Higher seminar: Half-time seminar, Christian Schwieter
Seminar
Date: Wednesday 1 October 2025
Time: 14.00 – 16.00
Location: Meeting room 41, Albano Hus 2, Floor 4
Presenter
Christian Schwieter (IMS)
Opponent
Mattias Wahlström (University of Gothenburg)
Chair
Mattias Ekman (IMS)
Description
Please note this seminar will take place in Meeting room 41, Albano Hus 2, Floor 4 - keep a look out for an email with the draft kappa and paper manuscripts.
This is the half-time seminar for Christian Schwieter and his compilation PhD thesis, tentatively titled: Far-right struggles for legitimacy in the age of social media regulation: Comparing discursive strategies across Western Europe
Abstract:
Access to social media is essential for contemporary far-right actors - not just to make themselves heard and seek resonance among their peers, but also to legitimise their politics to a broader audience. How, then, do far-right actors adapt to regulatory efforts that seek to combat the proliferation of hate speech and disinformation online - two central characteristics of far-right communication? This compilation thesis investigates the discursive legitimisation strategies of far-right actors in the context of emerging platform governance regimes in Europe using a corpus-assisted mixed-methods research design. To this end, four studies compare how different far-right media actors across Europe - namely alternative media, street activists-turned 'influencers', politicians and ideologues - vie for legitimacy in light of the changing rules of engagement in contemporary media systems.
Empirically, the project reveals the breadth of discursive strategies employed by these actors to seek political legitimacy - beyond hate speech and disinformation that are so commonly cited in the literature. Theoretically, the project contributes to a media-centric perspective on contemporary far-right actors, merging insights from social movement studies with media system theories. This approach acknowledges the strategic capacities of far-right media actors while understanding their pursuit of political legitimacy as a series of discursive contestations that extend well beyond traditional protest mobilisation or electoral party politics. Methodologically, the project builds on cross-disciplinary scholarship that utilises corpus-assisted, computational and otherwise large-scale descriptive methods within an interpretive research framework. Collectively, the findings contribute not just to our understanding of how far-right actors strategically adapt and respond to contemporary platform regulation efforts. They also speak to the larger discussions on democratic resilience in the age of social media, and the oft-cited `legitimation crises' of democracies and their media systems.
Last updated: September 10, 2025
Source: Institutionen för mediestudier