Pizza, beer and kittens: Negotiating cultural trauma discourses on Twitter in the wake of the 2017 Stockholm attack

Abstract

The overarching aim of this study is to analyse how social media communication can impact the formation of cultural trauma discourses in the aftermath of disruptive societal events. The article focuses on how the hashtag #openstockholm was used on Twitter for support, sharing and cooperation after the Stockholm lorry attack in 2017. Much of the content posted with this hashtag had a light-hearted tone, flouting the conventional trauma discourses of grief and sorrow in a way that was surprising, and perhaps even provocative, to some. A thematic analysis of tweets shows the different uses of the hashtag over time, as well as distinguishes two conflicting discourses that either downplayed or amplified the cultural trauma narrative. The study shows that the responses to traumatic events may depend on a culturally specific logic of collective action frames which implies the need for contextual understandings of how cultural trauma discourses are negotiated.

Cultural heritage through the lens of COVID-19

“…Social media have received considerable attention from researchers in risk and crisis communication and management ( Kamara, 2016 ; Rasmussen & Ihlen, 2017 ). Moreover, it is argued that social media could provide an arena for the formation of cultural discourses in relation to crisis events ( Ostertag & Ortiz, 2013 ; Eriksson, 2018 ). Further to this, the use of social media provides a welcome relief from a health disaster like the COVID-19 pandemic ( Zhong et al, 2021 ).…”

Continued Contexts of Terror: Analyzing Temporal Patterns of Hashtag Co-Occurrence as Discursive Articulations

“…In the case of dramatic, acute, and emergent public events, ranging from riots and protests to disasters and terrorist attacks, the Twitter platform stands out from other social spaces by its ability to convey public responses at high speed. Twitter might thus provide a space for understanding and in some way coming to terms with terror attacks and other incidents of societal disruption (Bruns & Hanusch, 2017; Eriksson, 2018; Lin et al, 2016; Stieglitz, Bunker, Mirbabaie, & Ehnis, 2017). Publics can form ad hoc—hence the notion of “ad hoc publics” (Bruns & Burgess, 2015)—the very point in time that they are needed.…”

“…When it comes to research on the role of hashtag publics and ambient affiliation in relation to terrorist attacks, Buntain and colleagues (2016) point out that the focus has largely been on single events of terrorism. Examples of such studies have dealt with the attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008 (Oh, Agrawal, & Rao, 2011) and 2011 (Gupta & Kumaraguru, 2012); in Utøya, Norway, in 2011 (Eriksson, 2016); the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 (Sutton et al, 2014); the murder of Lee Rigby in London in 2013 (Burnap et al, 2014); and the Stockholm lorry attack in 2017 (Eriksson, 2018). However, a couple of studies have also looked at online responses to terrorist attacks beyond single instances.…”

“…The number of fatal terrorist attacks in Western Europe has increased in recent years (Hanrahan & Wang, 2017), and a series of high-profile attacks starting in 2015 in France, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Sweden, and Spain have contributed to making such events a prevalent part of the collective consciousness in many European cities. While social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, have been frequently discussed in relation to their role as potential tools for terrorist recruitment, mobilization, and coordination, a particular strand of research is interested in how the same platforms can be used by victims and the general public for creating unity and for exchanging information during and immediately after attacks (Buntain, Golbeck, Liu, & LaFree, 2016; Cheong & Lee, 2011; Eriksson, 2016, 2018; Sumiala, Tikka, Huhtamäki, & Valaskivi, 2016). Crisis points, such as terror attacks, create “information holes” that the public works collaboratively to fill in in real time (Lin, Lachlan, & Spence, 2016, p. 627).…”

“…This indicates further that the tweeting activity in the midst of the Stockholm attack focused strongly on an ethos of resilience and calm by connecting the attack to previous statements of "coming together" and standing up against narratives of fear. Previous research on the tweeting activity after this attack (Eriksson, 2018) has shown that the social media response to the Stockholm attack was largely focused on the construction of counternarratives that were working against discourses on fear, Islamophobia, and the need for closed borders. This was primarily done by using the #openstockholm hashtag and by discursively formulating the issue by downplaying such narratives within the discursive context of this hashtag.…”