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SAMRISK-2-Samfunnssikkerhet og risiko

Far right politics online and societal resilience

Alternative title: Høyreekstremisme og høyreradikalisme på nett - hvordan påvirkes samfunnet?

Awarded: NOK 12.0 mill.

Online media has created novel opportunities for the production and distribution of content from the far-right, as well as the mobilizing capacity. FREXO examines the broader societal and political impact of this development. In the project the term far-right is used to describe political parties, organizations and groups that can be placed on the right side of the conservative right. On the one hand FREXO studies how the far-right, including alternative media, activists, groups and organizations, create and share content on online platforms. On the other hand, we investigate the effects of far-right content on the general public and targeted groups, such as ethnic and religious minorities. The project compares the situation in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The studies in the project provide a broad and complex picture of right-wing alternative media in the Scandinavian public. Although right-wing alternative media are relatively marginal in terms of readership, they often have high visibility on social media and compete for readers' attention and trust. The phenomenon is biggest in Sweden and smallest in Denmark, both in terms of the number of alternative actors and readership. In several scientific articles and as editors of two special issues on alternative media, the project has contributed with both theoretical and empirical insights into how we can understand alternative media and their relationships to the broader journalistic field, as well as what characterizes their audiences. Alternative media in some cases contribute positively to media diversity, nevertheless aggressive media criticism and alternative editorial practices lead to boundary negotiations and conflicts in the public. In an in-depth study from Norway, Ihlebæk and Figenschou (2022) investigate what happened when the editors in the alternative media, Resett and Document, applied for membership in the Editors' Association. The study sheds light on why the alternative actors wanted in, the reaction in the journalistic field, and what symbolic and material resources were at stake. Two different sub-studies have examined political attitudes and polarization in the Norwegian population linked to central right-wing populist themes. A study of citizens’ views of the 22nd of July ten years after, identified three divergent narratives of what the attacks were about: the “democracy narrative”, the “pluralist narrative and the “far-right narrative”. Support for these narratives varied with ideology, party affiliation and trust, which may create conditions for polarizations. Researchers within the project have also studied to what extent attitudes towards immigration have become more polarized over time, based on data from the Norwegian Election Study and the Integration Barometer in the period from 2001 to 2019. There is a tendency toward increasing polarization in attitudes towards Islam, but a reduction in polarization in relation to refugees. Attitudes toward Islam are also to an increasing degree linked to attitudes towards other contested political issues and to party affiliation. Two sub-studies zoom in on online debate in particular and political attitudes among participants. The analyses show that active online debaters are distinct from the rest of the population by placing themselves more on the political poles than others, and the Progress Party is particularly overrepresented. They are also slightly more immigration sceptic, and less concerned with climate and environmental issues. Online debate is in other words clearly polarized, and the far ends of the political spectrum dominate more, compared to other arenas for expression. An in-depth study of participants in particularly harsh online debates show that these can have different “projects”, and that a main distinction runs between those who have an ideological project and those who hold that they wish to contribute with “neutral” knowledge and enlightenment. The study demonstrates that it is important to distinguish between norm transgressions in terms of how something is expressed (language) and in what is expressed (meaning/content). Marjan Nadim’s article Making sense of hate: young Muslims’ understandings of online racism in Norway is based on qualitative interviews, and studies in-depth how online racism is understood and experienced. Online racism is experienced as massive and overt, but the nature of online communication creates a sense of control and distance for both the targets and perpetrators. The young Muslims’ ‘theories’ of the causes of online racism differ along two dimensions: the perceived intentionality of the perpetrators and the ordinary or exceptional nature of racism, yielding four distinct understandings of what online racism reflects: a racist Norway, exceptional racism, trolling and ignorance.

The primary aim of the FREXO project is to assess how online media affect both the mobilizing capacity and the broader societal and political impact of far right politics. The project is a fully comparative study of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and combines two sub-studies that examine how far right extremist groups (WP1) and hyper-partisan alternative media (WP2) produce and distribute content, with two sub-studies that study the impact of far right communication on public opinion (WP3), and the specific impact of far right online hate speech (WP4). FREXO employs a multi-method approach, combining content analysis, network analysis, survey methods and qualitative interviews. A separate WP (5) is dedicated to drawing out the theoretical and practical conclusions from the empirical studies, and to assess implications for the societal resilience of the Scandinavian countries. The research topics of FREXO are ethically demanding in terms of being politically and normatively sensitive, and concerns for anonymity and data security will be critical in all phases of the project. A crucial contribution of FREXO will be to study the impact of social media on both the capacity and the effects of far right politics, and to enhance reflection about counter-measures. Such knowledge is relevant to stakeholders such as the police, public officials, civil society organizations, and the media in developing strategies in relation to far right politics online. FREXO is interdisciplinary, including experts on far right extremism on the one hand, and experts on the public sphere, digital journalism, public opinion and hate speech, on the other, and it is based on cross-institutional cooperation between the Institute for Social Research, Center for Research of Extremism at the University of Oslo, and Oslo Metropolitan University. A strong and active international advisory board will enhance the capacity of the project to contribute to the international research front.

Publications from Cristin

Funding scheme:

SAMRISK-2-Samfunnssikkerhet og risiko