<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>This article explores the mimicking of tabloid news as a form of covert racism, relying on the credibility of an established tabloid newspaper. The qualitative case study focuses on a digital platform for letters to the editor, operated without editorial curation pre-publication from 2010 to 2018 by one of Denmark’s largest newspapers, <italic>Ekstra Bladet</italic>. A discourse analysis of the 50 most shared letters to the editor on Facebook shows that nativist, far-right actors used the platform to disseminate fear-mongering discourses and xenophobic conspiracy theories, disguised as professional news and referred to as articles. These processes took place at the borderline of true and false as well as racist and civil discourse. At this borderline, a lack of supervision and moderation coupled with the openness and visual design of the platform facilitated new forms of covert racism between journalism and user-generated content.</p>
</abstract>

This article explores the mimicking of tabloid news as a form of covert racism, relying on the credibility of an established tabloid newspaper. The qualitative case study focuses on a digital platform for letters to the editor, operated without editorial curation pre-publication from 2010 to 2018 by one of Denmark’s largest newspapers, Ekstra Bladet. A discourse analysis of the 50 most shared letters to the editor on Facebook shows that nativist, far-right actors used the platform to disseminate fear-mongering discourses and xenophobic conspiracy theories, disguised as professional news and referred to as articles. These processes took place at the borderline of true and false as well as racist and civil discourse. At this borderline, a lack of supervision and moderation coupled with the openness and visual design of the platform facilitated new forms of covert racism between journalism and user-generated content.

Mimicking News: How the credibility of an established tabloid is used when disseminating racism

Nordicom Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This article explores the mimicking of tabloid news as a form of covert racism, relying on the credibility of an established tabloid newspaper. The qualitative...

Most referenced sources	#	Most referenced source types	#
Wikipedia	20	Danish news articles	69
Cultural Radicalism Destroys Denmark(CRDD, Danish anti-Islamic/nationalist-conservative blog)	15	Danish anti-Islamic/Danish anti-Islamic/nationalist-conservative blogs or websites	33
Jyllands-Posten (Danish newspaper)	14	Foreign news articles	23
Politiken (Danish newspaper)	11	Encyclopaedias	20
The People’s Voice (Letters to the editor)	10	Foreign anti-Islamic/nationalist-conservative blogs or websites	12

Headline	Facebook shares	Author, year
Research: Islam is the world’s most violent religion	23,369	Sennels, 2015 [1]
Alarming paragraph: Islam might be illegal according to Danish law	14,736	Sennels, 2015 [2]
Vandalism against asylum centre led to 18 months in prison – Immigrant assault led to 2 months	8,104	Frederiksen, 2015 [3]
Asylum director: The government has made Denmark more attractive to asylum seekers	7,536	Mogensen, 2015 [4]
Four more years with Thorning [Danish prime minister] will likely result in 128,000 additional Muslim immigrants	4,239	Mogensen, 2015 [5]

Mimicking News: How the credibility of an established tabloid is used when disseminating racism

Published Online: Jan 19, 2020

Page range: 1 - 17

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2020-0001

Keywords
racism, letters to the editor, borderline discourse, digital journalism, fake news

© 2020 Johan Farkas et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Five most referenced sources (left), five most referenced types of sources (right)

TPV letters to the editor most frequently shared on Facebook

Mimicking News: How the credibility of an established tabloid is used when disseminating racism

Published Online: Jan 19, 2020

Page range: 1 - 17

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2020-0001

Keywordsracism, letters to the editor, borderline discourse, digital journalism, fake news

© 2020 Johan Farkas et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Five most referenced sources (left), five most referenced types of sources (right)

TPV letters to the editor most frequently shared on Facebook

Keywords
racism, letters to the editor, borderline discourse, digital journalism, fake news