Associate Professor, School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University Address: http://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/persons/tina-askanius(7a764ced-de86-400f-94e0-a1da3db5d1f0).html
An increasingly organized culture of hate is flourishing in today’s online spaces, posing a serio... more 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 workings 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, Reconquista 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 counterspeaking in the comment sections of German news articles on Facebook. The analysis draws on a multi-dimensional ...
This study examines the social, political, and fantasmatic logics involved in the production of c... more This study examines the social, political, and fantasmatic logics involved in the production of contemporary discourses about Scandinavia as a symbolic site and imagined place of sexual and moral decay and as a gender dysphoric dystopia by actors in the global anti-gender movement. Empirically, we draw on a rich digital archive of multi-modal media texts from an ongoing research project on anti-gender movements in Russia and Germany – two countries which provide particularly poignant examples of sites in which this mode of anti-gender propaganda is currently on the rise. In the analysis, we explore the discursive workings of a particularly prominent node in the material – that of the vulnerable child – and show how this figure is construed and instrumentalised to add urgency and fuel outrage among domestic audiences in Russia and Germany.
This article focuses on fan experiences of place in the Scandinavian crime series The Bridge (Bro... more This article focuses on fan experiences of place in the Scandinavian crime series The Bridge (Bron||Broen). It offers four in-depth portraits of fans representing different modes of engaging with geographies of the imagination based on participant observations and qualitative semi-structured interviews with 80 audience members conducted in Denmark, Sweden and the UK. The analysis draws attention to fans’ emotional engagement with the show, and to how the experience of the media location of a drama set in the borderland between Denmark and Sweden induces a ‘sense of place’ in fans’ imagination. Based on the analysis of fans’ experience of place in the drama and the emotional landscapes of Scandinavian crime fiction more broadly, the article engages in a broader discussion of the significance and contingency of place to fans’ emotional experience of television drama. I argue that the relationship between media fandom and sites of media production is best understood in terms of a serie...
Oresundsregionen som imaginar plats och utopiskt gransland : Den dansk-svenska publikens upplevel... more Oresundsregionen som imaginar plats och utopiskt gransland : Den dansk-svenska publikens upplevelse av TV-serien Bron
By situating debates on the virtues and limitations of practice theory in relation to the specifi... more 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 ...
An increasingly organized culture of hate is flourishing in today’s online spaces, posing a serio... more 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 workings 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, Reconquista 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 counterspeaking in the comment sections of German news articles on Facebook. The analysis draws on a multi-dimensional ...
This study examines the social, political, and fantasmatic logics involved in the production of c... more This study examines the social, political, and fantasmatic logics involved in the production of contemporary discourses about Scandinavia as a symbolic site and imagined place of sexual and moral decay and as a gender dysphoric dystopia by actors in the global anti-gender movement. Empirically, we draw on a rich digital archive of multi-modal media texts from an ongoing research project on anti-gender movements in Russia and Germany – two countries which provide particularly poignant examples of sites in which this mode of anti-gender propaganda is currently on the rise. In the analysis, we explore the discursive workings of a particularly prominent node in the material – that of the vulnerable child – and show how this figure is construed and instrumentalised to add urgency and fuel outrage among domestic audiences in Russia and Germany.
This article focuses on fan experiences of place in the Scandinavian crime series The Bridge (Bro... more This article focuses on fan experiences of place in the Scandinavian crime series The Bridge (Bron||Broen). It offers four in-depth portraits of fans representing different modes of engaging with geographies of the imagination based on participant observations and qualitative semi-structured interviews with 80 audience members conducted in Denmark, Sweden and the UK. The analysis draws attention to fans’ emotional engagement with the show, and to how the experience of the media location of a drama set in the borderland between Denmark and Sweden induces a ‘sense of place’ in fans’ imagination. Based on the analysis of fans’ experience of place in the drama and the emotional landscapes of Scandinavian crime fiction more broadly, the article engages in a broader discussion of the significance and contingency of place to fans’ emotional experience of television drama. I argue that the relationship between media fandom and sites of media production is best understood in terms of a serie...
Oresundsregionen som imaginar plats och utopiskt gransland : Den dansk-svenska publikens upplevel... more Oresundsregionen som imaginar plats och utopiskt gransland : Den dansk-svenska publikens upplevelse av TV-serien Bron
By situating debates on the virtues and limitations of practice theory in relation to the specifi... more 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 ...
Contemporary forms of political activism are increasingly digitalized and performed in ways that ... more Contemporary forms of political activism are increasingly digitalized and performed in ways that traverse online and offline spaces and modes of engagement. The past decade has for example seen a considerable rise in digital forms of feminist action, leading some scholars and observers to declare the birth of a so-called ‘fourth wave of feminism’ that is intrinsically linked to the use of social media. This talk focuses on recent cases of so-called hashtag feminism on Twitter addressing rape culture to illustrate some of the important changes taking place in political activism in terms of how networked digital media are transforming feminist discourse and movements in remarkable and unforeseen ways.
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Papers by Tina Askanius