I’ve done research on the topic of affective political polarization in multiparty democracies, focusing on the case of Finland. I’ve relied primarily on survey data and quantitative methods.

In the past, I have also done research on social media discussions, particularly advocacy and activism, using ‘big’ data sets and computational methods. I maintain an interest in topics such as computational social science and the philosophy of research methods, as well as social mechanisms an agent-based models, and might be interested in engaging with them in the future.

Feel free to contact me for more information or ideas for collaboration.

Publications

Kekkonen, A., Kawecki, D. & Himmelroos, S. (2024). Friends and foes: Affective polarization among Finnish voters. In Å. von Schoultz & K. Strandberg (Eds.): Political behaviour in contemporary Finland. Studies of voting and campaigning in a candidate-oriented political system. Routledge. [link]

Kekkonen, A. (2023). Affective Polarization in a Multiparty Democracy: Learning from the Case of Finland. Doctoral dissertation, University of Helsinki. [link]

Kekkonen, A., Suuronen, A., Kawecki, D. & Strandberg, K. (2022). Puzzles in affective polarization research: Party attitudes, partisan social distance, and multiple party identification. Frontiers in Political Science, 4. [link]

Kekkonen, A. & Ylä-Anttila, T. (2021) Affective blocs: Understanding affective polarization in multiparty systems. Electoral Studies, 72, 102367. [link]

Kekkonen, A. (2018). #Koulutuslupaus – keskustelu ja kampanjointi aihetunnisteella. In P. Isotalus, J. Jussila & J. Matikainen (Eds.), Twitter viestintänä, 111-133. Tampere: Vastapaino. [book website]

Laaksonen, S-M., Pöyry, E., Kekkonen, A., & Pääkkönen, J. (2018). Anatomy of Viral Social Media Events. Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. [link]

Rantasila, A., Sirola, A., Kekkonen, A., Valaskivi, K., & Kunelius, R. (2018). #fukushima Five Years On: A Multimethod Analysis of Twitter on the Anniversary of the Nuclear Disaster. International Journal of Communication, 12, 928–949. [link]

Laaksonen, S., Nelimarkka, M., Tuokko, M., Marttila, M., Kekkonen, A., & Villi, M. (2017) Working the fields of big data: Using big-data-augmented online ethnography to study candidate–candidate interaction at election time. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 14(2), 110-131. [link, request article]

Marttila, M., Laaksonen, S-M., Kekkonen, A., Tuokko, M., & Nelimarkka, M. (2016). Digitaalinen vaaliteltta: Twitter politiikan areenana eduskuntavaaleissa 2015. In K. Grönlund & H. Wass (Eds.), Eduskuntavaalitutkimus 2015: Poliittisen osallistumisen eriytyminen, 117-137. Helsinki: Ministry of Justice. [chapter pdf, full book pdf]