It is often claimed that computational methods for examining textual data give good enough party position estimates at a fraction of the costs of many non-computational methods. However, the conclusive testing of these claims is still far from fully accomplished. We compare the performance of two computational methods, Wordscores and Wordfish, and four non-computational methods in estimating the political positions of parties in two dimensions, a left-right dimension and a progressive-conservative dimension. Our data comprise electoral party manifestos written in Finnish and published in Finland. The non-computational estimates are composed of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey estimates, the Manifesto Project estimates, estimates deriving from survey-based data on voter perceptions of party positions, and estimates derived from electoral candidates’ replies to voting advice application questions. Unlike Wordfish, Wordscores generates relatively well-performing estimates for many of the party positions, but despite this does not offer an even match to the non-computational methods.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a qualitative, computationally assisted examination of prominent content patterns in the 2001–2016 National Audit Office of Finland (NAOF) performance audit reports and foremost changes in these patterns. Design/methodology/approach Without ex ante researcher decisions on which content elements are important, the authors use computational content analysis of topic modelling for detecting content patterns and their changes in the performance audit reports. Findings In the content patterns, professional effectiveness auditing stands out, whereas efficiency auditing is more weakly present. Other content patterns correspond to the NAOF institutional position and its audit mandate, the institutional characteristics of Finland’s public sector, and independent NAOF decisions in orienting its work. The authors can discern both ascendant, ascendant and stabler content patterns. Research limitations/implications As the paper emphasises textual analysis, examining from where changes in the content patterns derive is secondary. Implications for both more intensive and extensive future research are drawn. Practical implications The authors argue that together with other approaches the approach has potential in monitoring Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) performance auditing in the level of its contents. Social implications Knowing how an SAI orients its performance auditing has potential to support SAI monitoring by stakeholders – Parliament, the government, the citizens and others. Originality/value This is a comprehensive examination of the content patterns of the performance audit reports of an SAI since the 2001 introduction of its present institutional position.

This article discusses discursive transformations in the performance of the government and the “hashtag landscape,” studying Twitter discussions and the female-led government of one of the youngest Prime Ministers in the world, Sanna Marin of Finland. Among the countries in Europe, Finland has been, in the period of analysis of March 2020 to January 2021, one of the least affected countries by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our datasets from both Twitter discussions and the government’s press conferences in 2020 reveal which were the emerging topics of the pandemic year in Finland and how they were discussed. We observe a move from consensual governmental political control to control in the hands of the authorities and ministers responsible, performing a different basis for the pandemic. On the “hashtag landscape,” facemasks continually emerge as an object of debate, and they also become a point of trust and distrust that the government cannot ignore. In terms of comparative governance, this article also notes how the emergency powers legislation shifted control to the government from regional authorities and municipalities in spring 2020, and by that autumn, those powers were returned to regional and local bodies. We recognize several themes that were contested and the discursive field’s transformations and interplay with the authorities.

The performance of computational methods has been proven many times over. However, special efforts may be needed to ensure access to the research results achieved by means of these methods within specialized social science disciplines. This study joins previous efforts towards the mainstreaming of a specific computational method in the political science field of salience research. Rather than joining previous studies on the influence of the salience of issues to parties upon their electoral results or their propensity to form or join governments, this study represents the part of salience research that examines salience and its changes in their own right. Adapting ideas of digital historical humanities given the long study period, this study inserts salience theory within the frames of critical junctures theory to examine issues discontinuity, and path dependence theory to account for issue resilience. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling with 734 Finnish party manifestos from the 1880s to the 2010s as the research material, testing two hypotheses gave the following results. First, although many issues in the manifestos have been transitory, there have also been issues with resilience over critical junctures. Second, although there are resilient issues whose meanings have stayed the same by and large during longer periods, the meanings of some other resilient issues have pronouncedly changed, either suddenly at critical junctures or gradually during periods of path dependence. The implications for future studies are also discussed.

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