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Tina Askanius

Malmö University, School of Arts and Communication, Faculty Member

Lund University, Communication and Media, Post-Doc

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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

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Friedrich Krotz

Universität Bremen

Franziska Thiele

Universität Greifswald

Alexander Godulla

University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart

Klaus-Dieter Altmeppen

Koç University

Päivi Korpisaari

University of Helsinki

University of Zurich, Switzerland

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Papers by Tina Askanius

Combatting hate and trolling with love and reason? A qualitative analysis of the discursive antagonisms between organized hate speech and counterspeech online

Studies in Communication and Media, 2020

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 ...

Citizen media and social movements studies

Routledge, 2020

Raping turtles and kidnapping children: Fantasmatic logics of Scandinavia in Russian and German anti-gender discourse

Nordic Journal of Media Studies

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.

Citizen media and social movements studies

Raping turtles and kidnapping children: Fantasmatic logics of Scandinavia in Russian and German anti-gender discourse

Nordic journal of media studies, Jun 1, 2023

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.

#Metoo as a critical incident - voices, silencing and reckoning in Denmark and Sweden

Routledge, Oct 15, 2021

Market Radicalization: Exploring Reversed Co-optation in Far-Right Consumer Culture

ACR North American Advances, Oct 4, 2020

#MeToo 2.0 as Critical Incident. Voices, Silencing and Reckoning in Denmark and Sweden

Reporting on sexual violence in the #metoo era., 2022

Andrea Baker and Usha Rodrigues (eds.)

The activist journalist and the norm of objectivity:the case of #metoo

Journalism's various crises have been well-documented, such as lack of credibility and a decline ... more Journalism's various crises have been well-documented, such as lack of credibility and a decline in its active role in the democratic process, but there has been a lack of constructive response or research into solutions to its problems. There is evidence of a growing audience for live, face-to-face events. This article reviews past and present relationships between journalism and the stage and uses them as a springboard to introduce the concept of News Theatre. It configures a version of Habermas's public space/sphere as a new locus for this kind of open journalism, performed to the public. In an age of confused news literacy, it presents examples to show how face-to-face journalism might be successful in helping to re-establishing its status and role in society as truth-teller. It argues that human intervention is now required to restore journalism's authority and contends that journalism should consider communicating face-to-face, in order to rediscover its audience, by meeting them, in person. The paper points the way towards rebuilding communities of readers, strengthening the relationship between news, public and performance. The paper makes the historical connection between earliest known formats of News Theatre, from town crier, through revolutionary theatre in Russia and China and Living Newspapers of last century, to today's experiments in event journalism around the world. It uses a theoretical framework to consider the role of audience as activists. It redefines the boundaries between journalism, theatre and political activism, and proposes a model which might help towards sustaining journalism for the future, while rediscovering the public sphere, through 'News Theatre.'

Audience engagement with The Bridge : cultural citizenship, Øresund utopianism and audiences as regionauts

Women in the Nordic Resistance Movement and their online media practices: between internalised misogyny and “embedded feminism”

Feminist Media Studies, 2021

This paper is based on a case study of the online media practices of the neo-Nazi organisation, t... more 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.

“It feels like home, this is my Malmö” : Place, media location and fan experiences of The Bridge

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...

Genealogía del vídeo para el cambio. Videoactivismo y vídeo radical online

Akademin och aktivismen: samhällsvetarens politiska engagemang

Öresundsregionen som imaginär plats och utopiskt gränsland : Den dansk-svenska publikens upplevelse av tv-serien Bron

Oresundsregionen som imaginar plats och utopiskt gransland : Den dansk-svenska publikens upplevel... more

Press Coverage of the Refugee and Migrant Crisis in the EU: A Content Analysis of Five European Countries

In 2014, more than 200,000 refugees and migrants fled for safety across the Mediterranean Sea. Cr... more In 2014, more than 200,000 refugees and migrants fled for safety across the Mediterranean Sea. Crammed into overcrowded, unsafe boats, thousands drowned, prompting the Pope to warn that the sea was becoming a mass graveyard. The early months of 2015 saw no respite. In April alone more than 1,300 people drowned. This led to a large public outcry to increase rescue operations. Throughout this period, UNHCR and other humanitarian organisations, engaged in a series of largescale media advocacy exercises, aiming at convincing European countries to do more to help. It was crucial work, setting the tone for the dramatic rise in attention to the refugee crisis that followed in the second half of 2015. But the media was far from united in its response. While some outlets joined the call for more assistance, others were unsympathetic, arguing against increasing rescue operations. To learn why, UNHCR commissioned a report by the Cardiff School of Journalism to explore what was driving media coverage in five different European countries: Spain, Italy, Germany, the UK and Sweden. Researchers combed through thousands of articles written in 2014 and early 2015, revealing a number of important findings for future media advocacy campaigns. Most importantly, they found major differences between countries, in terms of the sources journalists used (domestic politicians, foreign politicians, citizens, or NGOs), the language they employed, the reasons they gave for the rise in refugee flows, and the solutions they suggested. Germany and Sweden, for example, overwhelmingly used the terms 'refugee' or 'asylum seeker', while Italy and the UK press preferred the word 'migrant'. In Spain, the dominant term was 'immigrant'. These terms had an important impact on the tenor of each country's debate. Media also differed widely in terms of the predominant themes to their coverage. For instance, humanitarian themes were more common in Italian coverage than in British, German or Spanish press. Threat themes (such as to the welfare system, or cultural threats) were the most prevalent in Italy, Spain and Britain.

Digitala medier, motoffentligheter och våldsbejakande extremism

Chapter in Repor

(Social) media time, connective memory and activist television histories

Social Media Materialities and Protest, 2018

Reporting on white supremacy: Challenges of amplification, legitimization and mainstreaming for political journalism

The Routledge Companion to Political Journalism, 2021

Video activism as technology, text, testimony – or practices?

Citizen Media and Practice, 2019

By situating debates on the virtues and limitations of practice theory in relation to the specifi... more

Combatting hate and trolling with love and reason? A qualitative analysis of the discursive antagonisms between organized hate speech and counterspeech online

Studies in Communication and Media, 2020

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 ...

Citizen media and social movements studies

Routledge, 2020

Raping turtles and kidnapping children: Fantasmatic logics of Scandinavia in Russian and German anti-gender discourse

Nordic Journal of Media Studies

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.

Citizen media and social movements studies

Raping turtles and kidnapping children: Fantasmatic logics of Scandinavia in Russian and German anti-gender discourse

Nordic journal of media studies, Jun 1, 2023

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.

#Metoo as a critical incident - voices, silencing and reckoning in Denmark and Sweden

Routledge, Oct 15, 2021

Market Radicalization: Exploring Reversed Co-optation in Far-Right Consumer Culture

ACR North American Advances, Oct 4, 2020

#MeToo 2.0 as Critical Incident. Voices, Silencing and Reckoning in Denmark and Sweden

Reporting on sexual violence in the #metoo era., 2022

Andrea Baker and Usha Rodrigues (eds.)

The activist journalist and the norm of objectivity:the case of #metoo

Journalism's various crises have been well-documented, such as lack of credibility and a decline ... more Journalism's various crises have been well-documented, such as lack of credibility and a decline in its active role in the democratic process, but there has been a lack of constructive response or research into solutions to its problems. There is evidence of a growing audience for live, face-to-face events. This article reviews past and present relationships between journalism and the stage and uses them as a springboard to introduce the concept of News Theatre. It configures a version of Habermas's public space/sphere as a new locus for this kind of open journalism, performed to the public. In an age of confused news literacy, it presents examples to show how face-to-face journalism might be successful in helping to re-establishing its status and role in society as truth-teller. It argues that human intervention is now required to restore journalism's authority and contends that journalism should consider communicating face-to-face, in order to rediscover its audience, by meeting them, in person. The paper points the way towards rebuilding communities of readers, strengthening the relationship between news, public and performance. The paper makes the historical connection between earliest known formats of News Theatre, from town crier, through revolutionary theatre in Russia and China and Living Newspapers of last century, to today's experiments in event journalism around the world. It uses a theoretical framework to consider the role of audience as activists. It redefines the boundaries between journalism, theatre and political activism, and proposes a model which might help towards sustaining journalism for the future, while rediscovering the public sphere, through 'News Theatre.'

Audience engagement with The Bridge : cultural citizenship, Øresund utopianism and audiences as regionauts

Women in the Nordic Resistance Movement and their online media practices: between internalised misogyny and “embedded feminism”

Feminist Media Studies, 2021

This paper is based on a case study of the online media practices of the neo-Nazi organisation, t... more 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.

“It feels like home, this is my Malmö” : Place, media location and fan experiences of The Bridge

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...

Genealogía del vídeo para el cambio. Videoactivismo y vídeo radical online

Akademin och aktivismen: samhällsvetarens politiska engagemang

Öresundsregionen som imaginär plats och utopiskt gränsland : Den dansk-svenska publikens upplevelse av tv-serien Bron

Oresundsregionen som imaginar plats och utopiskt gransland : Den dansk-svenska publikens upplevel... more

Press Coverage of the Refugee and Migrant Crisis in the EU: A Content Analysis of Five European Countries

In 2014, more than 200,000 refugees and migrants fled for safety across the Mediterranean Sea. Cr... more In 2014, more than 200,000 refugees and migrants fled for safety across the Mediterranean Sea. Crammed into overcrowded, unsafe boats, thousands drowned, prompting the Pope to warn that the sea was becoming a mass graveyard. The early months of 2015 saw no respite. In April alone more than 1,300 people drowned. This led to a large public outcry to increase rescue operations. Throughout this period, UNHCR and other humanitarian organisations, engaged in a series of largescale media advocacy exercises, aiming at convincing European countries to do more to help. It was crucial work, setting the tone for the dramatic rise in attention to the refugee crisis that followed in the second half of 2015. But the media was far from united in its response. While some outlets joined the call for more assistance, others were unsympathetic, arguing against increasing rescue operations. To learn why, UNHCR commissioned a report by the Cardiff School of Journalism to explore what was driving media coverage in five different European countries: Spain, Italy, Germany, the UK and Sweden. Researchers combed through thousands of articles written in 2014 and early 2015, revealing a number of important findings for future media advocacy campaigns. Most importantly, they found major differences between countries, in terms of the sources journalists used (domestic politicians, foreign politicians, citizens, or NGOs), the language they employed, the reasons they gave for the rise in refugee flows, and the solutions they suggested. Germany and Sweden, for example, overwhelmingly used the terms 'refugee' or 'asylum seeker', while Italy and the UK press preferred the word 'migrant'. In Spain, the dominant term was 'immigrant'. These terms had an important impact on the tenor of each country's debate. Media also differed widely in terms of the predominant themes to their coverage. For instance, humanitarian themes were more common in Italian coverage than in British, German or Spanish press. Threat themes (such as to the welfare system, or cultural threats) were the most prevalent in Italy, Spain and Britain.

Digitala medier, motoffentligheter och våldsbejakande extremism

Chapter in Repor

(Social) media time, connective memory and activist television histories

Social Media Materialities and Protest, 2018

Reporting on white supremacy: Challenges of amplification, legitimization and mainstreaming for political journalism

The Routledge Companion to Political Journalism, 2021

Video activism as technology, text, testimony – or practices?

Citizen Media and Practice, 2019

By situating debates on the virtues and limitations of practice theory in relation to the specifi... more

Video activism as technology, text, testemony - or practices?

Citizen Media and Practice. Currents, Connections Critiques., 2019

(Social) media Memory, Connective Memory and Activist Television Histories: The Case of TV Stop (1987- 2005)

Social Media Materialities and Protest Critical Reflections, 2018

Digitala medier, motoffentligheter och våldsbejakande extremism

Digitala medier, motoffentligheter och våldsbejakande extremism 325 Digitala medier, motoffentlig... more Digitala medier, motoffentligheter och våldsbejakande extremism 325 Digitala medier, motoffentligheter och våldsbejakande extremism SOU 2017:67 326 Digitala medier, motoffentligheter och våldsbejakande extremism SOU 2017:67 328 SOU 2017:67 Digitala medier, motoffentligheter och våldsbejakande extremism 349 SOU 2017:67 Digitala medier, motoffentligheter och våldsbejakande extremism 351

Rape culture, digital connectivity and hashtag feminism

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.