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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how international Covid-19 conspiracy narratives were localized in Norwegian anti-lockdown Facebook groups, showing how contemporary legends and rumors functioned as identity work by constructing “us/them” boundaries drawing “us/them” through essentialist portrayals of actors.

Paper long abstract

Conspiracy narratives related to Covid-19 circulated widely across digital platforms during the pandemic, often building on already familiar conspiracy plots. Like all vernacular storytelling, their meaning and resonance depended on local reinterpretations. This paper examines how such narratives were localized and adapted within Norwegian anti-lockdown Facebook groups, focusing on the collaborative identity work performed through rumours and contemporary legends.

The empirical basis is a digital ethnographic study of approximately 5,000 posts collected from public Norwegian Facebook groups critical of pandemic measures. While this database provides the foundation for the project, the analysis centers on close readings of a selected corpus of posts. This approach highlights how narrative detail and rhetorical strategies function as cultural practices of sense-making, rather than isolated texts.

Previous research has shown that conspiracy theories often gain plausibility by constructing essentialist portraits of actors. My earlier work on conspiracy narratives demonstrated how claims rested on assumptions about the inherent “nature” of elites and institutions. This resonates with Campion-Vincent’s observation that modern conspiracy culture frequently frames elites as “evil others.”

In the Norwegian case, I examine how global conspiracy motifs are reconfigured in a high-trust society with strong welfare institutions. Group discourse creates a sense of “us” (the skeptical, truth-seeking community) against “them” (government officials, health professionals, scientific elites – and the “sheeple” who trust and follow them). These narratives function as contemporary legends that dramatize encounters with the other and articulate cultural tensions about authority, trust, and belonging.