What did you research today? Artificial intelligence mines data and shapes the research subject

What progress have you made in your research today?

“Today, I worked on an analysis exploring the role of communicative artificial intelligence in Finnish newsrooms,” says Minna Koivula.

 “The goal is to write a piece that’s more accessible than an academic article, one that reaches not only researchers but also media professionals, while encouraging newsrooms to reflect more broadly on the impacts of artificial intelligence.”

Risto Turunen: Text mining generates entirely new knowledge about the history of democracy

Democracy has been a classic topic in the humanities from ancient times to the present day. Yet the subject continues to offer new insights, says Risto Turunen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä. According to Turunen, exploring it requires innovative methods and creative approaches.

Turunen uses innovative digital methods to study the history of democracy, including analysing digitised parliamentary records with text-mining techniques. In practice, this involves both simply counting words and converting texts into vectors using language models, which allows us to identify differences and similarities that the human eye might easily miss. Then he examines them through close reading to determine their historical significance.

Noticeable similarities in the democratic discourse of the far right and far left

Turunen is currently exploring how democracy has been discussed in Finnish, Swedish, and German parliamentary debates since the 1990s.

He says that data-driven analysis has highlighted how ideologically similar parties in different countries discuss democracy in very similar ways, such as the Social Democrats in Finland, Sweden, and Germany.

A surprising feature can also be seen in the noticeable similarities in the democratic discourse of the far right and far left,” explains Turunen. 

“These similarities aren’t due to a shared ideology, but because both primarily use the concept of democracy to criticise their opponents.”

Democracy has always been contested

Risto Turunen points out that people’s understanding of democracy has changed continuously throughout history.

Democracy has always been contested, and it will remain so in the future.”

Turunen is part of the research group of Academy Professor Pasi Ihalainen. The group produces comprehensive, comparative interpretations of the history of democracy spanning a long period.

“Our empirical dataset is exceptionally broad. The approach we use generates entirely new insights into which meanings of democracy are transnational and which are specific to particular countries.”

The dataset includes plenary debates from ten different parliaments since the 19th century, as well as debates from the European Parliament between 1999 and 2026.

What progress have you made in your research today?

“Today, I analysed discussions on democracy in Finnish, Swedish, and German parliamentary debates since the 1990s, using large language models,” says Turunen. “Large language models make it possible to project each speech into a shared semantic space, while visualising which parties most closely resemble one another in their debates on democracy.”

Dominic Saari: Early warning of emerging disinformation campaigns?

The world is experiencing a time of accelerating malign influence operations. One of the most famous information operations of recent years, the Russian-operated “Doppelgänger”, was exposed in 2022. The operation used fake websites, bot networks and artificial intelligence in an attempt to shape public opinion climate in Western countries – with the primary goal of decreasing support for Ukraine.

Since then, other operations have emerged. Doppelgänger is still active, and others have joined it: Matryoshka, Storm-1516, and Portal Kombat, which produces millions of fake news stories per year.

Dominic Saari investigates how states recognise various kinds of information operations.

During the Quran burnings in 2023, the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency warned of an ongoing information operation.”

“A bulletin issued to decision-makers and citizens warned that foreign powers, primarily Russia, were attempting to exploit the situation by spreading disinformation,” Saari says. “The goal of the operation was to paint a picture of Sweden as an Islamophobic country and to deepen divisions within society.”

Could an emerging operation be detected earlier?

When it comes to malign influence operations, European countries seem content to assume a defensive posture – they mainly react to threats directed at them, Saari explains.

But could an early warning be issued to decision-makers about an emerging or potential disinformation campaign? This is a question Saari is currently investigating in his doctoral dissertation. A central element of this is creating a real-time situational picture.

Who participates in creating the situational picture?

“At first glance, one might think that the situational picture is created solely by the authorities,” Saari says. 

“However, there are a vast number of actors in the information environment, and authorities often have quite limited resources. Disinformation campaigns are also detected by the media and various civil society organisations. Private companies like CheckFirst play a particularly significant role, as they have the capacity and expertise to detect such campaigns.”

Saari says that creating a situational picture requires knowledge of how the adversary typically operates.

Research on information operations is important

The pace of information-psychological operations has accelerated over the past decade.  The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations (UN), for example, have identified information that is spread either intentionally or unintentionally that is, disinformation and misinformation, as a major threat.

In the ‘super election year’ of 2024, election interference – often in the form of false narratives – was observed in up to 80 percent of the elections,” Saari states.

Saari points out that from the perspective of those organising information operations, the goal is not only to influence election results but also to increase polarisation and distrust within the targeted society.

What progress have you made in your research today?

“I investigated how the relationship between intelligence and information operations has been addressed in research. The problem has certainly been recognised, but solutions or methods have not yet been found. It appears that information influence and other means of hybrid influence fundamentally challenge traditional intelligence methods. In Finland and some other European countries, it is still somewhat unclear whose responsibility it is to detect and counter such operations.”

Since information operations can, at their worst, cause significant disorder and uncertainty, Saari hopes that an increasing number of people will begin to study how to detect and counter them. At present, the topic is of particular interest to authorities in Sweden and France as well as within the EU’s foreign affairs administration.