Tina Askanius traces a recent turn to humour, irony and ‘soft entertainment’ in their online communication and the increasing adaptation of stylistic strategies and visual aesthetics of the Alt-Right inspired by global communities such as 4chan, reddit and Imgur. Drawing on a visual content analysis of memes (N=634) created and circulated by the organisation in the period around the 2018 general elections in Sweden, she explores how ideas, symbols and layers of meaning travel back and forth between neo-Nazi and Alt-right groups within Sweden and how these are intricately connected to and networked with transnational movements of the far-right.

Tina Askanius is senior lecturer in media and communication studies at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University, Sweden. Her research primarily concerns the interplay between online media and transnational social movements and she has published extensively on these matters in the context of social and climate justice movements as well as ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi movements in Scandinavia. She is currently working on a comparative study of the #metoo movement in Sweden and Denmark and a 4-year research project on digital media practices in the context of takfiri movements and extreme right movements in Sweden.