Tasavallan presidentti Tarja Halosen puhe Kansainvälisen lehdistöinstituutin IPI:n maailmankongressissa (englanniksi) 9.6.2009

I have seen that your World Congress started with an extremely interesting Sunday. It has included discussions on the so called Nordic model and Russian politics. Let me just say: I do defend, advocate and promote the Nordic model of welfare society, including education - and this even after the elections.

So there are a number of agenda items which politicians and media people share. And to continue the common agenda: consequences of economic crisis and the underlying problems of the international financial architecture which require a structural solution.

I guess, you have not been able to avoid commenting on the recent European elections, even though it is not on your agenda. Here, we all may have to ask ourselves the question: what went wrong when the participation is so low? I am not sure if we have a good answer so far. But we can say that both the media and the politicians tried to push. Only the pull was not there. This needs a deeper analysis.

Network society has become an integrated part of business, economic and social globalization. Certainly, this represents a huge shift and challenge for the media industry.

But communication is a much more fundamental issue. Communication between people, no matter by which means, transforms people into a community. Communication between people makes them a community.

The rise of newspapers in Finland intertwined with the rise of the Finnish nation and our democracy. I say this only as a reminder, and in reference to some countries where a democratic society is still in the making and where Internet-based media has taken a strong foothold. This can result in fruitful interaction.

The quantitative and qualitative changes are huge. It is not easy to pin down exact numbers with regard to the Internet, but I have been told that there are now more than one billion Internet users around the world. Since 2002, Technorati has indexed some 133 million blog records.

The media have always wished to have interaction. Now, it is there.

People have established their own “mass media communications” – think for example of text messaging, blogs, podcasts, twitters, you name it. These relatively new media or means of communication may be created and can flourish as so-called horizontal media or social media networks, but traditional media is quite quick to adopt these peer-to-peer applications. The line between traditional and new media, between vertical and horizontal, is vague. Media consumers become media producers. Fundamental changes are taking place in journalistic processes and media content as well as in the competition for news and its delivery, to name just a few issues.

I am inclined to think that the media is also a holder of power – though in a different manner than, say, the institutions of society. It is not without reason that the press, already some two hundred years ago, was called the fourth estate. It still is.

The legitimacy and credibility of politics depends not only on politicians, but also on the actions of the media.

Information is power; it involves a battle of opinions, the winning over of people’s minds. It is the mind of a single individual which is captured; but the Zeitgeist is also affected.

Let me take two examples, which are actually related to media politics or media power. One is a threat; the other is a kind of a dream.

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First the worrying case: Finland experienced two school shooting incidents within a year’s time in 2008 and 2007. So what explains them?

Three different factors may lay behind these incidents. One is perhaps the violent history and the availability of weapons, a problem that is being tackled by the Government. Second is the mental health of the perpetrator and the availability of health services. This also relates to the political question of maintaining our Nordic welfare society. I should add school bullying to this category of explanations.

Lastly, a factor which seems somehow to be shared at least in the Finnish cases is the Internet.

There is growing concern over the violent features of the material, links and chats distributed over the Internet.

Some studies show that violence on the Internet is harsher, heavier and more brutal than on television – and viewers also perceive it as more real.

According to one study, about half of young people aged 12 to 19 had seen brutally violent videos, involving such acts as beatings, torture and assassination, on the web. The viewers reported that they had experienced nightmares and even long-lasting physical reactions after seeing these violent images. Another study showed that violent behaviour by youths increased after they had seen violence online.

I presume we have a common understanding about the Internet not being only a virtual world. It is a part of our real, everyday lives. Anyone, including children and young people, can, with just a few clicks, connect to the online world. It looks like a play but the moral issues are the same as in the real life.

We must not leave our children and young people alone on the web. Parents and adults should monitor and accompany these young surfers. I am pleased to note that we have started to take up our responsibilities as adults, also our officials are more present on the web today.

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This is the sad side of the Internet: growing loneliness and marginalisation, the experience of real violence.

The other side of the Internet is constituted from the same elements. It is a great media, which opens up possibilities for civil society globally and provides a means for empowerment. It can capture people’s minds and get them involved with social change, civic action, ad hoc mobilisations, cultural experiments, the sharing of information and so on.

My dream is that this positive power of media could be used to make peoples’ life and the world better.

Just one example: environmental awareness is greatly been raised through media attention. There are also a number of other examples; we all have seen many of them. In some cases, media can take a role of an actor, and nothing against it. Only that media needs to be aware on the role it has taken.

Sustainable development was one of the main messages when Secretary-General of the UN, Mr Ban Ki-moon, paid an official visit to Finland some two weeks ago. It is imperative to reach an agreement on emission reductions at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December this year. Yes, let seal the deal, and the media can help us to do it.

One of the challenging environmental issues in our region is the state of the Baltic Sea. To save the sea, we have launched the Baltic Sea Action initiative together with politicians, business and NGO communities.

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I wish you wisdom in integrating old and new, in combining the best features of traditional media and vertical communications with digital media and peer-to-peer communications.

I hope that the Spirit of Helsinki has inspired you.