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In this article, I aim to contribute to existing literature on counterpublics by analysing the extent to which competing counterpublics regarding Islam appear in mainstream news outlets' comment sections on Facebook. By utilising, and slightly modifying, Toepfl and Piwoni's pioneering theoretical framework for analysing (counter)publics, I identify an Islam-hostile counterpublic and an Islam-sympathetic counterpublic that operate in the examined comment sections. I conducted a quantitative content analysis of Facebook posts (and associated articles) published by 15 established Scandinavian news outlets in 2018 (N = 599) and the comments written by ordinary Facebook users in response (N = 6797). I found the majority of the comments mirrored the views presented in the established media posts, but a substantial minority of the comments engaged in counterpublic discourses, contesting the bounds of established discourse around Islam in the Scandinavian public spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies on boys and young men's heterosexual practices point in contradictory directions. On the one hand, boys and young men seem to be placing less value on "hard", overtly aggressive masculinity and compulsive heterosexuality, in keeping with their adoption of more egalitarian attitudes in their sexual relationships. On the other hand, the hegemonic masculine notions that associate "real" men with sexual prowess persist as well. In this article, we argue that this contradiction indicates careful (re)calibration in doing respectable heteromasculinities. We draw on a small-scale qualitative study located in Helsinki, Finland, in illuminating how cis-gendered boys and young men with less privileged backgrounds construct their heteromasculinities as respectable, which requires context-specific balancing between distancing themselves from and embracing hegemonic notions of manhood. Through this balancing, the boys and young men reconfigure not necessary the substance but the style of respectable heteromasculinity; thereby upholding masculine hegemony by attuning it to the claims of the "#MeToo era." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses Danish media discourses on racialized children's schooling as a lens through which to analyse how issues of kinship and family play into nation-building processes through representations of 'the child'. The article addresses the question of the distribution of racialized children, mostly termed 'bilingual pupils', at Danish schools, which is a recurrent theme in the public debate. The media representation of this issue is mostly framed around an ideal of spreading the 'bilingual pupils' among different schools to ensure proper mixing with white Danish pupils, which is framed as securing both the educational development of the children and the prosperity of the Danish nation. Through the ideal of mixing, the nation is constituted as able to include the racialized child as an act of saving it from its heritage of racialized and classed disadvantage. A comparison with other kinds of media reporting on racialized children in Danish schooling reveals the constellation of a racialized hierarchy that works to uphold Danish whiteness and non-racism through the ideal of proper mixing. Migrant subjects who have mixed through kinship with Danish whiteness and have actively abandoned their racialized familial background seem more easily constituted as belonging in Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being rated as some of the world's most gender equal countries, Sweden and neighboring Nordic nations show high rates of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW). As the news media contribute to the shaping of public attitudes, this article pursues a two-step discourse analysis of how IPVAW was represented in seven Swedish newspapers during 2018. Although an individualistic discourse on IPVAW was found to be most prevalent, articles where perpetrators were presented as non-Swedish more frequently contained a structural framing of IPVAW. This confirms previously noted tendencies toward individualization and othering of IPVAW in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue departs from elaborating on the issues explored in a project examining right-wing politics and "debates" about racism in Finland. It situates the research gathered in the collection in terms of a shared focus on the disparate networks of organised and opportunistic cultural producers that invest time and labour in the production of racialising and othering discourse and aesthetics, and on the modes and forms of cultural and media production that have, in a relatively short space of time, come to be distributed and adapted across divergent socio-political contexts, and integrated to the situated forms of racism and nationalism given exclusionary force across and within them. It underlines the need to understand the motivated circulation of racializing discourse in the wider context of forms of "postracialism," and the need for research to move past the paradigm of "hate speech" to get to grips with the significance and impacts of intensively circulated racist "noise." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores how visual affective practice is used to spread and bolster a nationalist, extremist and racist ethos on the public Facebook page of the anti-immigrant group, Soldiers of Odin. Affective practice refers to a particular sensibility of political discourse, shaped by social formations and digital technologies—the contexts in which political groups or communities gather, discuss and act. The study shows how visual affective practice and sharing and responding to images fortify moral claims, sense exclusionary solidarity and promote white nationalist masculinity which legitimizes racist practices of "soldiering." By examining both the representations and their reactions (emoticons), the study demonstrates how ideas and values are collectively strengthened through affective sharing and are supported by platform infrastructures. Most importantly, it demonstrates that instead of considering the affect of protecting the nation as a natural result of "authentic" gut feeling, we should understand the ways it is purposefully and collectively produced and circulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media coverage of immigration serves as an important test for modern democracies' ability to handle difficult public issues. Systematic and comparative studies over longer time periods are, however, still rare. This is deeply unfortunate as the nature of both immigration and the press systems vary considerably not only across nations but also over time. This article charts the immigration debate in seven Scandinavian newspapers from the birth of modern immigration in the early seventies to the present-day situation. While supporting claims about a general historical shift towards a more problematizing and cultural discourse in Scandinavia, the analysis also identifies major differences in how countries, publications, and genres have handled this complex issue, which brings out fundamental dilemmas for both modern welfare states and journalists. Using the method of multiple correspondence analysis and subsequent cluster analysis, the article also demonstrates how historical press coverage can be fruitfully studied using Geometric Data Analysis as an alternative to frequentist methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a discursive analysis of various media reports published in 2015–2018 by and about the Finnish right-wing street patrolling organization Soldiers of Odin (SOO), we explore the gendered dimension of contemporary vigilantism. We find that street patrolling as a practice of vigilantism, is justified in this case by using representations of the cityspace as a place of friction between locals and newcomers and of the street as a locus for enacting gendered and racial/ethnic identities. Our findings suggest that SOO's vigilant practices exhibit a mixture of traditional and new features of masculinity. We argue that the activities of anti-immigration groups such as the SOO in Finland demonstrate a feminist security dilemma concerning the way securitization of public gender-based violence is used to enhance militarized performance of white masculinity. We identify four recurring themes that are used by group members to portray themselves as part of a legitimate social movement: protective masculinity, militarized masculinity, supplement of the state, and indigenous masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media coverage of immigration serves as an important test for modern democracies' ability to handle difficult public issues. Systematic and comparative studies over longer time periods are, however, still rare. This is deeply unfortunate as the nature of both immigration and the press systems vary considerably not only across nations but also over time. This article charts the immigration debate in seven Scandinavian newspapers from the birth of modern immigration in the early seventies to the present-day situation. While supporting claims about a general historical shift towards a more problematizing and cultural discourse in Scandinavia, the analysis also identifies major differences in how countries, publications, and genres have handled this complex issue, which brings out fundamental dilemmas for both modern welfare states and journalists. Using the method of multiple correspondence analysis and subsequent cluster analysis, the article also demonstrates how historical press coverage can be fruitfully studied using Geometric Data Analysis as an alternative to frequentist methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article maps and analyzes quantitatively how the Scandinavian news press covered the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis. Our analysis shows that in the coverage of the migration events, Denmark and Sweden occupy polar positions in terms of their newspapers’ emphasis, with the former appearing more negative towards the refugees, and the latter more positive. The Norwegian case is found in between these. Danish print media more often mention the negative economic consequences of the arrivals, and Swedish the positive moral ones, while Norway appears to occupy a middle ground in the Scandinavian discourse. We also find that the Scandinavian press writes less often about the negative consequences of refugees coming than the European press in general. However, the humanitarian aspects of the crisis became less prominent in the Scandinavian press over time, as in the rest of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article employs theories of ethnic boundary-making to explore when and under what conditions ethnicity and religious background shape minorities' experiences when participating in the public sphere in Norway. Drawing on in-depth interviews with elite individuals with various ethnic and religious minority backgrounds, the analysis calls into question interpretations made in other studies, which tend to imply an all-encompassing significance of race, ethnicity or religion. Although the analysis support previous findings in that negative comments and harassment do occur, the interviews demonstrate a variety of experiences and positions and that several individuals are able to strategically cross existing ethnic boundaries. Overall, the findings suggest that important changes are occurring in Norway's mediated public sphere. The question is whether these changes point to broader, societal processes of boundary-blurring or rather are opportunities offered to exceptional individuals while the existing hierarchy of ethnic categories stays intact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the digital culture of Islamophobic bloggers, focusing on the online circulation of a forensic photograph of a Swedish woman who was assaulted. The analysis shows how through appropriating this image, the bloggers created a unifying, imagined whiteness in the transnational Islamophobic network. The empirical analysis clarifies how this one image migrated and transformed in the blogosphere and legitimated the recurrent discursive trope of “Muslim rape.” This image became a subcultural “memory freeze frame” crystallizing the contemporary Islamophobic ideologies articulated in connection to race, ethnicity, nation, gender, and sexuality. The viral circulation of this image constructed a cultural, gendered, and racial Swedish whiteness, imagined to have become victimized by both Islam and liberal feminism, and therefore requiring global protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article addresses how stereotyped constructions of migrants' television behaviour should be contrasted with empirical investigations into the perceptions and articulated practices of migrants themselves. In order to do this, the article explores how 20 migrant households in Norway make sense of television and TV-related activities in their everyday lives. The analysis, employing the domestication theoretical framework, reveals that TV consumption is a multi-faceted and situationally contingent phenomenon. The "practicing of television" goes beyond the mere viewing of programmes based on ethnic origin. Although transnational broadcasts are important, they are neither uncritically domesticated nor sufficient in creating a sense of stability and belonging for migrant families. Rather, it is television as a total experience that proves to be a crucial element in home construction. The domestication theory offers an analytical framework that allows for the dynamics of household relations to be properly articulated, including the embedding of television within household moral economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on media debates about interracial and interethnic marriage practices. In 2012, Danish immigrants and descendants, especially Muslim women, were accused of harming the integration processes as they were not marrying ethnically Danish men. Through analysis of newspaper articles and Internet debates the article shows how Muslim women became excluded from the national community in these debates. Drawing upon previous debates about interracial/ethnic relationships, the article illustrates how the contemporary criticism mirrors historical criticism of sexuality. Moreover, the 2012 debate provides new insights and reveals how we need to nuance previous understandings of interracial relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbial volatile organic compounds (MVOCs) are a variety of compounds formed in the metabolism of fungi and bacteria. Of more than 200 compounds identified as MVOCs in laboratory experiments, none can be regarded as exclusively of microbial origin or as specific for certain microbial species. Thus, the recognition of microbially contaminated areas by MVOC measurements is not successful with current methods. In this review, the basic physical and chemical properties of 96 typical MVOCs have been summarised. Of these, toxicological and exposure data were gathered for the 15 MVOCs most often analysed and reported in buildings with moisture and microbial damage. The most obvious health effect of MVOC exposure is eye and upper-airway irritation. However, in human experimental exposure studies, symptoms of irritation have appeared at MVOC concentrations several orders of magnitude higher than those measured indoors (single MVOC levels in indoor environments have ranged from a few ng/m3 up to 1 mg/m3). This is also supported by dose-dependent sensory-irritation response, as determined by the American Society for Testing and Materials mouse bioassay. On the other hand, the toxicological database is poor even for the 15 examined MVOCs. There may be more potent compounds and other endpoints not yet evaluated [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss new efficient learning algorithms for certain subclasses of regular and even linear languages based on the notion of terminal distinguishability introduced by Radhakrishnan and Nagaraja. The learning model we use is identification in the limit from positive samples as proposed by Gold and further studied by Angluin and many others. All classes we introduce in this paper are modifications of the language families TDRL (terminal distinguishable regular) and TDELL (terminal distinguishable even linear) defined by Radhakrishnan and Nagaraja. A tradeoff between the power of the language class and the time complexity of the identification algorithm is observed when the size of the underlying alphabet is considered as an additional parameter. Extending the classes of efficiently learnable languages is also important from the viewpoint of applications of the algorithms. One of these extensions is obtained basically by making use of the concept of control language which is known from formal language theory and has been employed for learning theoretic purposes in particular by Takada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BSTRACT: Fish confined to cages were used to determine the effects of effluent from a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). Control fish were kept in cages in an aquaculture pond. Acute effects of the effluent entering the final oxidation pond of the WWTP were determined by confining channel catfish ( Ictalurus punctatus) at the pond inlet; the mean total residual chlorine (TRC) concentration was 0.9 mg/l during this exposure. After 8 h, 42 percent of the fish had died and survivors had severe lesions of the skin and gills. During the first two weeks of exposure, channel catfish at the outlet of the final oxidation pond (mean TRC=0.1 mg/l) were predisposed to bacterial infection but lost the parasitic trematodes that were on the gills when the fish were placed in cages. After several weeks, exposed fish had histologic lesions, enlarged livers, and reduced growth. The presence of unidentified carcinogen(s) in the effluent of this WWTP was indicated by papillomas developing on caged black bullheads ( Ictalurus melas) and hepatic-enzyme induction in channel catfish. In situ exposure of caged fish was advantageous because storage and pretreatment of water samples were not required, and exposure levels corresponded to those present in the environment. The use of cages for containment of fish during field exposure allowed confinement to the location of interest and convenient sampling of the fish. Unlike wild fish, the caged fish could be compared to control fish with the same pre-exposure history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heavy metals cadmium, copper, lead, silver, nickel and zinc were evaluated for acute toxicity concentrations using bioassay with Daphnia magna (D. magna) and Photobacterium phosphoreum (P. phosphoreum) using Microtox™ toxicity test apparatus. Synthetic chelating agents Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and Nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA) were used for reduction of heavy metal toxicity. Copper, lead, silver were highly toxic to D. magna. Cadmium and nickel exhibited very low toxicity to P. phosphoreum. EDTA and NTA were effective in reducing metal toxicity to both organisms. However, the toxicity reduction to D. magna was significantly higher than that to P. phosphoreum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]