National Champions in Combat

The late 1990s was a time of strong economic growth in Finland and Sweden where two large companies, Nokia and Ericsson, ruled the world of telecom and brought considerable tangible and intangible benefits to their home countries. For business journalists their expansion became a source of thousands [...]
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The late 1990s was a time of strong economic growth in Finland and Sweden where two large companies, Nokia and Ericsson, ruled the world of telecom and brought considerable tangible and intangible benefits to their home countries. For business journalists their expansion became a source of thousands of stories explaining and celebrating their international success. But when the dot.com-bubble burst in early 2000 it also became obvious that behind this boom was another story of inflated stock market values, over-optimism and imminent structural change in the telecom market. This research focuses on how business journalists in Finland and Sweden compared Nokia with Ericsson in the first decade of the 2000s as this change took place. The research perspective is social constructionism and the thesis includes interviews with actors business journalists and corporate communicators as well as analysts to understand how they made sense of this development. The articles selected are treated as products of social interaction and their content analyzed as the result of negotiation influenced by the organizing principles of that engagement and manifested in frames. These frames are dealt with as a frame package, a master frame of national champions, Nokia against Ericsson. Of special interest is the narrative value of Nokia and Ericsson as representatives of the other, in this case the neighbour nation. This research points to major differences within the Finnish and Swedish socio-economic and cultural context. Since Nokia had no competitors for the position as a national champion it could engage with the press on its own terms while Ericsson, though powerful, did not have the same influence over journalists. As background factors there were also differences in the economic strengths of the companies, which were reflected in mediated public opinion, as well as strategic failures in corporate communication.