Extremist narratives in the digital mainstream: Exploring online discussions about migration in Sweden

Jullietta Stoencheva; Biljana Mileva Boshkoska

doi:10.7146/mk.v40i77.141525

Authors

Jullietta Stoencheva Malmö University https://orcid.org/0009-0008-0275-5606
Biljana Mileva Boshkoska Jožef Stefan Institute https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1137-9795

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/mk.v40i77.141525

Keywords:

Extremist narratives, immigration, topic modelling, narrative analysis, social identity theory, everyday extremism

Abstract

This article employs a mixed-methods approach to explore the narrative articulation of crises in discussions around immigration and integration on Flashback Forum in Sweden. Using a combination of topic modelling and narrative analysis, it follows a two-step research design. First, topic modelling helps to identify key topics in the data and select a corpus for qualitative analysis. Second, drawing on Berger’s (2018) extremist crisis typology, we explore the crisis-narrative constructions around these topics, highlighting the extremist components within these. Our findings show that the prevalent topics in these discussions are not about immigration per se – rather, they address societal issues where perceived crises with immigration at their root are articulated in terms of how they disrupt everyday life in Sweden. Our analysis reveals how mundane concerns around immigration ventilated on Flashback mix with overtly extremist discourse and conspiracy beliefs, explicating Flashback as a site of everyday extremism.

Author Biographies

Jullietta Stoencheva, Malmö University

Jullietta Stoencheva is a PhD candidate in Media and Communication Studies at Malmö University, Sweden. Her PhD project “Everyday Extremism in Sweden and Bulgaria” seeks to assess how extremist narratives are popularised and normalised in these countries through the interplay between online and offline mediated activities, and map the ways in which these travel between fringe, radical online communities, transcend into mainstream spaces, and contribute to (potentially violent) direct actions in local ecologies.

Biljana Mileva Boshkoska, Jožef Stefan Institute

Prof. Biljana Mileva Boshkoska is a leading expert in decision support systems and machine learning. She heads an AI lab at the Faculty of Information Studies and conducts research at the Jožef Stefan Institute in Slovenia. Her research includes more than sixty publications and more than thirty project involvements in the field of AI.

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Extremist narratives in the digital mainstream

Exploring online discussions about migration in Sweden

Authors

DOI:

Keywords:

Abstract

Author Biographies

Jullietta Stoencheva, Malmö University

Biljana Mileva Boshkoska, Jožef Stefan Institute

References

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