Riie Lotta Solveig Heikkilä
Biographic Data
| ID | 4625473 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Riie Lotta Solveig Heikkilä |
| GIVEN NAMES | Riie Lotta Solveig |
| FAMILY NAME | Heikkilä |
| SIGNATURE | HEIKKILÄ R L S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tampere University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1809-4776 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 37 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Algorithmic curation and the persistence of cultural distinction
The traditional understanding of how cultural consumption is shaped draws heavily on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory linking social class to cultural practices. A current challenge to this perspective is the profound technological transformation of cultural consumption brought about by the platformisation of cultural production and the widespread use of automated personalisation algorithms. In this theoretically oriented article, I examine how algorithm…
Regional differences in cultural participation in the United States and Europe
Cultural participation is socio-demographically stratified. However, the link between one’s region of residence and their cultural participation is understudied. We study this link in five countries: Denmark, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Cultural policies are typically constructed to level regional differences in cultural participation, so we chose the countries in our analysis to represent different well-known cult…
Media use, cultural orientations and support for radical right-wing parties: Comparing nine European countries
In the past decades, radical right-wing parties have gained increasing prominence in European politics, often promoting xenophobia, intolerance towards minority groups, anti-elitism, and anti-democratic sentiments. This paper examines how media and culture predict radical right-wing voting from a cross-national perspective, using survey data collected in 2021 from nine European countries – Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Serbi…
Algoritmos y jerarquización cultural: El impacto de la digitalización en la construcción del gusto
El artículo analiza el papel de los algoritmos en la transformación de las jerarquías culturales y la construcción del gusto en la era digital. Explora cómo la digitalización ha reducido la influencia de los intermediarios culturales tradicionales, desplazando la autoridad de críticos y expertos hacia plataformas y sistemas de recomendación algorítmica. A través de un análisis de investigaciones recientes, discute las implicaciones del consumo cu…
Exploring the limits and boundaries between cultural practices and political values in contemporary Finland
Cultural practices are indisputably socially stratified.At the same time, they are also connected to political values.Existing research has indicated that these two are linked, often pointing to the direction of a negative relation between more conservative attitudes and cultural capital.The aim of this paper is to examine how political values and cultural practices are intertwined in our era of 'new politics', in which cultural and social values…
Tolerants versus traditionalists: Making sense of online conversations on the new Finnish flagship library Oodi
Public libraries play a unique role in preserving, maintaining, and distributing cultural capital freely. Currently, public libraries are said to be undergoing a change: from public spheres offering culture selected and curated by legitimated experts, libraries are seen to have shifted more towards social hubs. However, little is known about how potential library users perceive these alleged changes. In this article, we explore which topics emerg…
Overlaps and accumulations: The anatomy of cultural non-participation in Finland, 2007 to 2018
There is a fervent belief that culture is, among other desirable ideals, “good for you.” This has been the baseline of the cultural policies in many countries. Through cultural policies, some forms of cultural participation over others are subvented through public funding, which makes it yet more important to ask which groups intentionally withdraw—or are left out—from which forms of it. We address the debate on cultural non-participation by scru…
Counter-talk as symbolic boundary drawing: Challenging legitimate cultural practices in individual and focus group interviews in the lower regions of social space
In qualitative interviews, challenges such as deviations from the topic, interruptions, silences or counter-questions are inevitable. It is debatable whether the researcher should try to alleviate them or consider them as important indicators of power relations. In this methodological article, we adopt the latter view and examine the episodes of counter-talk that emerge in qualitative interviews on cultural practices among underprivileged popular…
The stratification of media usage in Finland, 2007–2018: Signs of socio-political polarization
Over the last 10–15 years, Western societies have faced two interrelated social changes: the digitalization of media and the increase in socio-political polarization. While their relationship is causally reciprocal, population-level empirical studies focusing on over-time change remain scarce. We adopt the temporal perspective on the socio-political stratification of media usage in the context of Finland, one of the so-called Nordic media welfare…
The slippery slope of cultural non-participation: Orientations of participation among the potentially passive
Research on cultural practices has highlighted the rise of different cultural consumption patterns that challenge the classic theories on class-based hierarchies. However, most scholarly work has focused on active, rather than passive, cultural consumers. This article aims to fill that gap by exploring the orientations of cultural participation of hypothetically passive cultural consumers in contemporary Finland. Existing research proves that cul…
Live or recorded? Reassessing the “decline of the highbrow arts” debate using European newspaper data, 1960–2010
Recent scholarship has argued that the concept of highbrow culture is undergoing radical changes, both in content and modes of appropriation. We introduce a new layer to this debate by bringing to the fore the format of the cultural product, distinguishing between “live” cultural products (concerts, exhibitions, live shows) and “recordings” (distributable items such as books or music albums). Using culture sections of newspapers (The Guardian, Le…
Analysing the ways of participating in interview settings: Young People's Identity Performances and Social Class in Focus Groups
Critical discussions on the focus group method have highlighted the importance of considering the forms of interaction generated in groups. In this empirical paper we argue that these forms of interaction are intimately linked to the ways participants interpret the study setting, and these interpretations are likely to differ significantly depending on participants' social backgrounds. In the light of our data consisting of 18 focus groups with 1…
Cultural globalization on the printed page: Stability and change in the proportion of foreign cultural products in European quality newspapers, 1960–2010
To bring empirical scrutiny to the often very general and theory-driven debates on cultural globalization and to broaden the geographical scope of previous studies on the topic, this paper presents an analysis of the changes in the relative weight of national and global culture in the culture sections of quality European newspapers from 1960 to 2010. Through content analysis of newspaper articles, the paper examines how the composition of geograp…
Enter Culture, Exit Arts?: The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Sections, 1960–2010
Key debates of contemporary cultural sociology – the rise of the ‘cultural omnivore’, the fate of classical ‘highbrow’ culture, the popularization, commercialization and globalization of culture – deal with temporal changes. Yet, systematic research about these processes is scarce due to the lack of suitable longitudinal data. This book explores these questions through the lens of a crucial institution of cultural mediation – the culture sections…
Food, music and politics: The interweaving of culinary taste patterns, 'highbrow' musical taste and conservative attitudes in Finland
This article addresses two key debates in cultural sociology: one on coherent lifestyle patterns crossing several cultural fields and one on pervasive lifestyles, which also includes, apart from the cultural elements, wider socio-political orientations. The study takes the point of view of three fields rarely studied together - food, music and political attitudes - employing a rich empirical research design utilizing both representative survey da…
Matters of taste? Conceptions of good and bad taste in focus groups with Swedish-speaking Finns
The Swedish-speaking minority in Finland does very well in most welfare studies. Swedish-speakers, for example, live longer, have fewer difficulties at school and divorce less than the majority. The aim of this article is to examine whether there are significant internal differences within the minority when it comes to culture, lifestyle and taste. The data was gathered from 20 focus group interviews conducted with the Swedish-speaking minority i…
El debate sobre el omnivorismo cultural. Una aproximación a nuevas tendencias en Sociología del Consumo
En las últimas décadas uno de los debates más interesantes en el campo de la sociología del consumo ha sido la cuestión del omnivorismo cultural, planteada generalmente como una crítica a la teoría de la distinción establecida por bourdieu en sus trabajos más clásicos. Frente a la idea de diferenciación y jerarquización de los estilos de vida basada en la adquisición de capital cultural que enunciaba este autor, los defensores del omnivorismo cul…
‘It Is Not a Matter of Taste … ’
Upper classes and elites are usually exclusive circles which are hard to enter. In this paper we approach one such group using a focus group interview: a group from the Swedish-speaking upper class in officially bilingual Finland. Our paper addresses Bourdieu's idea of distinction by cultural or taste distinctions. In comparison to some international studies on elites and upper classes, our group was surprisingly keen on expressing disgust toward…
Food, music and politics: The interweaving of culinary taste patterns, 'highbrow' musical taste and conservative attitudes in Finland
This article addresses two key debates in cultural sociology: one on coherent lifestyle patterns crossing several cultural fields and one on pervasive lifestyles, which also includes, apart from the cultural elements, wider socio-political orientations. The study takes the point of view of three fields rarely studied together - food, music and political attitudes - employing a rich empirical research design utilizing both representative survey da…
The stratification of media usage in Finland, 2007–2018: Signs of socio-political polarization
Over the last 10–15 years, Western societies have faced two interrelated social changes: the digitalization of media and the increase in socio-political polarization. While their relationship is causally reciprocal, population-level empirical studies focusing on over-time change remain scarce. We adopt the temporal perspective on the socio-political stratification of media usage in the context of Finland, one of the so-called Nordic media welfare…
The slippery slope of cultural non-participation: Orientations of participation among the potentially passive
Research on cultural practices has highlighted the rise of different cultural consumption patterns that challenge the classic theories on class-based hierarchies. However, most scholarly work has focused on active, rather than passive, cultural consumers. This article aims to fill that gap by exploring the orientations of cultural participation of hypothetically passive cultural consumers in contemporary Finland. Existing research proves that cul…
Tolerants versus traditionalists: Making sense of online conversations on the new Finnish flagship library Oodi
Public libraries play a unique role in preserving, maintaining, and distributing cultural capital freely. Currently, public libraries are said to be undergoing a change: from public spheres offering culture selected and curated by legitimated experts, libraries are seen to have shifted more towards social hubs. However, little is known about how potential library users perceive these alleged changes. In this article, we explore which topics emerg…
Overlaps and accumulations: The anatomy of cultural non-participation in Finland, 2007 to 2018
There is a fervent belief that culture is, among other desirable ideals, “good for you.” This has been the baseline of the cultural policies in many countries. Through cultural policies, some forms of cultural participation over others are subvented through public funding, which makes it yet more important to ask which groups intentionally withdraw—or are left out—from which forms of it. We address the debate on cultural non-participation by scru…
Analysing the ways of participating in interview settings: Young People's Identity Performances and Social Class in Focus Groups
Critical discussions on the focus group method have highlighted the importance of considering the forms of interaction generated in groups. In this empirical paper we argue that these forms of interaction are intimately linked to the ways participants interpret the study setting, and these interpretations are likely to differ significantly depending on participants' social backgrounds. In the light of our data consisting of 18 focus groups with 1…
Counter-talk as symbolic boundary drawing: Challenging legitimate cultural practices in individual and focus group interviews in the lower regions of social space
In qualitative interviews, challenges such as deviations from the topic, interruptions, silences or counter-questions are inevitable. It is debatable whether the researcher should try to alleviate them or consider them as important indicators of power relations. In this methodological article, we adopt the latter view and examine the episodes of counter-talk that emerge in qualitative interviews on cultural practices among underprivileged popular…
Matters of taste? Conceptions of good and bad taste in focus groups with Swedish-speaking Finns
The Swedish-speaking minority in Finland does very well in most welfare studies. Swedish-speakers, for example, live longer, have fewer difficulties at school and divorce less than the majority. The aim of this article is to examine whether there are significant internal differences within the minority when it comes to culture, lifestyle and taste. The data was gathered from 20 focus group interviews conducted with the Swedish-speaking minority i…
El debate sobre el omnivorismo cultural. Una aproximación a nuevas tendencias en Sociología del Consumo
En las últimas décadas uno de los debates más interesantes en el campo de la sociología del consumo ha sido la cuestión del omnivorismo cultural, planteada generalmente como una crítica a la teoría de la distinción establecida por bourdieu en sus trabajos más clásicos. Frente a la idea de diferenciación y jerarquización de los estilos de vida basada en la adquisición de capital cultural que enunciaba este autor, los defensores del omnivorismo cul…
Exploring the limits and boundaries between cultural practices and political values in contemporary Finland
Cultural practices are indisputably socially stratified.At the same time, they are also connected to political values.Existing research has indicated that these two are linked, often pointing to the direction of a negative relation between more conservative attitudes and cultural capital.The aim of this paper is to examine how political values and cultural practices are intertwined in our era of 'new politics', in which cultural and social values…
Cultural globalization on the printed page: Stability and change in the proportion of foreign cultural products in European quality newspapers, 1960–2010
To bring empirical scrutiny to the often very general and theory-driven debates on cultural globalization and to broaden the geographical scope of previous studies on the topic, this paper presents an analysis of the changes in the relative weight of national and global culture in the culture sections of quality European newspapers from 1960 to 2010. Through content analysis of newspaper articles, the paper examines how the composition of geograp…
‘It Is Not a Matter of Taste … ’
Upper classes and elites are usually exclusive circles which are hard to enter. In this paper we approach one such group using a focus group interview: a group from the Swedish-speaking upper class in officially bilingual Finland. Our paper addresses Bourdieu's idea of distinction by cultural or taste distinctions. In comparison to some international studies on elites and upper classes, our group was surprisingly keen on expressing disgust toward…
Matters of taste? Conceptions of good and bad taste in focus groups with Swedish-speaking Finns
The Swedish-speaking minority in Finland does very well in most welfare studies. Swedish-speakers, for example, live longer, have fewer difficulties at school and divorce less than the majority. The aim of this article is to examine whether there are significant internal differences within the minority when it comes to culture, lifestyle and taste. The data was gathered from 20 focus group interviews conducted with the Swedish-speaking minority i…
El debate sobre el omnivorismo cultural. Una aproximación a nuevas tendencias en Sociología del Consumo
En las últimas décadas uno de los debates más interesantes en el campo de la sociología del consumo ha sido la cuestión del omnivorismo cultural, planteada generalmente como una crítica a la teoría de la distinción establecida por bourdieu en sus trabajos más clásicos. Frente a la idea de diferenciación y jerarquización de los estilos de vida basada en la adquisición de capital cultural que enunciaba este autor, los defensores del omnivorismo cul…
Food, music and politics: The interweaving of culinary taste patterns, 'highbrow' musical taste and conservative attitudes in Finland
This article addresses two key debates in cultural sociology: one on coherent lifestyle patterns crossing several cultural fields and one on pervasive lifestyles, which also includes, apart from the cultural elements, wider socio-political orientations. The study takes the point of view of three fields rarely studied together - food, music and political attitudes - employing a rich empirical research design utilizing both representative survey da…
Enter Culture, Exit Arts?: The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Sections, 1960–2010
Key debates of contemporary cultural sociology – the rise of the ‘cultural omnivore’, the fate of classical ‘highbrow’ culture, the popularization, commercialization and globalization of culture – deal with temporal changes. Yet, systematic research about these processes is scarce due to the lack of suitable longitudinal data. This book explores these questions through the lens of a crucial institution of cultural mediation – the culture sections…
Cultural globalization on the printed page: Stability and change in the proportion of foreign cultural products in European quality newspapers, 1960–2010
To bring empirical scrutiny to the often very general and theory-driven debates on cultural globalization and to broaden the geographical scope of previous studies on the topic, this paper presents an analysis of the changes in the relative weight of national and global culture in the culture sections of quality European newspapers from 1960 to 2010. Through content analysis of newspaper articles, the paper examines how the composition of geograp…
The stratification of media usage in Finland, 2007–2018: Signs of socio-political polarization
Over the last 10–15 years, Western societies have faced two interrelated social changes: the digitalization of media and the increase in socio-political polarization. While their relationship is causally reciprocal, population-level empirical studies focusing on over-time change remain scarce. We adopt the temporal perspective on the socio-political stratification of media usage in the context of Finland, one of the so-called Nordic media welfare…
The slippery slope of cultural non-participation: Orientations of participation among the potentially passive
Research on cultural practices has highlighted the rise of different cultural consumption patterns that challenge the classic theories on class-based hierarchies. However, most scholarly work has focused on active, rather than passive, cultural consumers. This article aims to fill that gap by exploring the orientations of cultural participation of hypothetically passive cultural consumers in contemporary Finland. Existing research proves that cul…
Live or recorded? Reassessing the “decline of the highbrow arts” debate using European newspaper data, 1960–2010
Recent scholarship has argued that the concept of highbrow culture is undergoing radical changes, both in content and modes of appropriation. We introduce a new layer to this debate by bringing to the fore the format of the cultural product, distinguishing between “live” cultural products (concerts, exhibitions, live shows) and “recordings” (distributable items such as books or music albums). Using culture sections of newspapers (The Guardian, Le…
Analysing the ways of participating in interview settings: Young People's Identity Performances and Social Class in Focus Groups
Critical discussions on the focus group method have highlighted the importance of considering the forms of interaction generated in groups. In this empirical paper we argue that these forms of interaction are intimately linked to the ways participants interpret the study setting, and these interpretations are likely to differ significantly depending on participants' social backgrounds. In the light of our data consisting of 18 focus groups with 1…
Counter-talk as symbolic boundary drawing: Challenging legitimate cultural practices in individual and focus group interviews in the lower regions of social space
In qualitative interviews, challenges such as deviations from the topic, interruptions, silences or counter-questions are inevitable. It is debatable whether the researcher should try to alleviate them or consider them as important indicators of power relations. In this methodological article, we adopt the latter view and examine the episodes of counter-talk that emerge in qualitative interviews on cultural practices among underprivileged popular…
Overlaps and accumulations: The anatomy of cultural non-participation in Finland, 2007 to 2018
There is a fervent belief that culture is, among other desirable ideals, “good for you.” This has been the baseline of the cultural policies in many countries. Through cultural policies, some forms of cultural participation over others are subvented through public funding, which makes it yet more important to ask which groups intentionally withdraw—or are left out—from which forms of it. We address the debate on cultural non-participation by scru…
Tolerants versus traditionalists: Making sense of online conversations on the new Finnish flagship library Oodi
Public libraries play a unique role in preserving, maintaining, and distributing cultural capital freely. Currently, public libraries are said to be undergoing a change: from public spheres offering culture selected and curated by legitimated experts, libraries are seen to have shifted more towards social hubs. However, little is known about how potential library users perceive these alleged changes. In this article, we explore which topics emerg…
Exploring the limits and boundaries between cultural practices and political values in contemporary Finland
Cultural practices are indisputably socially stratified.At the same time, they are also connected to political values.Existing research has indicated that these two are linked, often pointing to the direction of a negative relation between more conservative attitudes and cultural capital.The aim of this paper is to examine how political values and cultural practices are intertwined in our era of 'new politics', in which cultural and social values…
Algoritmos y jerarquización cultural: El impacto de la digitalización en la construcción del gusto
El artículo analiza el papel de los algoritmos en la transformación de las jerarquías culturales y la construcción del gusto en la era digital. Explora cómo la digitalización ha reducido la influencia de los intermediarios culturales tradicionales, desplazando la autoridad de críticos y expertos hacia plataformas y sistemas de recomendación algorítmica. A través de un análisis de investigaciones recientes, discute las implicaciones del consumo cu…
Algorithmic curation and the persistence of cultural distinction
The traditional understanding of how cultural consumption is shaped draws heavily on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory linking social class to cultural practices. A current challenge to this perspective is the profound technological transformation of cultural consumption brought about by the platformisation of cultural production and the widespread use of automated personalisation algorithms. In this theoretically oriented article, I examine how algorithm…
Regional differences in cultural participation in the United States and Europe
Cultural participation is socio-demographically stratified. However, the link between one’s region of residence and their cultural participation is understudied. We study this link in five countries: Denmark, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Cultural policies are typically constructed to level regional differences in cultural participation, so we chose the countries in our analysis to represent different well-known cult…
Media use, cultural orientations and support for radical right-wing parties: Comparing nine European countries
In the past decades, radical right-wing parties have gained increasing prominence in European politics, often promoting xenophobia, intolerance towards minority groups, anti-elitism, and anti-democratic sentiments. This paper examines how media and culture predict radical right-wing voting from a cross-national perspective, using survey data collected in 2021 from nine European countries – Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Serbi…
Sociology (15 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Cultural Industries and Urban Development (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Social science (9 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Diverse Music Education Insights (5 works)