‘WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?’ [written in capital letters], a member of the closed Facebook group asked in a post. They were referring to a theatrical play about the painful experiences of racism, discrimination, and unbelonging of Norwegians with physical appearances and skin colour other than what is usually considered Norwegian. The member of the Facebook group wanted to understand why the ‘white’ audience laughed at ‘what created f*cking trauma for others?’ She initiated a conversation with the group members about her emotions concerning the varied responses to the play, and the painful part of the piece that invoked laughter among the ‘white’ audience but not from the minoritised1 one. The fact that the play was performed and written by a minoritised Norwegian for a prestigious theatre stage was unusual. The post garnered several dozen likes and hearts, along with thirty-six comments, indicating a notably unusual high level of engagement in the comment section. One member left a comment: ‘It is good to talk about the theatre piece in the Facebook group.’
The post was from a closed Facebook group that I had permission to observe. I particularly noticed it because it was unusual for the members of the group to use capital letters and curse in a post. I will expand on it later, but the vignette provides an indication of the topic of this article, which is the intricate relationship between social media, anger, and the daily efforts of minoritised individuals in Norway to combat racism and assert their sense of belonging. I will examine diverse communication and participatory cultures across online and offline, private and semi-public spaces, emphasising the significance of digital communities facilitated by social media. The article argues against narrow evaluations of digital spaces solely in terms of polarisation and echo chambers (Thorleifsson 2022) or as spaces of toxicity (Archer et al. 2021). Rather, as research underscores (Ballantyne et al. 2017; Chang et al. 2022; Hickman Dunne et al. 2022; Hård Af Segerstad and Kasperowski 2015; Wang 2023), these spaces are vital arenas where individuals connect, forge bonds, and cultivate a shared understanding of painful experiences such as racism and discrimination. Emphasising the interconnectedness of social media and everyday anti-racist struggles, this study illuminates how digital networking enables the expression and processing of emotions, particularly anger.
Anger, although contested, is a complex and powerful emotion that plays a significant role in political discourse and mobilisation (Wollebæk et al. 2019). Often triggered by perceived injustices, grievances, or moral outrage, anger can serve as a catalyst for action and social change, as it is ‘loaded with information and energy’ (Lorde 1981). It is important to distinguish this form of anger from rage. Anger has many different expressions, and anger can lead to radicalisation, violence, and physical aggression, however these effects are beyond the scope of this study.
Mysha Cherry (2021b) explores various philosophical and political perspectives on anger, examining both supporting and opposing viewpoints. Some scholars argue that the suppression of anger among oppressed groups serves as a tool for their subjugation, whereas openly displaying anger is seen as an act of rebellion and liberation (Leboeuf 2018 and Spelman 1989 in Cherry 2021b). Additionally, Cherry notes, ‘Since anger is a form of protest, it can help the oppressed maintain self-respect and see themselves as self-respecting’ (Cherry 2021b: 5).
Dag Wollebæk and colleagues point out that the Norwegian culture – in contrast to others – tends to be consensual and has strong traditions of deescalating conflict ‘Levels of anger are therefore likely to be quite low in international comparison’ (Wollebæk et al. 2019: 10). Except for the heterogeneous nature of sociability in Norway and for the disputed idea of consensus and cohesion (Salö et al. 2022), externalised anger has not been part of the general repertoire of face-to-face communication in public spaces (Isachsen 1990; Solberg 2015). Externalised anger is not always well received, and often stigmatised, dismissed, or invalidated making it difficult for individuals, even children (Grindheim 2014, 2022), to voice their concerns and frustrations openly and out loud. Raising one's voice is negatively labelled as utestemme (outdoor voice) in some contexts.
Thus the threshold for expressing anger in face-to-face interactions is high, confining its expression to the private domain. There is limited research on this specific topic, so in addition to the works already referred to, I draw on my personal experience as an immigrant from Argentina to Norway. My insights are grounded in my extensive experience of living in the country for over two decades and in conversations with my interlocutors. Being openly angry has become more accepted in the context of protests (Gregersen et al. 2023; Marczak et al. 2023; O'Brien et al. 2018) – though not entirely permitted for some groups as I will discuss.
Nevertheless, social interactions are dynamic and changing. The new digital embedded sociality increasingly includes externalised anger in interactions in commentary fields. It seems that digital networking sites (in this study, Facebook and Instagram) not only allow but actively promote a very different set of communicative practices that might radically shift – at least in digital social networks – existing cultural norms. Marjan Nadim and Kjersti Thorbjørnsrud (2022) argue that heated and aggressive debates on social media are characterised by cultural boundary transgressions where Norwegians challenge social and cultural norms in language use and expression. It is necessary to remark that the dynamic of how (and if) social media influence communicative practices is not the same everywhere (D. Miller et al. 2019; Wang 2023). In Korea, for instance, deeply ingrained cultural beliefs and activities are subtly integrated into online communication and behaviours, reinforcing certain aspects of Korean users’ cultural expectations in relationships (Kim and Yun 2007).
Through the examination of social interactions in digital and non-digital contexts, with a specific focus on anger and racism, I aim to make valuable contributions to various fields and promote a deeper and nuanced understanding of how these platforms affect social interactions. Firstly, it addresses a gap in media research (Malighetti et al. 2020; Wollebæk et al. 2019) by adopting a non-digital centric approach (Broch et al. 2024, Pink et al. 2015) in studying emotions on social media platforms, which have been predominantly explored through hashtags or textual posts. Secondly, research specifically on anger and the effects of social media on cultural norms and socialisation patterns in Norway, is limited. Thirdly, it contributes to Karin Wahl-Jorgensen's (2018) call for a deeper understanding of anger in political contexts.
Method
The study draws on ethnographic research among minoritised Norwegians working in the art and cultural sector who use social media. I carried out participant observation, interviews (both individual and group), and analyses of social media posts, between March and November 2021. The twenty-nine research participants were either born to immigrant or refugee parents or adopted from non-Western countries. They were between twenty-three and sixty years old and had different genders, religious backgrounds, and languages. They were either born or grew up in different parts of Norway, but at the time of the fieldwork, the majority of them lived in Oslo.
I conducted non-digital-centric research (Broch et al. 2024) therefore the analysis of their posts and sharings is based on what I learnt through fieldwork on face-to-face interactions. With their consent, I followed several research participants across various online platforms and closed Facebook groups, or they showed me their interactions in these closed groups without me being a member. Additionally, I observed their offline activities and everyday engagements. Communication took place through platforms like Teams, Zoom, Facetime, and chat platforms. I visited their homes, workplaces, and study places, spending time with them in public spaces and accompanying them to cultural events and discussion panels, both as audience members and participants. Some research participants were administrators of closed Facebook groups. I did not engage in the commentary field of those groups but instead had private conversations with the research participants through Messenger.
Throughout the many conversations and observations of their work and other activities, I got a sense of how it was for them to grow up and live in Norway with lower-middle or lower working-class backgrounds, having darker skin colour, non-Anglo-Saxon-phenotype (see Bangstad and Døving 2015: 52), being Muslim, of indigenous descent, being LGTBQ, having a disability, or having other languages than Norwegian as their mother tongue, or relating to the norms and customs of different cultures simultaneously. The language used during the fieldwork was Norwegian, English, and Spanish. I am born and grew up in Argentina and moved to Norway in January 2001 and I speak Norwegian fluently.
Due to the sensitivity of the topic of the research, I applied different strategies to handle the anonymity aspect of the research. I used pseudonyms for all the participants, and I changed identification signs. To comply with European GDPR, I developed techniques to anonymise screen captures of digital posts (Salinas 2023). The fieldwork was emotionally challenging, and I deeply reflect on how I navigated through difficult and unsettling emotions and the strategies I applied to process them (Salinas 2024a).
Digital Social Networks
It started with a mega frustration that came before the explosive movement #BlackLivesMatter. I had been so sad after I returned to Norway. I came back in 2017. I thought: ‘Where have the musicians who look like me gone?’ They existed, I knew they existed, but they were not visible. The Nordic, Norwegian artists had careers, while the others like me weren't there, especially the women. It was shocking. I felt that I had to do something. I had to find other good people who felt the same way. I found them, and we started the closed Facebook group.
Adra had lived abroad for several years and only a few days after she returned to Norway, an unknown white man spat in her face. This traumatic event, and the feeling that musicians with minoritised backgrounds were not visible, prompted her to find others and create a closed Facebook group for people with shared experiences of racism, discrimination, and exclusion, as well as to connect and challenge hegemonic representation. She and Benazir, a writer in her thirties, had met through Instagram. They chatted for a while before they finally met in person and during a workshop about diversity in the cultural sector in which Lara, a performer in her forties, also participated, the three of them decided to create a Facebook group. Lara commented: ‘I don't want to be in Norway because I don't feel at home here, so I'd rather flee the country. And I met Benazir at a seminar, and we were both frustrated, so we met Adra and that was the beginning for the closed Facebook group.’ In the group they shared ideas, experiences, thoughts, work possibilities, and comments on actual debates about racism, discrimination, and exclusion. Christian, a young performer remarked: ‘There are several of us who feel that it is good to sometimes talk to others who look like us, even if we think differently.’ Adra told me that they wanted to create a digital ‘safe space’ in the sense that all the negative things ascribed to their skin colour, phenotype, culture, and religion would not apply. It would be a space where ‘differences are welcome and celebrated’, a ‘safe space where we respect each other, support each other and give love to each other’. The notion of a safe space does not refer to a space without conflict or disagreement, but a space where those invited can also express strong feelings like anger and get the feeling that they are being listened to and understood rather than rejected or ignored. I will provide an example to clarify this point.
Within the same Facebook commentary field presented in the opening observation, a member shared information about a series of panel discussions centred around the theatre production. Subsequently, Sandy, a research participant who followed the digital conversation, invited me to go with them (non-binary person) to the panel discussion; we were chatting on Messenger in parallel with the discussion on the closed Facebook group. We had already seen the play together. One of the panel discussions was entitled ‘Berøringsangst’2 and aimed to explore the discomfort associated with interpreting and conveying themes such as racism and sexism on the theatre stage. During the non-digital seminar, several members of the closed Facebook group participated. The panellists discussed personal experiences of racism and exclusion and the ways in which they had not been taken seriously professionally and otherwise. Suddenly a Black man from the audience, clearly moved by the conversation, asked the actresses in the panel discussion, with vocal outbursts of anger: ‘Where is your boss? [the theatre director] Why isn't he sitting here listening to this conversation? This theatre play is only part of a checklist. Nothing changes! Where is he . . . ? Call him! This all is just a circus.’
No one could answer him, and an uncomfortable silence enveloped the room for some seconds. The panel participants agreed that the theatre director and other people in positions of power should have attended the discussion. While for Naomi – a research participant in her forties – the absence of the director was one more example of the lack of interest, a white Norwegian woman in the audience questioned the panel, asking how real the alleged anxiety and rejection of racism was. According to her, racism was a much-discussed topic in Norway – ‘We talk about it all the time.’ Sandy and Joyce, a woman we met for the first time at the panel discussion and who told us that she was the one who posted about the seminar series in the closed Facebook group, commented to me later that they wonder why it was so hard to listen. Listen properly. ‘Didn't she listen to what was said?’ They showed frustration and even anger about the disregard (Salinas in press) that Norwegians from the majority society manifest towards minoritised experiences. ‘It is hard to share painful experiences, and it is even harder not to be listened to’, Sandy concluded.
As the comments below reflect, minoritised Norwegians experience that the racism, discrimination, and unbelonging they undergo have been rejected, corrected, or ignored. This is why digital social networking has been significant for them, both personally and for their anti-racist, anti-oppression struggles even though they do not identify as a single group. Studies of digital networking have shown that social media foster, through social scalability, ‘scalable sociality’ (Miller et al. 2016), establishing connections among people who did not know one another before. The technical affordances also allow the scale to be regulated, including the size of the group and the degree of privacy and publicity. Research participants were members of several closed Facebook groups with specific profiles and, despite being loosely connected to each other, they created ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 2016) based on solidarity, emotional resonance, or personal ethical commitments.
Circles of Emotional Support
There is so much ignorance about racism. And a lot of white fragility which makes it extremely hard for anyone to talk about these issues because they get so easily offended. They say no, there is no racism, instead of showing empathy. People often think that I am pretty tense and angry when I talk about this, but it is not intentional, it is because of my experiences . . . my trauma when I was a kid. I've seen my parents get beaten in front of me because of racism, and I've seen my friends working in environments [have to deal] with so much microaggression that it has greatly impacted their mental health.
I find it difficult that in a Norwegian context, I don't have terms for my thoughts. You are always put in a box. You don't need to open your mouth. The person believes to know you by the way you look. You are this or this, regardless of the countless attempts to make yourself understandable from other perspectives beyond either-or. You quickly become labelled as the angry, the radical, the stereotype, you become the ‘angry Black woman’, ‘now you come again’, ‘is it so bad to live in Norway?’ It's so difficult!
It hurts. I am two. I am Norwegian and Chilean, and I cannot reconcile these identities. I understand it a little bit, but I haven't managed to put it into words. My mother doesn't really understand anything . . . (Maru mimes knocking on her forehead) ‘Is anyone home?’ She doesn't understand what it means to be me. And I tell her, but she doesn't understand. I can't decide if it is naivety or arrogance, I don't quite know. And I'm so angry. I have this rage inside me.
Maru, as with other research participants who were either adoptees or had only one non-Norwegian parent, expressed a deep grief caused by experiences of racism, discrimination, and unbelonging that were not understood even by their parents. The grief was described as anger felt twice. When individuals experienced anger and expressed it publicly, they were often labelled or ‘tarnished’, so they supressed it. However, suppressing the outward expression of anger only serves to fuel its persistence (Rosaldo 2014).
We have no concepts in Norwegian of what it means to be me or be white. I had a conversation with a friend who said, ‘Hey, I didn't take part in colonialism, hunting slaves, and that was a long time ago, and we [Norwegians] have nothing to do with that now.’ This kind of argumentation makes it impossible to have a conversation about how the past influences the present . . . We are in denial about what is going on. Think about how we talk about Norway's self-image, ‘a country without racism’ . . . They say that one is easily offended or angry, that we are snowflakes if we talk about racism. I'm so used to things I heard growing up such as ‘Ah you are so pretty . . . are you mulatto? You're Black, you aren't white, you are half’. They don't see that the way people talk is a problem.
Most of all they give me a language and nuances. The closed groups, networks with people in Norway, give me the feeling that there is a new generation that shares much more, that there is much more cooperation, that there is much more focus on community, that they dare to ask for help . . . ‘is there anyone who can help me? . . . ’ ‘I don't understand this, can someone explain it to me . . . ?’ There is a generosity of sharing knowledge, and I had never experienced this before. Now we share our knowledge in those groups. We do better by each other. These networks alone don't give me a sense of belonging necessarily, but I feel generosity and trust, which I miss from society at large. But! These encounters must also take place physically. If you're alone, never going out, you fall short. No matter how much support you have received in these closed groups, we need physical meeting points, to see, feel, and share!
Lara told me how the digital networks gave her Norwegian words such as melaninrik (melanin rich). Melanin is the pigment that exists in all skin and determines the skin colour. Lara recalled that when she lived in England, she talked about herself as brown, but then people would say ‘“You are not brown! What do you mean, you are Black, everyone can see that you are a Black person”. So I just . . . okay, Sorry!’ And in Tanzania, she was called mulatto ‘as when I was a child in Norway, people said “oh sweet mulatto child”’. When she grew up, people asked her often ‘“Are you half Norwegian and half . . . ?” “No! I'm not half anything. I am a whole person!” What a question?!’ She said that she grew up being called pejoratively or hearing that others were called Pakkis, neger, svarting, brunost (Pakkis, N-word, blackie, brown cheese3). She was therefore happy about the Norwegian concept of melaninrik. It was the prominent dance artist, choreograph and researcher Thomas Prestø who introduced the concept to Norway, and Lara said that she liked it, ‘‘cos it is neutral, and it gives me the feeling that I am at least rich in something’. For Sandy kameleon (chameleon) was a similarly insightful concept. Sandy grew up altering their identity depending on the environment they found themselves in, yet they remained unaware that this was not an abnormal or unique endeavour, but a shared experience. Learning about ‘chameleon identity’ was liberating. Several of the youngest research participants told me that they also learnt about the concept of ‘gaslighting’, which colloquially refers to the subjective experience of having one's reality repeatedly questioned by another person. This concept enabled them to make sense of subtle forms of oppression. Even when their emotions might become heightened right there and then, having accurate concepts creates understanding, which is key to processing emotions.
Through the digital social networking the research participants received insight into other experiences and lives, as well as information and knowledge. Through this they were able to understand and nuance their feelings. Furthermore, several came to understand that their experiences are not individual but shared by a larger collective. Research participants reported growing up feeling out of place because they had to relate to at least two sets of cultures, languages, and religions, which society arranged hierarchically, and on top of that experienced racism, discrimination, exclusion, and intergenerational traumas (Archambault and Haugen 2016). Research participants are as mentioned marked by intergenerational histories filled with trauma, loss, poverty, and uncertainty that in most cases have made them feel alone with their stories. Several commented that they have friends and even siblings with similar experiences, but who were not interested in either talking about these stories or processing them. However, on digital social networking sites, they met others with similar experiences and a burning engagement in anti-oppression struggles.
Anger and Social Media: A Productive Link
The anger that surfaced and was clearly expressed in the public space in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement was a topic of conversation throughout my fieldwork, both among research participants and Norwegians belonging to the majority society. While the research participants meant that anger was much needed at the individual and collective level, Martin Zondag a Norwegian journalist for the state broadcaster NRK, remarked about the Black Lives Matters demonstration in Oslo in June 2020 that ‘despite the nature of my work, I was surprised by the variety of speeches and the anger’.4 I heard several times people belonging to the majority society ask, ‘Do they have to be so angry?’, referring to minoritised Norwegians and their public expressions about racism. The research participants for their part commented that they were ‘not allowed to be angry’ despite it being a natural self-defence towards repeated episodes of racism, oppression, and offensive speech.
Marianne Gullestad (2004) noticed that the anger people with darker skin in Norway provoked by being deliberately stared at in public spaces, was dismissed. ‘The topic of minority anger is left in order to privilege the question of whether unwanted attention qualifies as an act of racism’ (Gullestad 2004: 183). Furthermore, she remarks in Norway, to stare at other people is usually regarded as bad manners. However, ‘[W]hat is regarded as common decency in relation to someone who is seen as more or less similar, is not considered necessary if the person is Black . . . It is not an act of will, just natural curiosity’ (Gullestad 2004: 184), she ironically commented. In this sense ‘the immigrant's anger at being stared at, has to recede in favour of majority people's natural response to differences’ (2004: 184). Emotions are not just personal experiences but are also socially and politically regulated, influencing how individuals express, perceive, and experience emotions within various social and institutional contexts (Ahmed 2004a, 2004b).
Cecilie Benneche (2020), points out that anger is rarely held up as praiseworthy in Norway. However, anger is about setting boundaries for other people, and if those boundaries are not demarked, closeness becomes an impossible project. She points out that all emotions, including anger, are an invitation to make contact: ‘You are stepping over my boundaries, and I care enough about both of us to respond. When I show you where my limits are and what I expect from you, it means that I invite you to do the same. Only then can we be ourselves – together’ (Benneche 2020).
However, Liv Torunn Grindheim (2014) underscores that the socialisation dynamic in kindergarten in Norway experience anger as only negative. Children who express their perception of disrespect or injustice through anger, are often labelled as aggressive and encouraged to modify their emotions, rather than recognised as communicators with an important message. Anger presents ‘both a temporary threat to friendship and the possibility of being heard’ (Grindheim 2014: 308. Nonetheless anger is not an emotion that is commonly validated, she points out.
Anger is deeply relational (Holmes 2004) and with positive potential (Cherry 2021a). Gullestad too shares a concern for the relational nature and transformative potential of anger. ‘Without the anger, there would have been nothing to tell’ (2006: 188), she claims, highlighting the positive side of anger in everyday life encounters. She describes the story of the encounter a professor had with an Indian-Norwegian woman who resisted the professor's labelling of her as an immigrant. The woman's anger destabilised the sense of the ‘self-evident and opened a space for new kinds of reflection’ (2006: 188) of who and how a person can be/become Norwegian. After this encounter the professor started to reflect about it, and it was he himself who recounted this episode publicly. Thus, without the anger there would have been no possibility for change. It is not only at the discursive level that social and cultural differences are negotiated, Gullestad remarks, but in the conviviality of everyday life practice and thus through emotions. Emotions and discrepancies in face-to-face interaction enable the destabilisation of the taken-for-granted as natural, common, and shared. Gullestad (2006) stresses that there are written and non-written rules that shape the way emotions should be expressed within certain cultural settings. Therefore, when there is a discrepancy between the expression of emotions and the sociocultural rules for that expression, a possibility for change emerges.
As artists or artistic producers, the research participants were very aware of the transformative potential of emotions, and as such were not afraid of expressing anger. Some humorously commented that Norway abounds in courses and talks about sinnemestring (anger management). Anger management, Mariela, a musician in her late forties observed, can easily turn into ‘anger suppression’ and lead to ‘passive aggression’. For the research participants, the way to handle anger was among others through creative processes and sharing about it, for which digital networks were extremely useful.
During my fieldwork and period of analysing and writing, I observed several conversations in digital networks where members manifested being angry and converting it into artistic creation. The video ‘Adopted/ imported’, the #VogueChallenge, and the attitude campaign ‘If Mustafa isn't Norwegian, what the f*ck am I then?’ are some examples (Salinas 2024b). The last consists of a 50-second artistic video. Well-known figures from the Norwegian cultural sector recited the following slam poem:
The video was uploaded to the internet in December 2020 and spread at full speed through social media. Only two days after its publication, it had half a million views. Martin a multi-artist in his late thirties told me that his friend Emma Sukalic, a photographer and artist, was the initiator of the campaign and the one who wrote the slam poem. According to Martin, she watched with mounting consternation how unfairly the young man Hasan was being treated. In December 2020, he was almost eighteen years old and was fighting for the right to stay in the country. She literally asked herself ‘If Mustafa ain't Norwegian, what the f*ck am I then?’ With support and help from her network, the poem was sent to artists and celebrities who recited it in the video and spread it with the help of digital networks.
Mustafa arrived in Norway from Jordan in 2008 at the age of six with his pregnant mother and four brothers and the family applied for asylum. After a few years, the family's temporary residence permit was revoked because his mother had received asylum for her family on faulty grounds. While his older brother, Abdel, was later granted Norwegian residency Mustafa did not have identity documents and was fighting for permanent residence in Norway.
Sukalic shared the video in a public post on Facebook asking: ‘Who will define who you are? Who is going to tell you where you belong? Is home a home when someone can take the key away from you? And if Mustafa isn't Norwegian, what the f*ck am I then?’ Through the figure of Mustafa, Sukalic symbolically turned the individual pain and anger into collective grief and anger of heterogenous social demands about belonging. The slam poetry brings to the fore what is at stake for the individual who is placed in a space of unbelonging: not being understood, being valueless; not being heard (their voices turned into noise) (see Salinas in press), and even the denial of Being. Sukalic calls for identification with Mustafa's case by connecting citizenship with national identity and belonging. Through Mustafa's case, Sukalic highlights the conditional belonging that, in one way or another, minoritised Norwegians are subjected to.
Social boundaries are in reality complex, situational, and relational. As such being Norwegian in some contexts refers to Norwegian citizenship, in others to ethnicity, religion, family or place ties, and/ or sharing cultural and class codes (Aarset 2018). However, as Gullestad already noticed, at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, there was a popular reinforcement in Norwegian nationalism of ethnic dimensions and ancestry, ‘being from’ a place and false ideas of homogenous culture (Gullestad 2002a). These concepts are now applied to define Norwegians with other ethnic backgrounds as not belonging to Norway. Gullestad has also argued that in Norwegian culture there exist different ways to set up social boundaries and create distance to maintain healthy relationships (Gullestad 1986). However, boundaries towards others with darker skin are not set up to regulate interaction, but as fences or walls to close people off.
Nevertheless, Gullestad (2002b) remarks, while discursive dichotomies between ‘Norwegians’ and ‘Immigrants’ now appear to be rigid and fixed, new spaces for reflection and innovation continuously open up. Digital networks contribute to create spaces for reflection at least among minoritised Norwegians who can process experiences and emotions with others who have similar experiences of grievances, pain, and frustrations. Digital networking sites also afford spaces for connection and community, regardless of ‘how fleeting or permanent those feelings may be’ (Papacharissi 2015: 9). Despite the fact that the interactions in digital networking sites alone do not create revolutions, they can, as Papacharissi highlights, create changes at the individual level and lend ‘storytelling publics their means for feeling their way into the developing event, frequently by making them a part of the developing story. There is an affective attunement and investment’ (Papacharissi 2015: 5).
During periods of lockdown, I connected with Sandy on Zoom, and utilised the scroll-back method (Robards and Lincoln 2017) on their Instagram and Facebook accounts through the share screen feature. One day we stopped and talked about what they had reshared. One post was on Facebook, and it was Sukalic's video ‘If Mustafa isn't Norwegian, what the f*ck am I then?’
Sandy connected with Mustafa and the video through the story of their father, who was a refugee. Once in Norway, the traumas of the war, the horrific escape, a life in exile far from his loved ones, and the hardship of being an immigrant led him to lose his job and with it much of his sense of dignity. Sandy resonated with Mustafa's struggle. The figure of Mustafa and his concrete demand for citizenship serves to call into question this conditional belonging that certain Norwegians experience. Sukalic makes a point of the fact that if Mustafa – who identifies and is identified as Norwegian – does not have the right to live in the country, then others who speak Norwegian, feel Norwegian, and are socialised into Norwegian cultural and values, cannot feel safe either. Josée Archambault and Gry Mette D. Haugen (2016) remark regarding Norway ‘there must exist both an internal and an external identification for an individual to experience belonging’. Monica Five Aarset (2018) coined the concept of ‘conditional belonging’ to describe how feelings of belonging among middle-class Norwegian minorities co-exist with awareness of the conditionality of this belonging, and of not being in control of these conditions. Inclusion is on the one hand discursively presented as ‘conditional on the ability and desire to take part’ (Aarset 2018: 255), and on the other, it is signalled that nonetheless ‘ability and desire’ are not enough. The person is not recognised as an equal.
Sandy, as with other research participants, expressed that while they were Norwegians, they were ‘told’ in diverse ways that they did not belong to Norway. As such, they never get full confirmation of their belonging to the country. It is in this sense that many resonated with the angry expression ‘If Mustafa isn't Norwegian, what the f*ck am I then?’
Spaces of community afforded by social media are significant for Sandy and other young individuals and their processes of identity formation, and in some situations, also for the deep sense of collective identification they give. As I have mentioned above, collective identification and interactions within communities of opinion, may also awaken a sense of protagonism regarding the stories, such as Mustafa's, that are shared on social media. Protagonism might give the feeling that their life and their concerns also matter and as such contribute to a positive experience of belonging.
Conclusion
By examining the interconnectedness between social media, anger, and everyday negotiations over belonging and anti-racist struggles, this study sheds light on how digital networks provide a platform for the expression and regulation of emotions. The ethnographic approach to digitally embedded sociality in Norway allows the examination of how digital networking sites give minoritised Norwegians a different set of communicative practices than those offered by cultural norms and traditional ways of socialising in Norway. Interlocutors stressed almost unanimously the emotional intensities involved in their social media practices, which bridge the personal and political, the private and the public. By taking part in the sharing of emotions like frustration, anger, and grief ‘in communities networked digitally but connected discursively’ (Papacharissi 2015: 5) they confirm, and the youngest become aware of, that their experiences and feelings were not particular and individual, but experiences of a larger collective. Social media platforms offer minoritised Norwegians arenas to create a sense of community and solidarity where they can develop shared languages to understand and express experiences of racism, discrimination, and unbelonging.
I have discussed that, externalised anger has not traditionally been a dominant aspect of face-to-face communication among Norwegians. However, social interactions are dynamic and constantly evolving. Social media platforms have facilitated an environment where expressing anger is allowed. The closed Facebook groups created a sense of safety and freedom for individuals to vent their frustrations and voice their anger without fear of losing face or facing immediate repercussions. These digital networks help research participants to cope with their anger creatively and process their emotions. In the context of this study, anger is a manifestation of grief and pain of one form or another – both physical and emotional – in the face of racism, rejection, threat, or loss. Anger that is never let loose can also lead to anxiety, shame, and self-loathing.
I do not know if interactions in social media platforms will change the dominant Norwegian cultural repertoire of dealing with anger in face-to-face public interactions, but it certainly plays a significant role in mediated mobilisation towards different forms of oppression. Audre Lorde (1981), the Black poet and activist, stresses that to address racial injustice it is necessary to acknowledge the anger that racism gives rise to – whether as a personal experience or as a witness – and transform it into a liberating and strengthening act. The power of anger, as my research demonstrates, might not only be a motivating force for social media users. The philosopher Amia Srinivasan (2018) rightly notes that anger can be productive also epistemically, particularly in research areas where anger intersects with issues of equity and justice. By exploring the epistemic potential of anger, scholars can better understand how this emotion can be channelled into productive and transformative action. Ultimately, it is not anger itself that is inherently dangerous, but rather how it is expressed and utilised. By exploring the complexities of anger, one can also harness its power for positive change.
Acknowledgements
This article is part of the research project Private Lives: Embedding Sociality at Digital Kitchen-Tables, Research Council Norway (RCN) 303048. I want to deep thank the research participants for their generosity, openness, and support in the completion of this study. Their contribution is invaluable. I would also like to thank the project participants, Professor Marianne Lien, and researches Tuva Beyer Broch, and Tom Bratrud for fruitful discussion and scholarly support.
Notes
I use the term ‘minoritised’ to describe the research participants, following the concept introduced Rita Segato (2016) who defines ‘minoritised’ as the practice of reducing individuals and groups who deviate from the ‘universalised’ default to a minor position. The concept elucidates the power dynamics within the minority–majority relationship.
The Norwegian concept of berøringsangst (literally translates to ‘anxiety of touch’) is commonly used to describe a fear, anxiety, or avoidance of addressing certain sensitive topics. In the Norwegian public debates on racism there has been a recognition that in some contexts there are berøringsangst, implying a reluctance to openly acknowledge and discuss the ‘elephant in the room’.
Paradoxically, brown cheese is a Norwegian goat cheese specialty, but in this context it is pejorative.
See Nallu, P. (2020), ‘Black Lives Matter Reaches Norway’, The Battleground, 2 December, https://thebattleground.eu/2020/12/02/black-lives-matter-reaches-norway/.
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