Hundreds of such complaints have been filed this year, compared to just 14 last year. Half of those cases were classified as libel and half as incitement to racial hatred.
The Council for Mass Media also reports an upsurge in complaints related to immigration-related comments.
The council's chair, Pekka Hyvärinen, says he has been astonished by the brutality of the comments in some online comment threads.
"I worked as a reporter in South Africa during the apartheid era, and I did not encounter this kind of language even there," he told the Oulu-based daily.
