The trial lecture will last from 10:00-10:45. The title will be announced 14 days ahead of the defence.
The candidate will defend her thesis at 12:00.
The committee is:
- Professor Bente Kalsnes, Kristiania University of Applied Sciences
- Associate Professor Frederik Hjorth, University of Copenhagen
- Professor Roy Krøvel, Oslo Metropolitan University
Leader of the public defence is Vice Dean Steen Steensen, Oslo Metropolitan University.
Main supervisor is Senior Researcher Yuri Kasahara, Oslo Metropolitan University.
Co-supervisor is Associate Professor Yngve Benestad Hågvar, Oslo Metropolitan University.
Summary
This doctoral dissertation examines digital dissent during the COVID-19 pandemic by exploring the role of misinformation and critical humor as tools for contesting institutional authority in Norway. Using Twitter data spanning three years of the pandemic, it conceptualizes these practices as forms of political resistance within modern, liberal democracies.
The first article focuses on the task of misinformation identification, developing a semi-supervised self-training framework for short-text classification. The second article examines misinformation discourses, revealing ways in which vaccine-related misinformation was used to challenge institutional authority. The third article develops a framework for multimodal humor detection, and explores the use of humor for delineating symbolic boundaries between citizens and political elite.
Together, these articles provide empirical insight into how digital dissent operates in a high-trust democracy during a time of prolonged pressure and uncertainty.
