Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article investigates how the Norwegian police’s Online Patrols contribute to the cultural production of monstrosity through their posts on social media. Drawing on theories of monstrosity as a shifting moral and cultural category, the study examines how police communication—though framed as preventive and informative—implicitly constructs boundaries between humanity and its monstrous others. The article employs the concept of “implicit narrative,” derived from Bakhtin’s theory of speech genres, to analyze how police posts implicitly activate broader cultural scripts. Through a close reading of posts about sexual predators, hate crime and women’s rights, the article explores different ways that the police’s social media presence draws from and play into ongoing cultural negotiations ultimately connected to morality and humanity. By situating police storytelling within the algorithmically governed and affectively charged landscape of social media, the article argues that digital policing practices are deeply entangled with cultural processes of othering. In this context, the law is not only a regulatory framework but also a narrative device through which monstrosity is constructed, contested, and circulated.
DOI: 10.3384/cu.6272
Author: Guro Flinterud
Institution: University of Bergen
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7202287014
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