Distance and Discontent? How Staying Connected Shapes Satisfaction with Homeland Politics

This article investigates how staying informed with homeland politics shapes satisfaction with the homelands political system among emigrated Swedish-speaking Finns. By contrasting highly similar populations living in Finland and abroad, the paper sheds light on the interplay between emigration and media consumption and estimates effects on satisfaction with the political system in the homeland. While the link between media and political attitudes has been thoroughly investigated, there is scarce research on these linkages among diasporas, particularly among minority groups. Although Finland is a bilingual country, the Swedish-speaking population in Finland is de facto a linguistic minority. Swedish-speaking Finns are emigrating to considerably higher degree than the Finnish-speaking population, which makes it particularly relevant to investigate their satisfaction with the Finnish political system. The results show that those who live abroad consume political news about their country of origin rather sparsely. Results from linear- and hierarchical linear regression models predicting satisfaction with the Finnish political system show a surprisingly small effect of media consumption both home and abroad. Further, only a small degree of variance in the satisfaction can be derived from variation in the national settings where the emigrants reside. Although we find a positive association between reading newspapers and satisfaction with the political system, this linkage does not hold among emigrants and the overall effect of media consumption on satisfaction with the political system is small. The article also finds no evidence that the duration of the stay in the destination country would shape levels of satisfaction. The results raises questions about the role of media in making evaluative assessments of politics and political institutions, particularly among emigrant populations.