How Demographic Shocks Show Up in Suomi24 Discussion Forum?

Juha Alho and Julian Lin

No 151, ETLA Working Papers from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy

Abstract: Abstract The collapse of fertility in 2010–2024, corona pandemic in 2020–2024, and the sharp increase of net migration in 2022–2024, are fresh examples of population shocks. How have they been understood by the population at large? Suomi24 discussion forum has been in operation since 2001. Four topic groups were formed. A corpus of 1.26 million posts was formed. The frequencies of nouns and adjectives were counted in the topic groups. On this basis, a vocabulary of approximately 8,000 lemmas was determined. In each topic group, the language used and its change, was studied by embedding the lemmas into a four-dimensional Euclidean space. The analysis was complemented by reading, on a sample basis, about 2,000 posts. Gemini AI was also used to provide summaries of the posts we had read. The bursts in the flow of posts were only indirectly related to the demograhic shocks. Changes in fertility were thought to be caused by changes in attitudes. Corona dominated the discussions on mortality, although its effect on mortality was minor. In discussions on migration, the major burst was related to the refugee crisis of 2015. In contrast, the wave of immigrants provoked by the Ukrainian war was less discussed.

Keywords: Order statistics; Mortality; Migration; Social media; Fertility; AI; Token (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 J10 N34 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2026-10-16
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