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., 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]