The Finnish and Nato flags at the scene of a press conference held after a summit of Baltic Sea Nato countries in the Presidential Palace in Helsinki on 14 January 2025. A study by Finland Promotion Board reveals that Finnish foreign and security policy was of particular interest to international media outlets in 2024. (Vesa Moilanen – Lehtikuva)
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GLOBAL PERCEPTIONS of Finland have remained primarily positive but differences from one country to the next have widened amid the global turbulence, reveals a study conducted by Finland Promotion Board.
In 2024, Finland was perceived increasingly positively in countries such as Germany, Japan and the US, but more negatively in China and Russia.
The country was mentioned roughly 300,000 times in the headlines of foreign media articles during the course of last year, a figure that remains well above the long-term average of roughly 200,000 but represents a modest drop of both 2023 and 2022.
The most dominant themes of the articles were linked to foreign and security policy, with readers worldwide being informed about the country’s membership in Nato, high public willingness to defend the country in the event of a conflict, expanding defence co-operation with other Nordics and – at the very end of the year – suspected sabotage of submarine data and power cables in the Baltic Sea.
Although the reporting was largely positive, similarly to previous years, it was punctuated by violent acts such as a school shooting in Vantaa, Southern Finland, and racist stabbings in Oulu, North Ostrobothnia. The former was contrasted against the country’s standing atop the World Happiness Index, a standing it secured for the seventh consecutive year in 2024.
Happiness, the study found, has indeed emerged as an increasingly fixed dimension of the country brand, alongside education, good governance and various environmental themes.
Foreign reporting on Finnish nationals focused – similarly to previous years – particularly on athletes and politicians, with the former category led by F1 driver Valtteri Bottas and the latter by President Alexander Stubb. Also garnering attention, however, were conductors such as Klaus Mäkelä, Sakari Oramo, Tarmo Peltokoski and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Windows95man, the Finnish representative in the Eurovision Song Contest 2024.
Finland has become more widely known in other parts of the world in the 2020s. Last year, the country slipped one spot to 16th in the Anholt Nation Brands Index. In the 2010s, Finland ranked a few spots lower – between 17th and 18th – in the index measuring perceptions of 50–60 countries around the world.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
