Political Fandom for Danish PM Mette Fredriksen

The early morning session this Friday at AoIR 2023 that I’m in starts with a paper by my QUT DMRC colleague Sebastian Svegaard. He presents a case study of what happens when politicians behave badly – and how their political fan bases respond to this. This connects with a larger body of work which connects fandom and political research, and positions politics as fandom.

The case study focusses on Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen, who has been in the office since 2019 and therefore through the COVID-19 pandemic. She leads a minority Social Democrat government – an unusual setup in Danish politics. Early on in the pandemic, it appeared that mink might be involved in spreading COVID-19, and the government decided to mandate the premature killing of mink (ahead of the usual cull later in the year); this became a major political controversy.

The project observed two major groups of Fredriksen fans on Facebook which started during the pandemic, and examined their discussions surrounding the keyword ‘mink’; this detected two major discourse. One claimed that she was right all along, and generated a substantial amount of fandom of Fredriksen as a strong, independent woman; the second claimed that all other political leaders (and especially the conservative parties and their leaders) are terrible for orchestrating a smear campaign against Fredriksen. The latter especially shows a strong sense of anti-fandom, opposing the conservative parties.

These two groups act as fan spaces, then, and the use of affect links them in their political discourse – these are ‘feels’ cultures that blend politics and popular culture. (This includes the regular posting of rows of ‘rose’ emoji in Facebook comments since the red rose is the symbol of the Social Democrats.) Discussion here builds on a sense of canon (or ‘fanon’) that is universally accepted in these fan communities. Affective engagement is more important here than rational debate.