Science communicators intimidated: researchers' freedom of expression and the rise of authoritarian populism

Abstract

In this article, we explore scientists' freedom of expression in the context of authoritarian populism. Our particular case for this analysis is Finland, where the right-wing populist Finns Party entered the government for the first time in 2015. More recently, after leaving the government in 2017, the party has been the most popular party in opinion polls in 2021. We illustrate the current threats to Finnish researchers' freedom of expression using their responses on three surveys, made in 2015, 2017 and 2019. We focus on politically motivated disparagement of scientists and experts, and the scientists' experiences with online hate and aggressive feedback. Further, we relate these findings to the recent studies on authoritarian populism and science-related populism. We argue that this development may affect researchers' readiness to communicate their research and expertise in public.

Values and vendettas: Populist science governance in Mexico

“…Younger and less established researchers are being affected in the short term by unprecedented levels of precarity. The reforms recall Valiverronen and Saikkonen’s (2021 , p. 12) analysis of the effects of populism in the Finnish academic context which, as the Mexican case, illustrates ‘how populist tendencies can entail a distancing from researchers’ views and can portray researchers as elites who are alienated from the world’, thus weakening scientific, academic and intellectual voices that can confront populist claims. Here I have tried to contextualize the grievances against Mexican academic communities in what I propose is a form of ‘trickle-down populism’ that has, in effect, resulted in an imposition of a model of populist science governance .…”

Chilling and Warming Effects on the Production of Legal Scholarship

“…107 Academics have had comparatively greater freedom than, for example, judges or lawyers to choose the projects they pursue 108 but this freedom has increasingly been whittled away by 'corporatization of the university, the march of the quantitative metrics, the rule of the rankings, and the triumph of administration over faculty'. 109 Researchers of course face pressure not only from governments or institutions but also from political activists, lobbyists and ordinary citizens, 110 and not only in authoritarian regimes but also in liberal Western democracies. 111 Academics are particularly susceptible because many depend on the government for employment and funding.…”

Populist radical-right junior coalition partners and liberal democracy in Europe

“…In Norway the Progress Party has continued to campaign on anti-Islamic policies such as the banning of wearing the burqa, successfully created a Ministry of Immigration and Integration in the Norwegian government, and pushed through tougher restrictions to immigration, asylum, and social benefits (Bjerkem, 2016). Similarly, the admission of the True Finns to coalition government in Finland has been credited by many as harming freedom of speech, especially among academics and journalists (Valiverronen and Saikkonen, 2021). Whereas the deterioration of rule-of-law can be described as eliminating institutional constraints to power, the deterioration of civil liberties can best be summed up as both the elimination of mass constraints to power, and an effort to return society to its traditional form—one made up of only the native population with high levels of law and order (Mudde, 2007).…”

“…We can see examples of liberal democracy deteriorating when confronted by right-populist coalition partners: immigrants’ rights were attacked in Austria and Italy, while Islamophobic policies have been pursued in Norway, where the Progress Party is often credited with normalizing Islamophobic racism. Similarly, some have noticed declines in freedom of speech among journalists and academics in Finland following the True Finns inclusion in government (Valiverronen and Saikkonen, 2021). But it remains unclear how widespread these effects are.…”