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        <title>Nordic Journal of Media Studies Feed</title>
        <link>https://sciendo.com/journal/NJMS</link>
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            <title>Nordic Journal of Media Studies Feed</title>
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        <copyright>All rights reserved 2026, University of Gothenburg Nordicom</copyright>
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            <title><![CDATA[Digital afterlives: Tracing the resurrection process of dead online cultures]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0007</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0007</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, we discuss the different dynamics of the resurrection process of “dead” online cultures and objects. We have previously defined four life phases of online objects (active, passive, zombie, haunting), and this article adds resurrection as activities which affect both alive and dead objects. We explore resurrection through three case studies: the Finnish online platform IRC-Galleria, short-form–video content platform Vine, and the gamified online community Habbo Hotel. Our findings are based on traces and evidence found on the web by using the clue method. We identify three distinct forms of resurrection process: the narrative resurrection, which never materialises; partial or resuscitative resurrection, where a passive object is revived; and complete resurrection of a dead object. Our approach focuses on theory and its applicability, while building on media archaeology, online culture, and social media studies.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
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        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Skateboarding memories and social (in)cohesion: Mediated subcultural memory and “grey” belonging]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0006</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0006</guid>
            <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, we investigate how Swedish ageing male and female skateboarders construct their subcultural past, present, and future, and how this is mediated. We are especially interested in how research participants use niche media and negotiate the subculture’s images of risk and youth. We pay special attention to how cultural memory is embodied, including how gendered and aged bodies matter in negotiating subcultural memory and belonging. Building on previous work on age in skateboarding culture (O’Connor, 2018), the findings suggest that “grey” practitioners may use their temporal capital not only to negotiate their belonging to the subculture but also to represent an evaluative gaze from the past. Media play a defining role, ranging from connecting to the community to creating and communicating subcultural values in “older” media, such as print magazines and niche VHS tapes, to fostering a more inclusive scene through self-produced video materials depicting practitioners.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
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            <title><![CDATA[The nostalgic (de)legitimation of sportswashing: Social media and legacy media reactions to the Saudi Arabian state takeover of Newcastle United]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0005</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0005</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

On 7 October 2021, a consortium led by the Saudi Public Investment Fund completed a takeover of Newcastle United Football Club. The takeover was both welcomed by many Newcastle fans and criticised as an act of sportswashing by other supporter groups, human rights groups, and media outlets. In this article, we explore the interaction between nostalgia and sportswashing in football discourse through an examination of social media and legacy media responses to the Saudi Arabian State takeover of Newcastle United Football Club. We explore how nostalgia was mobilised within the sports media landscape, with a focus on Twitter and British newspapers, to legitimise or dele-gitimise sportswashing in the year after the takeover. We argue that while nostalgia carries activist potential in the delegitimation of sportswashing, this is largely unrealised, as it occupies separate discursive spaces to hopeful forms of football support that choose to legitimise or ignore sports-washing.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Mediating the AIDS crisis. The affective and queer politics of cultural memory in film, television, and digital media]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0002</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0002</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, I examine how AIDS is remembered and mediated in popular culture by identifying three distinct waves of representation: contemporaneous portrayals in the 1980s and early 1990s, a first retrospective wave in the mid-2000s to early 2010s, and a second retrospective wave emerging from 2017 onwards. Drawing on theories of prosthetic memory, retroactivism, and reflective nostalgia, I propose this tripartite framework as a historiographical contribution that clarifies how mainstream film, television, and digital media have shaped AIDS memory over time. Using a purposive sample of widely circulated audiovisual works, the analysis shows how early representations relied on heteronormative respectability, how the first retrospective wave reintroduced the epidemic through melodrama and selective commemoration, and how the most recent wave expands the field through more intersectional and collective histories. I conclude the article by considering how digital platforms enable new, participatory forms of transnational remembrance.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[“Like a small trip back to the GDR”? East German evaluations of the television serial Weissensee and its authenticity in a dynamic discourse landscape]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0003</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0003</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, I take the example of the historical German television fiction success Weissensee and ask how East Germans have read and judged the way this serial constructed their past more than a decade after its television premiere. This question is raised against the background that Weissensee was produced at a time when all questions related to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) seemed to have been answered. In the meantime, the remembrance discourse has changed. Hall’s encoding/decoding model, Giddens’s identity theory, and Sabrow’s typology of memories of the GDR provided the theoretical framework. Empirically, this study draws on five focus groups of East Germans, and the findings demonstrate that the dominant media memory, the dictatorship discourse, still operates within three reading positions. More recent discourses are visible but have not (yet) expanded the horizon to relocate oneself in the past. This study contributes to the rare research on authenticity from an audience perspective.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Posted pasts. Strategic uses of the past in the 2022 Danish and Swedish national election campaigns on Facebook]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0001</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0001</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, we investigate how Danish and Swedish political parties strategically mobilised references to the past in their Facebook campaigning during the 2022 national elections. Through a qualitative content analysis of 759 Facebook posts, we identify how the past was instrumentalised in political rhetoric, specifically exploring positive, negative, and ambivalent campaigning strategies. Rather than reinforcing a pure binary between positive and negative messages, the findings illustrate that such references were also deployed ambivalently – simultaneously legitimising political positions and discrediting opponents. Yet, the study also highlights significant cross-national differences: While Swedish parties more often invoke long-term ideological legacies, Danish parties tend to focus on recent events. By combining insights from research on political campaigning and memory studies, our analysis underscores the complex narrative functions of history and memory in contemporary multiparty contexts. The study demonstrates how invoking the past shapes electoral discourse and thereby has the potential to influence both voter perceptions and self-proclaimed party legitimacy.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Whose story wins? LLM-powered chatbots as sites and agents of memory-political contestation and corporate greenwashing]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0004</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2026-0004</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, we explore the memory-political dimensions of LLM-powered chatbots. We are initially interested in how LLMs (large language models) can be utilised to manipulate political discourse and historical interpretations. By expanding on the idea presented by, for example, Makhortykh and colleagues (2024), we examine how open, commercial LLMs generate information on current political topics with contested historical and political dimensions in the Nordic region by examining the outputs of three different models – ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Mistral – in Finnish, Swedish, and English. Our focus is on three themes that are intertwined in identity and memory-political contestations in the Nordic region: climate change, security politics, and colonialism (e.g., regarding Indigenous communities). In this context, we study whether and how LLM-powered chatbots mediate various actors’ contesting narratives engaging in and functioning as sites and agents of memory-political contestations. We discuss the ideological and epistemic dimensions of LLM-powered chatbots at a time when generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) increasingly impacts memory discourses in democratic societies.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[The expertise of financial influencers and strategies of calibration towards monetisation]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0003</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0003</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, we examine the emerging phenomenon of financial influencers, or “finfluencers”, in the context of platformised personal finance and influencer monetisation strategies. As retail trading platforms have democratised access to financial markets, influencers on digital media platforms have carved out a niche as popular experts who provide financial advice and investment strategies. The article presents a typology of four prominent influencer strategies – influencer classic, academy operator, platformised trader, and veiled promoter – where each strategy identifies a distinct configuration of types of expertise calibrated towards monetisation of distinct audiences and requisite products and services. Building on analyses of empirical examples from Denmark, our study contributes to the theoretical understanding of expertise and addresses an empirical gap in financial influencer research. It also contributes to the general discussion around influencers as emerging sources of authority in society.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Influencing through advocacy: Parents of children with disability giving and seeking support on Instagram]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0007</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0007</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, I examine how parents raising children with disabilities are using Instagram to advocate for the rights of their children, and how these practices can be understood as a form of non-commercial influencing. I study how these practices enable the creation of supportive networks as the basis of performing advocacy regarding disability rights. Based on interviews with six mothers who use Instagram to share insights from their everyday lives, the analysis explores how their content curation and network building provides support and enables advocacy with the purpose of influencing public opinions about disability. Despite lacking commercial interests, their sustained engagement, storytelling, and ability to mobilise audiences position them as influencers within the online disability community.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Grief labour on Instagram: Resilient influencers and platformed grief]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0005</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0005</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

Drawing on the postfeminist notion of resilience, in this article we explore female influencers in grief who, after losing their spouse, share their practices of grieving on Instagram. We examine how, in the narrations of grief, the grieving self is constructed as a resilient subject able to move forward in the “grief journey” through exercising control at the site of the self. The article shows how reconciling the strain of coping with loss with influencer culture and platform requirements demands significant affective labour. We argue that such grief labour, a concept we introduce in this article, is rooted in the neoliberal regime of control targeted at the self. Utilising a digital media ethnographic design and multimodal content analysis, this study sheds light on influencers’ complex affective practices of resilience in the context of death; furthermore, the study advances knowledge on the normative aspects of platformed grief and further elaborates on the commercialisation of personal grief in the current platform economy.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Influencers: Navigating platforms, expertise, branding, and authenticity]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0001</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0001</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Relevance, commitment, and impact: Aspirational formulations of investing-related influencer collaborations in the context of ethical fashion]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0004</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0004</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In contemporary society, social media influencers have become mediators of not only commercial but also political and cultural meanings, and their roles are diversifying. In this study, we focus on a nascent phenomenon of “investing-related influencer collaborations”, where influencers act as and address followers as (potential) investors in the context of ethical business. To explore this type of collaboration, we study two empirical cases where lifestyle and fashion influencers run investing-related campaigns with self-proclaimed ethical fashion companies. We analyse these campaigns from a discourse-analytical perspective, identifying three aspirational-affective formulations through which influencers give meaning to investing-related collaborations: renewal of relevance, long-term commitment, and concrete impact. These formulations draw on and rearticulate discourses of investing in relation to evolving influencer roles and ethico-social aspirations. The article shows how the specific forms that influencer collaborations take are connected to wider processes of relational and identity work in the context of promotional politics.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[“Heil Sol Brah”: Community-building practices around far-right masculinist influencers]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0009</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0009</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, we explore community-building practices among followers of far-right masculinist influencers. Utilising visual ethnography and netnography, we examine the Right-Wing Bodybuilder (RWBB) community on the platform X and focus on how followers cohere around and promote two previously pseudonymous influencers: Sol Brah and Bronze Age Pervert. Our analysis of memes produced by these follower communities highlights the participatory nature of culting influencers, a process that fosters community-building and reinforces in-group cohesion. We also show how follower communities facilitate message uptake by disseminating influencer messages and mobilising against threats to their credibility from adversaries. Our article contributes to influencer studies by examining the reciprocal dynamics between influencers and followers through these engagement practices.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[When influencer logic and news media logic converge in the scandalisation of an influencer: The exposure of literary critic and influencer Katherine Diez’s plagiarism]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0006</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0006</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In January 2024, the high-profile Danish literature critic and postfeminist influencer Katherine Diez was scandalised when users on Reddit exposed that she had plagiarised in some of her posts on Instagram and in some of her cultural reviews and columns produced for magazines and news media. In this article, we analyse the unfolding of the scandal across media through a qualitative thematic analysis of the intermingling of three types of media content: news articles, user comments on Reddit, and user comments on Instagram. We argue that two logics – the logic of influencers and the logic of news media – worked together to create an authenticity scandal, compromising not only the main component of the persona construction in influencer culture – that is, the performance of authenticity – but also the foundation of the news media logic – that is, trustworthiness, truth, and fact-checking.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Reframing masculinity: Male beauty influencers, hybridity, and the digital Pakistani diaspora]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0008</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0008</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, we examine how digital diasporas reconfigure Pakistani gender norms through the case of Adnan Zafar, known as Ken Doll Dubai. Drawing on Bhabha’s hybridity and Brinkerhoff’s digital diaspora frameworks, we investigate how Zafar’s engagement with beauty and feminised aesthetics subverts rigid masculine ideals, intersecting global beauty standards with local expectations. By positioning influencer culture within non-Western contexts, this study reveals digital ambivalence – where Zafar’s identity simultaneously challenges and complies with patriarchal and consumerist forces. This work extends current literature by illustrating how diasporic influencers negotiate masculinity beyond Western models of self-branding, inviting further studies on identity formation across diverse digital communities.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Influencer autonomy: Navigating authenticity, agencies, and algorithms]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0002</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2025-0002</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, we explore the often-overlooked concept of autonomy among influencers. We define influencer autonomy as the sense of control and self-governing freedom that influencers perceive in their everyday life and work. Based on in-depth interviews with 28 Norwegian influencers, influencer managers, and legacy media experts working with influencers, our research uncovers a complex interplay between influencers’ sense of autonomy and restraints emanating from their social environment. We argue that influencer autonomy is at the same time enabled and restricted by three structures: cultural norms, technological algorithms, and economic management. Understanding the space for autonomy within these structures is, we contend, crucial for deciphering power within the influencer industry. Our findings reveal that while influencer autonomy is always limited and partial, it remains a compelling narrative.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[A broken mirror? From representation to presentation of gender in Scandinavian news media]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2024-0005</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2024-0005</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

Across Scandinavia, one can witness a situation where gender equality has previously been at the forefront of the political and societal agenda, but where progress now seems to be slowing down. The news media is a domain where this negative development is particularly pronounced, and several studies have established that the Scandinavian news media display a more unequal gender representation than the society they supposedly mirror. In this article, we report on an ongoing cross-Scandinavian research project on news media content, where we explore not only the traditional metrics of how many men and women are in the news, but also, more importantly, how women and men are portrayed in news media content. The study demonstrates significant gender discrepancies, echoing findings from previous studies on the quantitative representation of women and men, and, more importantly, it introduces presentation as an additional qualitative metric. Consequently, we contribute with an analytical framework involving a range of qualitative parameters through which the news media industry can comprehensively evaluate gender equality within their content.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Understanding the current backlash against LGBTIQ+ rights through the lens of heteroactivism: A case study of the International Organization for the Family’s transnational norm diffusion on Twitter]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2024-0011</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2024-0011</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

A new generation of transnational anti-gender actors are framing themselves as human rights champions and protectors of the rights of the “natural family”. To better understand these actors’ norm diffusion, including their re-styling of anti-gender narratives in contemporary iterations of heteroactivism and its potential threat to LGBTIQ+ rights, in this article we analyse the social media tactics of a key transnational anti-gender actor: the International Organization for the Family (IOF). The analysis is focused on the organisation’s Twitter (now X) account and we draw on theories of network media logic, connective action, and connective emotions. Two periods of activism – the first a low-intensity period in 2021 and the second a high-intensity period in 2022 – were purposefully selected for the analysis. In this article, we identify differences between the two periods, noting that the period covering the flagship event, the World Congress of Families (WCF) in 2022, was markedly less LGBTIQ-hostile and adversarial than the first period. IOF thus appears to be inspired by heteroactivist frames during the WCF and abides by logic that should trigger user interaction and content spreading. The lack of interactions and engagement with IOF Twitter content in either period indicates the need for more research on which logics apply to anti-gender audiences. We discuss the findings and what they may imply in a context like Sweden, a country whose self-image as a global champion for women’s and LGBTIQ+ rights may make it ill-equipped to counter the onslaught of transnational actors’ norm entrepreneurial activities.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Gender inequality in the Nordic film industry: Exploring above-the-line positions in film production]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2024-0006</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2024-0006</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, we explore the enduring barriers to gender equality in the Nordic film industry, with a focus on positions of power and structural biases. Despite considerable efforts over the past decades to highlight gender inequality – resulting in more women in creative positions in Sweden, Denmark, and Finland – a significant gap remains. Our analysis of 1,070 films produced and released theatrically between 2010 and 2020 in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden shows men dominating directing, writing, and producing roles in 75 per cent of the cases, with women slightly more present in producing. The study finds a negative correlation between the dominance of men in producing roles and the presence of women in directing and writing roles. Factors such as the size of the creative team and co-production had less impact on the proportion of women in key creative positions than expected, whereas a higher proportion of women in managerial roles is linked to an increased presence of women in positions of directing (Sweden) and writing (Finland). These results indicate that while some progress has been made, structural barriers still significantly hinder gender equality in the industry.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Veiling as free choice or coercion: Banal religion, gender equality, and Swedish identity on Instagram]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2024-0003</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njms-2024-0003</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In this article, we analyse implicit connections between gender equality and particular forms of religion in Sweden, as expressed in political discourse and social media debates. Instagram posts responding to the Christian Democrats [Kristdemokraterna] political party's proposal to ban the wearing of veils in Swedish primary schools in 2021 were analysed through methods of co-occurrence analysis and feminist critical discourse analysis. By applying the concept of banal religion from mediatisation of religion theory, the results reveal how implicit connections between veiling as opposed to gender equality in the proposal turn into explicit debates on Instagram regarding what kind of religious practice is compatible with Swedish identity and values. This reveals the ambiguous nature of Instagram as a digital platform that may enhance hegemonic ideas of gender, ethnic, and religious identities, but that may also enable Muslim women to challenge understandings of Islam and gender equality in the public debate.
]]></description>
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