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On October 9, 2024, Dr. Line Nybro Petersen, associate professor in Media Studies at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), presented insights from the SMIDGE Project during the ongoing "Research for Breakfast" series at UCPH. The event, titled "Between Meme-Culture and Shitstorms: Conspiracy Theories and Online Harassment of Public Personas", brought together representatives from various sectors to explore how research can help combat online conspiracy theories and harassment faced by public figures.
The session featured an engaging conversation between Petersen and Magnus Heunicke, the Danish Minister for the Environment and Equality, who shared his personal experience of being targeted by conspiracy theories during his time as Minister of Health amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The discussion focused on the strategies public figures and politicians can use to protect themselves from damaging online narratives and extremist sentiments, as well as the broader societal impact of such harassment.
Following this discussion, Petersen facilitated a co-creation session, where she presented preliminary results from the SMIDGE project. The audience, which included representatives from major media networks, political parties, public organizations, municipalities and private communication companies, participated actively in identifying potential issues and collaboratively developed solutions to address the spread of disinformation and extremism online.
Petersen is the co-coordinator of the Smidge Project and, along with her team, is responsible for data scraping extremist content from social media platforms to study its spread and evolution as it migrates across different platforms and user networks. You can find their initial report on data scraping here: https://www.smidgeproject.eu/_files/ugd/e2c6f4_24422d25c7a1417193b6bdb6fc4034a2.pdf
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