examines energy related experiments suggested and outlined in a co-creative Energy Transition Arena in Finland in 2017 with participating experts from various spheres of society. A transition arena is a process for engaging stakeholders in systemic transitions, and experiments are an important measure for enhancing transition and mechanisms of change. We apply network analysis and use the Theories of Change evaluation framework to reveal the implicit expectations and change theories of the arena participants. In the analysis, we first deconstruct the experiments into their key elements and then reconstruct them in the form of visual networks, which helps us to identify what the examined experiments have in common and how their elements connect. The data visualisations of the networks further help to examine how the arena participants construct transitions in the Finnish energy sector. peerReviewed

Editorial: New Forms of Media Work and Its Organizational and Institutional Conditions This thematic issue explores the widening scope of media work and the institutional and organizational conditions that support new forms of media work. The media industry has undergone significant economic, structural, and technological changes during the past few decades, including changing patterns of ownership and digitalization of media production, distribution, and consumption. Simultaneously, practices of media work are adopted also in other industries. The 10 articles in the issue not only focus on the new professional roles and responsibilities emerging in the news media industry but also study the practices of media work in organizations in other fields, such as the music industry and public sector. Non

Despite accounts of how artificial intelligence (AI) is replacing human labour, constant efforts are needed to keep AI-based automation running. In this chapter, we are particularly interested in data work that supports processes of automation. We explore an unconventional arrangement in which Finnish prisoners annotate text to produce training data for a local AI firm. The use of prison labour to train AI invites straightforward conclusions of exploitation of the marginalised. On a closer look, however, attention is drawn to local and situational variations of data labour: how high-tech development can be married with humane penal policies and low-cost labour with rehabilitative aspirations. We argue for an approach that can hold together seemingly contradictory value aims and open novel ways of exploring processes of automated decision-making. By acknowledging what is of value to the different parties involved, we can begin to see alternative paths forward in the study of automation.

Energy transitions are in many respects past the early exploration stages and moving towards the urgently needed mass market take-up. We examine the Finnish energy transition regarding how solutions – heat-pumps, deep retrofits and new district-wide solutions – that have demonstrated economic benefits and reasonable payback times have faced slow uptake and slow market development. We focus on the difficulties that suppliers and adopters face in establishing the value and singularization of goods when adopters need to act as calculative agents in the market. When the intermediation processes needed for market development do not cover the all the needed aspects, these market difficulties can persist until late in the transition process. We further elaborate how the intermediation takes place in ecologies of actors that become complex once the complexity of goods grows and the intermediation becomes tied to formalized arenas such as those found in urban development. Periodic assessment of the effectiveness of markets and ecologies of intermediation can inform policy interventions on market development. Highlights • Market formation in the energy transition may take longer than assumed • Intermediation is important in market formation prior to mainstream markets • Intermediation is not functional but happens in partial and shifting ways • Ecologies of intermediation and socio-material arenas pattern intermediation • The embedding of markets into complex patterns of intermediation slows market development

Social capital has a dark side. While social capital can facilitate collective action, a few members might form closed circles and dominate planning processes. Bonding and bridging social capital are arguably crucial factors in explaining these different outcomes, yet the causal link remains unexplored due to underdeveloped measures and methods. This article contributes to the literature by proposing network measures and testing these effects one against the other through exponential random graph models. The analysis focuses on the case of an urban regeneration project in Sinchon, an inner-city neighborhood in Seoul, where residents were engaged in the governance of planning, partnered with public officials. Based on a survey and interviews, the study found that the project has a propensity for tightly clustered relations centered around public officials without bridging, indicating a stronger role of bonding social capital. However, residents remained passive rather than voicing their concern, calling for another type of social capital that accounts for power.

Public health and individual health care are increasingly oriented towards managing risks. This 'surveillance medicine' does not target present illnesses but aims to prevent possible future conditions, greatly expanding the number of people implicated in medical interventions. In this paper, I interrogate the everyday experience of being at risk of illness. First, I suggest that we lack a comprehensive account of this experience, because current ways to characterise this phenomenon tend to equate risk with (chronic) illness and patient status. I then report a case study designed to avoid this starting point. I conducted interviews with laypersons with varying levels of elevated cholesterol, a common risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, who were recruited from a consumer panel in Finland in 2015. I found three elements that structure the health risk experience: the intangible nature of risk, the probabilistic character of risk estimates, and the ambivalent status of risk in terms of health and illness. While these findings overlap with previous literature in many ways, detaching health risk from illness foregrounds health management instead of patient behaviour. These findings call for caution in approaching health risk uncritically through illness categories or patient status, and I invite researchers to critically examine such elements in other cases and contexts.

Summary The article describes the shaping of an iconic public health intervention, the North Karelia Project (NKP) in Finland in the 1970s. NKP is widely hailed as a landmark project, contributing significantly to the development of the community approach to chronic disease prevention. This approach targets comprehensively a specified health problem in a circumscribed area among the whole population, not only high-risk individuals. Based on published and archival material as well as interviews with a few key actors, the article shows how two interlinked tensions shaped the project: the first between rigorous scientific inquiry and politically motivated practical healthcare development in a disadvantaged area and the second between a broad community approach and a focus on individualised health behaviour. These tensions played out in the planning, funding and administrative structure of NKP, were the key source of criticism of it and have affected the possibilities to evaluate its results.

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors District heating is a major energy infrastructure in many urban settlements in the world, contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Decarbonising district heating is an important step towards the realisation of a carbon-neutral society that entails considerable socio-technical change. Building on sustainability transitions literature that has dealt with socio-technical reconfiguration, this paper investigates the barriers to the implementation of a low-carbon district heating system that is based on biomass incineration minimisation and the total phasing out of fossil fuels. Empirically, the study relies on an extensive stakeholder analysis that involved 44 organisations representing technology providers, energy companies, industry organisations, policymakers, local authorities and researchers. The results show that while several stakeholder groups could converge on key issues such as the need to support certain technological niches and the danger of a biomass lock-in, divergences regarding barriers to be removed existed between policymakers, new entrant firms, and building owners. Cities were considered important actors for the implementation of the proposed low-carbon district heating concept. However, they should encourage building owners' participation in demand response schemes, decentralized renewable energy production, and the re-design of local electricity networks to support district heating electrification.

While there is little agreement about the definitions, theories and practices of internationalisation, they have one thing in common. They tend to originate from Europe and North America and primarily serve the interests of Anglo-American academia (Ivancheva and Syndicus 2019; Marginson 2016; Rhoades et al. 2019). These two articles take a different perspective. They look at internationalisation from two kinds of peripheries and consider the strategies that peripheralised countries and people are using to try and create a more balanced or equal relationship between local or national interests and those of universities in Europe and North America. The first article considers internationalisation from peripheral countries in sub-Saharan Africa, China and Indonesia and explores the strategies of regional cooperation, ‘balanced internationalisation’ and marketisation (respectively) that they are adopting to resist marginalisation and dependency. The second article is written from the perspective of international students who are peripheralised within their host university and country in Europe. It explores the dilemmas students encounter when trying to negotiate language politics and the use of social media in order to participate more fully in the university and society.

Executive duties have long been described as becoming more intensive and demanding. One contributing factor is a perceived increase in the complexity of the operating environment. A high level of physical fitness has been suggested to support responses to those demands. This study aims to contribute to the topic by producing a holistic view informed by asking how physically active executive-level leaders perceive the impact (whether positive or negative) of managerial athleticism on the level of the individual, organization, and society. Twenty physically active high-level leaders were interviewed for the study. The sample was almost equally split by gender, represented a diverse range of societal sectors, and engaged in many different forms of exercise. The results support previous research, however, this study provides a more nuanced view of the topic. Although the interviewees saw many good aspects of physical exercise, such as providing physical, affective, cognitive, and social resources, they were also able to think critically about their personal relationship with exercising and their attitudes toward others taking physical exercise. The study highlights the role of balancing the harmonious and obsessive aspects of the relationship with exercising. Instead of a disproportionate study of extreme cases, we conclude that it would be worthwhile studying leaders with a harmonious relationship with exercise to ensure results do not become biased and physically active leaders are not stereotyped.

Financing the clean energy transition is a growing field of research, yet most research on investments in clean energy has focused on the early stage, and hence on the role of public policy and private equity such as venture capital. We examine how the clean energy sector enters the stage of mainstream financing, using Finland as an empirical case. We combine data from expert interviews and secondary sources, which are analysed using the Technological Innovation Systems framework to identify the enablers and barriers of the TIS functions of the market motor. The findings show the interdependency of the various TISs of the clean energy sector especially in creating a stable market for the developing technologies. Especially the growth of investments in renewable power production is dependent on the growth of investments in electrification and the management of intermittency of power production.

The idea of organizations as polyphonic sites, where the voices of heterogeneous members are articulated to become the voice of their organization, has been widely addressed by scholars taking a discursive approach to organizations. In this study, we investigate the multivocality of organizational decision-making and meaning-making in the context of a sit-in demonstration called the Right to Live. The seven-month long demonstration was held in Helsinki, Finland, as a response to government politics during the so-called European refugee crisis. The protest collective consisted of three groups with diverging ethnolinguistic backgrounds: Afghans, Iraqis, and Finns. Using interviews, ethnographic field notes and public statements communicated by the protest, we examine the interplay between the different voices within the protest. We explore processes of building an organizational voice that were involved in the constitution of Right to Live ( as an organization: formulating demands and external statements, and communicating about the protests online. The negotiations by which the voicing processes were sustained highlight that the activists cherished the idea of multicultural polyphony, yet regarded it necessary to filter the multiplicity of voices into univocality in order to create a recognized entity and to communicate strategically and effectively. Our findings show how authority was established and negotiated in communication: in an organization in which no authority seemingly or allegedly exists, authority was revealed through the process of generating the voice of the organization and forming a textual representation of it. The more traditional forms of authority such as meritocracy become intertwined with communicative authority in the process of authoring the organization.