This paper is based on a case study of the media narratives of the neo-Nazi organisation the Nordic Resistance Movement(NRM) which situates this particular actor within the broader landscape of violent extremism in Sweden today.[i] The empirical data consists of a strategic sample of the organisation’s online content (including web-TV, feature articles, and podcasts) all produced by and for members of the NRM and all presented as ‘culture’ and categorised under labels such as ’entertainment’, ‘pleasure’, ‘humour’ and ‘satire’[ii]. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis informed by the conceptual horizon of narrative inquiry, the paper examines various cultural expressions of neo-Nazi ideology in the organisation’s extensive repertoire of online media. Theoretically, it turns to the work of Miller-Idriss (2018) and Teitelbaum (2018) to bring centre stage the role of popular culture and entertainment in the construction of a meaningful narrative of community and belonging built around neo-Nazism in Sweden today. The paper demonstrates how the organisation with their efforts to boost the culture and entertainment-end of their media repertoire seek to add to the ordinariness and normalcy of neo-Nazi discourse and the banalisation and defusing of its underlying ideologies. Further, the analysis of the convergence between different genres, styles and content into new borderline discourses illustrate how contemporary extreme right movements are complicating the traditional binaries with which scholars have operated such as fascist versus liberal, totalitarian versus democratic and mainstream versus extremist.

This article is based on a case study of the online media practices of the militant neo-Nazi organization the Nordic Resistance Movement, currently the biggest and most active extreme-right actor in Scandinavia. I trace a recent turn to humor, irony, and ambiguity in their online communication and the increasing adaptation of stylistic strategies and visual aesthetics of the Alt-Right inspired by online communities such as 4chan, 8chan, Reddit, and Imgur. Drawing on a visual content analysis of memes (N = 634) created and circulated by the organization, the analysis explores the place of humor, irony, and ambiguity across these cultural expressions of neo-Nazism and how ideas, symbols, and layers of meaning travel back and forth between neo-Nazi and Alt-right groups within Sweden today. 

Through a case study of the Copenhagen-based activist television channel TV Stop (1987-2005), this chapter examines how social media are used as archives in ways that seek to facilitate connective memory between past, present and future protest movements. Drawing on in-depth key informant interviews and a thematic analysis of the online spaces former activists appropriate to store, organise and reinvigorate the historical video material, the case of TV Stop is used to reflect upon memory, archival activism and media time/temporalities in relation to social media materialities. The chapter is concerned with materiality in the specific context of video and television production and the pre-digital properties of the media landscape in which the channel first operated. It follows a shift in the cultural form that the channel uses to express itself along with a general transition from analogue to digital video materiality, which involve different forms of temporality, storage and memory. The analysis shows how the relaunch of TV Stop in social media can usefully be understood as driven by three interlaced incentives to store and preserve time; to catch up with times and as impelled by the urge to remember times passed and reminding people of the value of remembering and making connections between past and present struggles.

This commentary provides critical reflections on a number of challenges related to research methodology and ethics when studying organized racism in online environments. Based on ongoing fieldwork of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) in Sweden, I ask three critical questions about researching the neo-Nazi organization and organized racism more generally: (1) How do we produce valid knowledge of these ‘closed’ groups in their ‘open’ online spaces? What are the limitations of our research on hidden social life when we only have access to what they want us to know? (2) Why and for whom are we producing research on these groups? Or, put another way, what ethical considerations and problems related to intent and research agendas arise in studies of neo-Nazism and other forms of organized racism? (3) What is the emotional labour involved in studying these groups for the researcher and how might it be used in a productive manner?

By situating debates on the virtues and limitations of practice theory in relation to the specific field of video activism, this chapter inscribes itself into the burgeoning area of scholarship on social movement media practices. First, by synthesizing scholarship on historical and contemporary forms of video activism, I identify three distinct foci in this literature, each adding valuable but essentially isolated insights to the phenomenon by considering video as either or primarily technology, text, or testimony. Based on this review, I then demonstrate how a practice-based approach allows us to appreciate this form of citizen media as not one, but all of these, and puts us in a position to ask holistic questions. Rather than repeating conceptual dichotomies such as online/offline, digital/analogue, old/new, mainstream/activist, a practice-based approach addresses the rich ways in which these categories impinge and encroach on each other. For the purpose of developing such a framework, I draw on the concepts of activist media practices (Mattoni, 2012) and citizen media practices (Stephansen, 2016) as theoretical orientations for further developing an understanding of video activism as the things activists do, think, and say in relation to video for social and political change.

This paper is based on a case study of the online media practices of the neo-Nazi organisation, the Nordic Resistance Movement, conducted in the context of an ongoing project on contemporary forms of violent extremism in Sweden. Focusing on the activities of female “online influencers”, the paper explores the contradictory discourses around the role of women as “race warriors” and “Nordic wives” as this is articulated both by the women in the organisation themselves and in the online universe of the organisation more generally. On the one hand, women’s positions are determined and heavily policed by men in an organisation that openly propagates women’s subordination to men and their natural and biological role in the realm of homemaking. On the other, the discourses produced by these women are saturated by ideas of female empowerment, sisterhood, emancipation and the importance of women in the reproduction of the white race. The content analysis of online propaganda produced by female activists about the role of women positions these contradictory pulls of “White femininity” inherent to the white supremacist movements at the current political juncture in which the extreme right is growing and actively looking to recruit women as part of a broader strategy to “mainstream” in Sweden and mobilise internationally.

The purpose of this report is to provide a comprehensive overview of existing knowledge on contemporary extremist narratives circulating online in three countries across Europe; Austria, Bulgaria and Sweden. To achieve this, the report draws on a review of an extensive body of previous research and secondary data sources, pursuing two primary objectives: firstly, it maps what kind of extremist narratives are on offer across Europe today, and second, it identifies where across the digital mainstream, these are currently in circulation.

Upon reviewing the available evidence, two key topics emerge as central to the proliferation of extremist narratives in Europe. First, extremist narratives continue to predominantly emerge around anti-migration ideas and sentiments. Contemporary anti-immigration narratives echo familiar themes and long-standing ideas that European societies are collapsing under the weight of enforced multiculturalism and/or that European/white populations are being replaced by immigrant communities and in particular Muslim “invaders”.  Such anti-immigration narratives, which continue to take on new forms and tap into shifting conspiratorial beliefs and falsehoods, circulate openly today and in mainstream media.

Second, the Covid19 pandemic gave rise to a host of anti-establishment narratives some of which veered towards illiberal and anti-democratic ideas and behaviours. These narratives peddled widely circulated conspiracy theories suggesting that a malevolent global elite exploited or orchestrated the pandemic to dismantle European societies, infringe upon civil liberties and harm populations through the vaccination programs.  Anti-establishment narratives sparked during the pandemic continue to circulate and take on new forms in online spaces today.

Beyond the key topics outlined by OppAttune - vaccination, migration, silent narratives and protectionism - this report provides evidence that climate change and gender are emerging as key topics around which new extremist narratives and conspiracy theories tend to gravitate in Europe today.

In its efforts to identify the key online spaces in which extremist narratives occur, the report finds that these move across a wide range of online spaces ranging from well-known global social media platforms to more fringe and country-specific sites operating at the margins of the digital mainstream. These range from alternative news sites, websites and blogs to fringe video sharing platforms such as Rumble, BitChute, Odysee; the online messaging services Telegram, Discord and Viber; discussion forums like Reddit and mainstream social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. Some of the online platforms identified are specific to the national contexts. In the Swedish landscape of online media discussion forums Flashback Forum and Familjeliv along with SwebbTube emerge as prominent conduits for extremist narratives and divisive discourse. Specific to the context of Bulgaria are Spodeli, Kaldata, Dir and BG-Mamma, all of which are online forums affording anonymous and relatively unmoderated discussions.

In addition, focusing on the transnational and multi-language forum Reddit, the report provides preliminary analytical insights into the dynamics of online discussions on migration among ordinary citizens in the three countries. These empirical insights suggest that extremist narratives proliferate across the three subreddits and provide ample evidence of the increasing penetration of exclusionary and stigmatising discourse into the digital mainstream. 

This paper traces the recent turn to humour, irony and ambiguity embodied in the adaptation of memes into the repertoire of online propaganda of the militant neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance Movement; in a process, we dub the ‘memefication’ of white supremacism. Drawing on a combination of quantitative visual content analysis (VCA) and in-depth visual analysis focused on iconography and symbolism, we explore all memes (N = 634) created and circulated by the group around the 2018 general elections in the country. The analysis proceeds in two steps: First, we present the results of the VCA in which we identified five thematic categories of memes crafting white supremacy, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny and anti-Semitic ideas onto esoteric and popular culture iconography then to map these across a matrix of content and form. We then proceed to the analysis of the cluster of memes coded as violent to explore the iconography and symbolism used to promote violence and death threats and render them banal. We draw on a range of recent scholarship on the entanglement of memes in the rise of the far- right and engage critical perspectives on the necropower of fascism to explore the interplay between ambiguous, playful and jokey imagery on the one hand and the murder fantasies and serious threat of white supremacist violence at the heart of neo- Nazi ideology, on the other.

This comparative case study of the Freedom Movement in Sweden and the Freedom Convoy in Canada provides insights into the processes of transnationalization involved in the (re)production of far-right narratives around the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the online media of these protest movements we explore the extent to which the political and cultural context shaped far-right meta narratives and more universal concerns around the pandemic. The study finds significant similarities in how protest narratives in the two countries were constructed and appropriated to intersect with far-right extremism and anti-establishment ideas but also that these narratives were repurposed to make sense in two national contexts characterized by stark differences in the level of restrictions imposed and curtailment of civic rights. Unpacking the local/global intricacies of these narratives helps us understand the ubiquity of contemporary anti-government and anti-establishment discourse propelled by the far-right but also its malleability and flexibility in terms of how it is made to fit different political contexts and scenarios across liberal democracies. 

This study examines the media coverage of the #metoo movement in neighbouring countries Denmark and Sweden. A comparative content analysis shows differences in genres, sources and themes across the two samples. Further, the analysis shows that the coverage predomi- nantly positioned #metoo within an individual action frame portraying sexual assault as a personal rather than societal problem in both countries. However, the individual action frame and a delegitimising frame focused on critique of #metoo were more prevalent in the Danish coverage. A framing analysis revealed four different news frames in the coverage: #metoo as (1) an online campaign connecting networked individuals, (2) part of a broader and long-standing social movement for gender justice, (3) an unnecessary campaign fuelled by cultures of political correctness and, finally, (4) a witch hunt and “kangaroo court”. Finally, we discuss and relate these findings to the political and cultural contexts of the two countries and their different historical trajectories for the institutionalisation of feminism and implementation of gender equality policies.

Extended abstract

This paper explores the influencer practices of an online network of individuals, extra-parliamentary groups, and alternative media on the far-right, promoting content ranging from mainstream conservatism and ethnopluralism all the way to overtly white supremacist ideas. These actors vary in their beliefs and values on the far-right spectrum, but unite in their opposition to feminism, social justice, left-wing politics and mainstream media creating a collaborative ecosystem around these issues that Lewis (2020) dubs the “alternative influence network.” This study identifies central nodes in and maps the composition of the alternative influence network (AIN) on YouTube distinct to the context of Sweden. We ask: How are YouTube channels networked to form an AIN connecting the extra-parliamentarian far-right in Sweden? To what extent does the extra-parliamentarian far-right in Sweden connect across individual influencers, groups/organisations and alternative far-right news media?  How do actors in the network engage in influencers practices combining commercial (self-)branding strategies, marketing and monetization schemes with political propaganda techniques?   

The network analysis is based on a sample of YouTube channels which includes a combination of far-right groups (9), individual far-right influencers (32), and hyper-partisan/far-right alternative news media (11). In a first analytical step, drawing on the results of a network analysis of videos (n=8531), we show how these actors are connected by an interlocking series of connective practices including guest appearances on each other’s YouTube channels as well as a variety of referencing- and hyperlinking practices. We then take a qualitative case study approach to examine the influencer practices of central nodes in the network to provide an in-depth examination of the various ways political influencers on the far-right intersperse business strategies with political propagation techniques.  

The analysis demonstrates how, much like online influencers in any other field, these actors conform to the market logics of attentional economy of the platform society (Van Djick Poell and de Waahl 2018). We may understand these “Political influencers” as content creators repurposing influencer marketing techniques to impart ideological ideas to their audiences (Lewis 2018). Similar to other creators aiming to reach influencer status in the digital sphere, they attempt to self-brand as micro celebrities and build an online following, encouraging listeners to subscribe to their channels, like their content, and engage with it and the creators via the comment field. Creating deeply intimate connections with their followers enables AIN actors to promote far right ideas and conspiracy theories, in ways very similar to how a fashion influencer will promote their clothing style or brand. To boost engagement, AIN actors address timely and controversial events from a unique angle – in their case, often with a shocking/conspiratorial element and strategic use of controversy. This distinctiveness in approach is arguably what attracts their increasingly large follower base, in addition to strategically mixing in misinformation and disinformation which are found to engage with their novelty element, and hence possess a larger spreadability potential than factual information (Vosoughi et al. 2018). However, due to the added challenge of being forced to “dance around” YouTube policies and carefully toe the lines of legality and the platform’s Community Guidelines, AIN creators are required to be creative in their linking and reference practices if they want to stay on the platform.

A variety of different marketing and promotion techniques are at work just as the network of channels provide a window onto the broader commercial market of far-right merchandise in Sweden today. Although mostly unaffiliated with formal groups, actors in the so called “Swedish YouTube family” often stream wearing different forms of merchandise such as caps with AfS’ logo, t-shirts from Medborgerlig Samling or DFS and other attires produced and sold by actors on the extra parliamentarian far-right in Sweden today. Some channel hosts offer others in the network the opportunity to promote their products, events or news (e.g., on upcoming protests) in return for a fee. Others again use their channels as a platform for advertising specific products - anything from self-defense courses and pepper spray to protein powder and fruit juice – and promote brands or companies that either sponsor the channel or that the actors themselves are directly involved in.   

There is a widespread feeling that globalization represents a major system change that has or should have brought world society to the forefront of international relations theory. Nonetheless, world society remains an amorphous and undertheorized concept, and its potential role in shaping the structure of the international society of states has scarcely been raised. We build on Buzan's (2018, 2) master concept of ‘integrated’ world society (‘a label to describe the merger of world and interstate society’) to locate the integration of world society in the globalization of social networks. Following the advice of Buzan (2001) and Williams (2014), we use conceptual frameworks from international political economy to systematically explore the structure of integrated world society along six dimensions derived from Mann (1986) and Strange (1988): military/security, political, economic/production, credit, knowledge, and ideological. Our empirical survey suggests that, on each of these dimensions, power has centralized as it has globalized, generating steep global hierarchies in world society that are similar to those that characterize national societies. The centrality of the United States in the networks of world society makes it in effect the ‘central state’ of a new kind of international society that is endogenized within integrated world society.

This special issue of PARSE Journal is the result of a collaborative project, with “conviviality” and “contamination” as inspirational but not delimiting concepts. It has been carried out by an international group of twelve artists and academics, writers and researchers, who came together in the autumn of 2022 to generate the body of work presented in the volume.

The project began with transversal forms of writing as its main focus, with the original cohort of contributors all active at the interface of literary and academic writing. However, as the process developed and more participants were drawn into the project, sound emerged as a secondary focus and an alternative angle from which to approach the themes of conviviality and contamination. Overall, the contributions perhaps represent the contributors' own “hot compost pile” of voices, art forms and perspectives.

JORGE LUIS BORGES (1899–1986) är en av nittonhundratalets mest ikoniska förfat­tare. Hans berömmelse vilar både på den ny skapande litteratur han producerade under mer än ett halvt sekel och på mytologin kring hans liv: han var den unga avantgardisten, den utvalde huvudbibliotekarien vid nationalbib­lioteket i Buenos Aires, den stridbare Peron­-motståndaren som gjorde mer än ett politiskt snedsteg och, på ålderns höst, den blinde bar­den som fostrade en ny generation författare.

I nio essäer djupdyker Borgeskännaren Oscar Hemer i Borges liv och författarskap utifrån lika många perspektiv, till exempel kärle­ken till hemstaden Buenos Aires, de ideliga förälskelserna, fascinationen för den judiska mystiken och förhållandet till Sverige och Nobelpriset.

Idén till boken föddes under arbetet med de tre stora volymer med Jorge Luis Borges verk som Tranan givit ut under de senaste åren. Oscar Hemer — som varit en av redaktörerna och översättarna — började skriva en bok som kan ackompanjera läsningen av Borges egna texter, skriven i en på samma gång lärd och personlig stil.Boken kan ses som en pendang till de tre Borges-volymerna och fungerar både som fördjupning och läsguide, samtidigt som essäerna också är lättillgängliga och allmänbildande för den vanliga läsaren.

This chapter discusses three concepts—cosmopolitanism, conviviality and creolisation—that, although emanating from diverse historical and academic contexts, are clearly interrelated and, arguably, interdependent. Ivan Illich (Tools for Conviviality, New York: Perennial Library, 1973) envisioned a post-industrial convivial society of “autonomous individuals and primary groups” which resembles present-day manifestations of ‘convivialism’. Paul Gilroy (After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? London: Routledge, 2004) refashioned conviviality as a substitute for cosmopolitanism, denoting an ability to be ‘at ease’ in contexts of diversity. Rather than replacing one concept with the other, this chapter explores the interconnections between them. The urgency of today’s global predicament is a recurring reason to bring them in dialogue. From the perspective of Communication for Development, the as yet little explored axis between conviviality and creolisation is potentially the most interesting one.

This book is an experimental interrogation in the crossroads of literature and anthropology (fiction and ethnography). “Southern Crossings” refers to travels in the Global South, i. e. India and, primarily, South Africa, whereas “contaminations” invokes a supposed tradition of genre transgression and cross-over writing. The form aims at being congenial with the subject: an exploration of purity vs. impurity, or racialisation vs. creolisation, and a reflection on identity and boundaries, personal and collective. Close readings of Mary Douglas (Purity and Danger), Edouard Glissant (Poetics of Relation) and others (Appadurai, Coetzee, Zimitri Erasmus) are interfoliated with a fictional autoethnography in third person (and third gender), spanning from 2007 to 2018. Many anthropologists have tried literary or journalistic forms of expression, but this book is an unusual, if not unique, approach to anthropology from the literary writer’s position. It ambitiously competes on both literary and academic merits.

Strax före jul får syskonen Beyonce och Lasse ett överraskande sms: ”Nu har pappa och jag bestämt att vi reser bort några veckor. Ni är välkomna att bo i Sandäng medan vi är borta. Det finns mat i kylen. Puss. Mamma”.

Åtta månader senare är Leo och Tania fortfarande spårlöst försvunna. Men alla löpande räkningar betalas per autogiro, till och med ICA-kortet fylls på automatiskt varje månad. Lasse är kvar i huset på Österlen efter att ha svultit sig genom en snövinter som lokalt skördade fler liv än pandemin. Beyonce, hans räddare i nöden, kommer nu tillbaka från Christiania och flyttar in med sin katt i föräldrarnas sovrum. 

Familj är en roman om den i grunden slumpmässiga fusion av två individers gener, förhoppningar och minnen som i sin tur är produkter av slumpmässiga kombinationer av ärvda och förvärvade egenskaper och erfarenheter i två eller tre led – så länge det levande minnet varar. Ramhandlingen utspelar sig pandemiåret 2020 på Österlen, men berättelsen sträcker sig över tre generationer och tre kontinenter till bland annat sjuttiotalets Tanzania och den finska krigsvintern 1939-40.

More than a quarter of a century since Nelson Mandela became the country’s first democratically elected president, the racial categories of apartheid live on in South Africa. The proud vision of the “Rainbow Nation” is now being challenged by various forms of populism, with racial thinking as the common denominator. How can one advocate for non-racism and cosmopolitanism—in South Africa and the world—without being perceived as a defender of the privileges of the white minority? Oscar Hemer, Professor of the Arts at Malmö University, considers these questions in discussion with South African author colleagues Masande Ntshanga, Ivan Vladislavić and Bronwyn Law-Viljoen.

On his fourteenth journey to South Africa, Oscar Hemer repeatedly comes across the casual expression “going to the dogs” and starts reflecting on dogs and other companion species with regards to his ongoing exploration of “speculative anthropology”. When does something go to the dogs? Is there a correlation between contaminated diversity and decline? Even though contamination may appear to be a hopeless motto for political mobilisation at present, he arrives at the conclusion that it is the only option for a country—and a planet—increasingly pressured by essentialisms of multiple varieties that all counteract the fine balance of everyday conviviality.

The chronological travel account from March 2022 is juxtaposed with a parallel text, written before and after (October in Berlin), which from a slightly altered perspective reflects on the process and the form of the “Conviviality and Contamination” project.

This chapter assumes that the globally resurging nationalism, identity politics and xenophobia may be explicated by the conceptual dichotomy Purity-Impurity. South Africa is an especially apt case for such analysis. Twenty-five years after the transition, its inhabitants are still divided according to the apartheid categories and very modest progress has been made in breaking former barriers and changing attitudes. Yet, whereas apartheid was one of the foremost applications of a “politics of purity”, the Western Cape has also historically been one of the epicentres of creolisation. By means of an experimental cross-genre (literary and academic) approach, the apartheid vision of “separate development” is here interrogated as suppressed creolisation. The chapter is an abbreviated excerpt from a forthcoming diptych on creolisation vs. racialisation in South Africa.

With the 2015 refugee migration and its aftermath as a main reference and focal point, this anthology uses Conviviality as a lens to examine the current challenges to democracy. Conviviality and the inter-related concepts Cosmopolitanism and Creolisation are assumed to provide tools for analysis as well as forms for “cross-cutting communication”. Originally introduced by Ivan Illich (1973), conviviality was re-launched and re-defined by Paul Gilroy (2004) against a backdrop of social, racial and religious tensions in post-imperial Britain, denoting an ability to be at ease in the presence of diversity without restaging communitarian conceptions of ethnic and racial difference, and has subsequently been refined to provide “an analytical tool to ask and explore in what ways, and under what conditions, people constructively create modes of togetherness” (Nowicka & Vertovec 2014: 2). In Gilroy’s understanding conviviality was a substitute for cosmopolitanism, which in his view had been hijacked as a pretext for Western “supposedly benign imperialism” in the aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror (Gilroy 2004: 66). But rather than replacing one concept with the other, this anthology seeks to explore the interconnections – commonalities and differences – between cosmopolitanism and conviviality. Creolisation is the other supplementary concept, by constituting a valid alternative to conventional interpretations of cross-cultural contact and allowing agency and influence to hitherto marginal and subordinate cultures and peoples (Cohen and Toninato 2010).

The introductory chapter discusses conviviality in relation to the adjoining concepts cosmopolitanism and creolisation. Inspired by the Spanish term convivencia, Ivan Illich envisioned a post-industrial convivial society of “autonomous individuals and primary groups” (Illich 1973), which resembles present-day manifestations of “convivialism”. Paul Gilroy refashioned conviviality as a substitute for cosmopolitanism, denoting an ability to be ‘at ease’ in contexts of diversity (Gilroy 2004). Rather than replacing one concept with the other, this book seeks to explore the interconnections—commonalities and differences—between them. The urgency of today’s global predicament is the recurring argument in the discussion of all three concepts, and a further reason to bring them in dialogue. Whereas conviviality and cosmopolitanism are already tightly intertwined, creolisation is arguably a necessary complement to the other two.

This report gives an overview of the obstacles to political participation among mobile European Union (EU) citizens – people holding the citizenship of one Member State who have used their freedom of movement rights to live or work in another. It focuses on how their non-citizenship status in their country of residence, and external status relative to their country of citizenship, affects their ability and propensity to take part in elections in both countries. Drawing on an extensive body of research conducted for the FAIR-EU project, funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020), the report summarises and synthesises the findings of other FAIR-EU reports to give an overview of the obstacles to electoral participation amongst mobile EU citizens, and the extent to which these impede their propensity to vote and participate in public life.

The inventory catalogues sources of official information on turnout and electoral registration for the two most European Parliament elections, prior to 1 January 2019 (generally 2009 and 2014, except for Croatia). This inventory was funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020). The content of this inventory represents the views of the authors only and is their sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia's party system has suffered a difficult and turbulent infancy. Moscow based parties have had only very limited territorial penetration, and fragmentation has been one of its most significant features. Based on extensive fieldwork in three Russian regions, this book examines the development of the country's party system and the role played by parties in regional politics. Using a comparative approach, it scrutinises the internal structures and activities of the parties, looks at their decision-making processes, their everyday party life, the activities of party members, and the role of regional party organisations in federal and local election campaigns.

The inventory catalogues available sources of official information on turnout and electoral registration amongst mobile EU citizens for the two most European Parliament elections, prior to 1 January 2019 (2009 and 2014, except for Croatia in 2013) and the most recent municipal elections to which Directive 94/80/EC applied, prior to 1 January 2019. This inventory was funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020). The content of this inventory represents the views of the authors only and is their sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

The inventory catalogues sources of official information on turnout and electoral registration for the most recent elections to which EU Directive 94/80/EC applies, prior to 1 January 2019. This inventory was funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020). The content of this inventory represents the views of the authors only and is their sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

Democracy is one of the fundamental values of the European Union (EU). The starting point of democracy is that it represents ‘rule of the people’. But which people should be represented? In this report, particular focus is on the representation of ‘mobile EU citizens’ – the 14.3 million people of voting age holding the citizenship of one Member State and living and working in another. With a particular focus on supra- and sub-national elections, it first looks at the scope and enactment of Directives 93/109/EC (EP elections) and 94/80/EC (municipal elections) that in principle grant mobile EU citizens the right to vote on the same terms as national citizens of their countries of residence. Thereafter, based on the most comprehensive database hitherto, it examines the available information on registration and turnout rates amongst mobile EU voters in the most recent municipal elections and EP elections prior to 2019 in each Member State. Finally, it examines the available registration and turnout data of mobile EU voters in depth in a selection of key countries. Based on these three levels of analysis, conclusions are drawn about the representation of mobile EU, and policy suggestions are made based on them. 

Conviviality has lately become a catchword not only in academia but also among political activists. This open access book discusses conviviality in relation to the adjoining concepts cosmopolitanism and creolisation. The urgency of today’s global predicament is not only an argument for the revival of all three concepts, but also a reason to bring them into dialogue. Ivan Illich envisioned a post-industrial convivial society of ‘autonomous individuals and primary groups’ (Illich 1973), which resembles present-day manifestations of ‘convivialism’. Paul Gilroy refashioned conviviality as a substitute for cosmopolitanism, denoting an ability to be ‘at ease’ in contexts of diversity (Gilroy 2004). Rather than replacing one concept with the other, the fourteen contributors to this book seek to explore the interconnections – commonalities and differences – between them, suggesting that creolisation is a necessary complement to the already-intertwined concepts of conviviality and cosmopolitanism. Although this volume takes northern Europe as its focus, the contributors take care to put each situation in historical and global contexts in the interests of moving beyond the binary thinking that prevails in terms of methodologies, analytical concepts, and political implementations.

An increasingly organized culture of hate is flourishing in today’s online spaces, posing a serious challenge for democratic societies. Our study seeks to unravel the work-ings of online hate on popular social media and assess the practices, potentialities, and limitations of organized counterspeech to stymie the spread of hate online. This article is based on a case study of an organized “troll army” of online hate speech in Germany, Re-conquista Germanica, and the counterspeech initiative Reconquista Internet. Conducting a qualitative content analysis, we first unpack the strategies and stated intentions behind organized hate speech and counterspeech groups as articulated in their internal strategic documents. We then explore how and to what extent such strategies take shape in online media practices, focusing on the interplay between users spreading hate and users counter-speaking in the comment sections of German news articles on Facebook. The analysis draws on a multi-dimensional framework for studying social media engagement (Uldam & Kaun, 2019) with a focus on practices and discourses and turns to Mouffe’s (2005) con-cepts of political antagonism and agonism to operationalize and deepen the discursive di-mension. The study shows that the interactions between the two opposing camps are high-ly moralized, reflecting a post-political antagonistic battle between “good” and “evil” and showing limited signs of the potentials of counterspeech to foster productive agonism. The empirical data indicates that despite the promising intentions of rule-guided counter-speech, the counter efforts identified and scrutinized in this study predominantly fail to adhere to civic and moral standards and thus only spur on the destructive dynamics of digital hate culture.

Refugees are already a vulnerable group in society and are in a stressful situation due to their often uncertain legal status in seeking asylum and integration in the new society after migration. Refugees are, in general, at greater risk of poor health outcomes when contracting Covid-19, exacerbated by poor living conditions and difficulties in accessing healthcare. The longer-term social consequences of the pandemic also disproportionately impact refugees, including social isolation, unemployment and difficulties to obtain correct health information. The aim of this paper is to review the social and health consequences that Covid-19 has brought to the refugees residing in Sweden. This needs to be emphasized in order to mitigate against these likely consequences and improve the overall well-being among such a highly vulnerable group in society. As Covid-19 demonstrates, human health needs to be understood holistically, meaning that the vulnerability of any individuals, or even nations, is a vulnerability for the whole population requiring urgent action. 

Keywords: Covid-19, refugees, social situation, health information

This article presents the results of a study examining the self-perceived roles of journalists covering the #MeToo movement in Denmark and Sweden. Drawing on qualitative interviews with journalists, editors and activists (N = 20) and participant observation at various #MeToo events, we examine the professional journalism cultures underpinning differences in the coverage and the broader public debate spurred by the movement in the two countries. The analysis is informed by the theoretical framework of role performance [Mellado, C. 2015. “Professional Roles in News Content: Six Dimensions of Journalistic Role Performance”. Journalism Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2014.922276; Mellado, C., L. Hellmueller, and W. Donsbach. 2016. Journalistic Role Performance Concepts, Contexts, and Methods. Routledge) in combination with Tuchman’s (1972. “Objectivity as Strategic Ritual”. American Journal of Sociology 77 (4): 660–679) seminal work on “Objectivity as Strategic Ritual”. This combined framework enables an analysis of how journalists negotiate ideals of objective reporting and activist imperatives when covering the movement and issues of gender (in)equality more broadly. Our study shows that journalists, to a varying degree, felt torn between ideals of impartiality and objectivity and ideals of active reporting oriented towards action and problem-solving but that these experiences differed between the two countries and between newsrooms. We discuss these findings in light of differences in the political climates around issues related to gender in the two countries and partially diverging normative ideals and professional journalistic cultures regarding the extent to which journalism and activism can and should be combined.

Denne artikel præsenterer en undersøgelse af mediedækningen af #MeToo-bevægelsen inabolandene Danmark og Sverige. En komparativ indholdsanalyse viser forskelle i genrer,kilder og temaer på tværs af de to lande. Analysen viser endvidere, at dækningen overvejendeplacerede #MeToo inden for en individuel handlingsramme, der fremstiller seksuelle overgrebsom et personlig snarere end samfundsmæssigt problem i begge lande. Imidlertid var denindivid-orienterede handlings-frame og en de-legitimerende frame fokuseret på kritik af#MeToo mere udbredt i den danske dækning. En framing-analyse viste ydermere, at deroverordnet kunne observeres fire forskellige nyhedsframes i dækningen: #MeToo som 1)en online kampagne, der forbinder individer i et netværk af personlige vidnesbyrd, 2) en delaf en bredere og langvarig historisk social bevægelse for ligestilling mellem kønnene 3) enunødvendig kampagne drevet af politisk korrektheds-kultur og til sidst 4) en heksejagt og enfolkedomstol. Artiklen diskuterer disse resultater i relation til de politiske og kulturelle forholdpå køn- og ligestillingsområdet i de to lande.

This empirical chapter examines the experience of reporting on, and advocating around, the #MeToo movement 2.0 in Denmark and Sweden, two Scandinavian countries that are ranked among the most gender-equal societies in the world. The #MeToo debates developed in different directions in the two countries, as well as over different time trajectories since its revitalization in 2017. Using the metaphor of “voice(s),” what voices were heard or silenced in the years following the initial #MeToo debate? How were the whys and hows of reporting on sexual violence renegotiated in the post-#MeToo era? We use a mixed methods approach that draws on quantitative and qualitative content analysis; in-depth interviews with journalists, nongovernmental organizations, and activists in both countries (n = 20); participant observations from #MeToo events; and our own participation as expert sources in the coverage of the development of #MeToo in Denmark and Sweden. The study shows how the different patterns of silencing and speaking up illustrate a broader renegotiation of boundaries along two axes. The first axis relates to objectivity/subjectivity in journalistic practices, and the second axis links to the structural/individual foci in the reporting on issues related to sexual violence. However, these renegotiations are highly contextual and intertwined with the political context and civil societal structures in Denmark and Sweden.

During the 1992–95 war, the vast majority of people in Bosnia and Herzegovina relied on international humanitarian assistance for survival. Material goods sent as humanitarian aid were crucial to the civilians trapped in Sara-jevo under siege. This chapter presents what some of the residents remember and how they talk about it two decades later. The analysis pursues how the act of narration of a particular person–object interaction activates corporeal memories and establishes affective links – resonances in the body and mind – between then (when the experience was acquired) and now (when one narrates it), between what the research participants talked about (their humanitarian aid-related experiences), and how they talked about it (affects that were revived in the course of narration). The vivid descriptions of sensual experiences concerning humanitarian aid – the tastes and smells of food and feel of clothing items received from distant donors – witness to the lingering sensual effects those experiences still have today.

This chapter contributes to the literature that seeks to understand the social and political developments of Refugees Welcome initiatives beyond the immediacy of 2015 “crisis”. Based on interviews conducted in 2018 with activists who hold leading positions in the national umbrella organisation Refugees Welcome Sweden, the chapter presents the analysis of their perceptions and self-reflections on engagement with refugees and on working for a humane asylum politics. It exemplifies how the moral and political dimensions of cosmopolitanism are intertwined in pointing to the universal aim of equality and at the same time demanding that it is realised locally. While none of our interviewees employed the notion of cosmopolitanism, they outlined a normative order that emerges as a political project towards a reconstruction of society along lines of equality and justice.

The authors take on a problem that many departments in Sweden, not least in the humanities, are dealing with right now: language. They show how social status in academia is decoupled from linguistic integration, at least if we understand status in terms of academic titles. Feelings of insufficiency and incompleteness are, however, prevalent, even among those whose Swedish proficiency is objectively very high. The authors underline the value of language, how competence in English, Swedish, and other languages is crucial for academics’ possibilities to work and build careers.