Call for Papers:  Extremism on Social Media: Nordic Perspectives

The SMIDGE research project (HorizonEurope), Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at University of Copenhagen, and Nordicom invite scholars from a broad range of disciplines to submit extended abstracts for a special issue of Nordicom Review. The issue will focus on contemporary trends in extremism on social media in the Nordic countries, including mainstreaming processes, hybrid threats, conspiracy theories, and social media practices and phenomena, which enable shifts toward the extremes of the Nordic public cultures.

Editors:  

  • Mikkel Bækby Johansen, University of Copenhagen  
  • Line Nybro Petersen, University of Copenhagen 

Contact

Important dates: 

  • Deadline for extended abstracts: 11 October 2024 
  • Invitation to submit full paper: 1 November 2024 
  • Full paper submission: 17 February 2025 
  • Peer review process: Spring 2025 
  • Expected publication (Open Access): Early 2026  

Background and aim 

Recent years have witnessed a growing scholarly interest in emerging forms of extremism on social media. Extremist content, ranging from hateful yet ironic and ambiguous memes over misinformation-based narratives to malicious conspiracy theories and hardcore extremist ideologies, circulates on mainstream social media platforms on a large scale (Bryant, 2020; Rothut et al., 2024). Everyday social media users are exposed to radical and subversive content on the same platforms they use for the most common practices of catching up with the news and keeping in touch with their network. On the one hand, mainstream actors such as influencers, journalists, celebrities, activists, and politicians use their social media visibility to platform ideas and opinions previously considered fringe (Baker, 2022). On the other hand, extremist narratives have become a matter of co-creation, as social media users accumulate ad hoc convictions, political opinions, personal grievances and inclinations, conspiracy beliefs, and ideology fragments to construct new narratives located outside the window of what is typically considered morally or politically acceptable (Petersen & Johansen, forthcoming; see also Makinac Center for Public Policy, 2019). 

This type of amalgamated and crowdsourced extremism challenges established classifications of extremism and obfuscates the process of tracing its origin. In a fragmented digital media landscape, antagonism against the center of society – that is, the political and institutional mainstream – may not necessarily originate from the most well-known extreme positions, for example, the far-right, the far-left, or militant Islamism. Today, extremist narratives also emerge from diffuse online communities, which cut across ideological divides. This type of hybrid extremism has recently caught the attention of security practitioners and law enforcement in the Nordic region (see PET, 2024; SÄPO, 2023). Highlighting the ontological connection between extremism and conspiracism (Cassam, 2021), the hybridisation trend is closely linked to the online proliferation and increased salience of conspiracy theories, which accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic (Brennen et al., 2020). This, combined with the perpetually ironic and ambiguous tone of online environments, challenges security practitioners and scholars alike to distinguish real threats from playful rhetoric. 

While Nordic societies are traditionally recognised as relatively peaceful, homogenous, pragmatic, and consensus-seeking, the recent pandemic and polarising effects of “the dark side” of social media culture (Zeng & Schäfer, 2021) are currently unsettling the categories by which Nordic public discourse may be understood. This includes Nordic perceptions of extremism vis-à-vis the mainstream and the perceived presence and influence of conspiracy theories in the Nordic public cultures. How, for instance, is the QAnon conspiracy theory imported and adapted to fit a Nordic context? What characterises the sentiments of anti-authority groups in the Nordic region, and what role do cross-national conspiracy theories like The Great Reset and The Great Replacement play in these movements? Are there any patterns, similarities as well as differences, in the way extremist narratives emerge through social media use across the Nordic countries? 

Further empirical studies of dynamic, ambiguous, and unclear spaces of online extremism in the Nordic context may help not only security practitioners and scholars but also a wider public audience to understand the emerging environments from which new extremist ideas and potential threats originate. 

Focusing particularly on contemporary forms of extremism and conspiracism in the context of social media, we invite empirical as well as theoretical contributions to elucidate potential Nordic particularities within current developments in online extremism. We prioritise contributions that 1) specifically address social media and engage with social media theories and 2) have a clear focus on the Nordic region. We welcome a broad range of methods, both qualitative and/or quantitative approaches, (comparative) case studies, ethnographic studies, and so on. Topics may include but are not limited to the following: 

  • Social media practices and communities, e.g., (co-)creation and dissemination of extremist narratives and conspiracy theories. 
  • Social media technologies, affordances, and the communicative infrastructure of extremism. 
  • Changing forms of extremist expression: aesthetics and genres. 
  • Hybridisation processes and the amalgamation of ideologies, conspiracy beliefs, religious convictions, current events, etc. 
  • Conditions of mainstreaming and processes of normalisation, e.g., conceptualisations of the mainstream-extreme continuum. 
  • Nordic import of conspiracy theories and extremist narratives from other national contexts. 
  • Actors engaged in mainstreaming, legitimating, or promoting extremism, e.g., journalists, influencers, celebrities, activists, politicians, and public intellectuals. 
  • Case studies of extremist phenomena, i.e., movements, incidents. 
  • Comparisons between spaces of extremist discourse in the Nordic countries. 

Procedure 

Please send an extended abstract of no more than 750 words to mikkel.johansen@hum.ku.dk by 11 October 2024. The abstract should outline the main theme and approach of the intended paper and mention how it fits with the overall theme of the special issue. 

Authors invited to submit a full manuscript (7,000–9,000 words) will be notified by e-mail when all abstracts are assessed by the editors. All submissions should be original works and must not be under consideration by other publishers. 

After the initial submission and review process, manuscripts that are accepted for publication must adhere to our guidelines upon final manuscript delivery. You may choose to use our templates to assist you in correctly formatting your manuscript. 

Read the full instructions for authors and download a manuscript template 

References 

Baker, S. A. (2022). Alt. health influencers: How wellness culture and web culture have been weaponised to promote conspiracy theories and far-right extremism during the COVID-19 pandemic. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 25(1), 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494211062623

Brennen, J. S., Simon, F. M., Howard, P. N., & Nielsen, R. K. (2020). Types, sources, and claims of COVID-19 misinformation. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/types-sources-and-claims-covid-19-misinformation

Bryant, L. V. (2020). The YouTube algorithm and the alt-right filter bubble. Open Information Science, 4(1), 85–90. https://doi.org/10.1515/opis-2020-0007 

Cassam, Q. (2021). Extremism: A philosophical analysis. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/978042932547

Makinac Center for Public Policy. (2019). The Overton window. https://www.mackinac.org/OvertonWindow

PET (Danish Security and Intelligence Service). (2024). Assessment of the terrorist threat to Denmark 2024. https://pet.dk/en/-/media/mediefiler/pet/dokumenter/analyser-og-vurderinger/vurdering-af-terrortruslen-mod-danmark/vurdering-af-terrortruslen-mod-danmark-2024-eng.pdf

Petersen, L. N., & Johansen, M. B. (forthcoming). Spaces of hybridized prefatory extremism. 

Rothut, S., Schulze, H., Rieger, D., & Naderer, B. (2024). Mainstreaming as a meta-process: A systematic review and conceptual model of factors contributing to the mainstreaming of radical and extremist positions. Communication Theory, 34(2), 49–59. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtae001

SÄPO (Swedish Security Service). (2023). The Swedish Security Service 2023–2024. https://tinyurl.com/4v8yfthd

Zeng, J., & Schäfer, M. S. (2021). Conceptualizing “dark platforms”: Covid-19-related conspiracy theories on 8kun and Gab. Digital Journalism, 9(9), 1321–1343. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1938165 

About the Publisher 

Nordicom is a centre for Nordic media research at the University of Gothenburg, supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers. Nordicom publishes all works under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence, which allows for non-commercial, non-derivative types of reuse and sharing with proper attribution. All works are published Open Access and are available to read free of charge and without requirement for registration. There are no article processing charges (APC), and authors retain copyright. 

Nordicom Review is an international peer reviewed journal devoted to new Nordic media and communication research. In 2023, Nordicom Review recorded a Journal Impact Factor of 2.0, a CiteScore of 2.8, and an H-Index of 23.