Study limitations

It is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study and how they affect the interpretation of the analysis. As this is an exploratory study, it is only possible to draw tentative conclusions on this under‑researched topic. The aim of this work was to understand the scope and nature of the Russian-language media landscape in Finland, and to lay the groundwork for more structured and conclusive research. Therefore, the preliminary results of this study should be confirmed with further research.

The manually compiled database used for this study is by no means exhaustive. Consequently, there may be additional Russian‑language social media accounts that fulfil the set criteria but were not included in this research. Due to the ever-changing nature of social media, creating an exhaustive database is likely impossible, but we believe that this research captured most relevant accounts. Future studies might set a goal to improve the database further and make it more complete.

Due to the exploratory nature of the study, we only analysed social media accounts that were publicly available and easy to access. Consequently, a significant proportion of accounts (e.g. private Facebook groups and closed Telegram channels) were excluded from the study. Similarly, neither the personal accounts of the audience members nor the content of posts on the social media accounts of the targeted Russian‑language media were analysed. As studying closed or private social media accounts raises multiple ethical considerations and requires more extensive preparation and lengthier research time, this was left for future exploration.

During the research, technical issues were encountered when analysing the Facebook accounts. Due to technical limitations of the Apify service when processing accounts with large volumes of data, only six months' worth of data could be analysed for the Damochki Finlyandii account. The results for this account, particularly the activity statistics, should therefore be interpreted with caution. However, we have chosen to include this account in the analysis because it is one of the largest and most active Russian‑language social media accounts on Facebook. Excluding it would hinder understanding of the media landscape more than including partial results.

The connections in this study were only measured in terms of their existence rather than their strength. As this was the first attempt to analyse such a highly fragmented network, we concluded that further analysis of connection strength was not essential at this exploratory stage. Consequently, it is not possible to differentiate between strong and weak connections, and only an overall picture of the Russian‑language media network could be obtained.

The study also considered only Russian‑language media operating in or targeting Finland. Connections between Russian- and Finnish-language media in Finland were not examined. Similarly, links between Russian-language media in Finland and Russian-language media in other countries, including Russia, were not analysed. Both of these areas of research are planned for future research.

It is important to acknowledge that this study is subject to a high degree of self‑selection bias with regard to the participants interviewed. Ideally, we would have sent interview invitations to all media actors in our database. However, this was not possible due to time and resource constraints. While the intention was to include a diverse range of Russian-language media actors, the initial selection was based on accessibility and personal interest. Consequently, the full range of existing views and opinions may not be represented.

Despite these shortcomings and the exploratory nature of the study, the best possible results were achieved in the time frame.