Line Nybro Petersen is an associate professor in Media Studies at the University of Copenhagen, with a PhD in Film and Media Studies from the same institution. Her research focuses on online practices and communities with a focus on everything from fan culture, conspiracy theories and extremism. She often works with digital ethnography, but favours mixed methods with both textual readings and quantitative data sets.
Line Nybro Petersen is the author of the book Mediatized Fan Play: Modes, Moods and Dark Play in Networked Media, which presents her theoretical perspective on fan culture as a kind of mediatised play. One chapter in the book deals with how fan games are played out in the Qanon community across different platforms and how users collectively built an entire conspiracy theory universe.
Most recently, Petersen has been head of research on a Horizon Europe project (, 2023-2026) on extremism on social media among the 45-65 age group. In collaboration with media researcher Mikkel Bækby Johansen, she developed a conceptualisation of a current trend of hybridisation, where ideologies both fragment and merge in online communities. Their joint research shows how extreme narratives blend with mainstream practices and therefore have the potential to help these ideas reach a wider audience.
Line Nybro Petersen regularly disseminates her research to organisations and internships working with online radicalisation and violent extremism in Denmark and internationally.
Line Nybro Petersen
Associate professor
Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen
| Phone: | +45 35 33 10 96 |
| Email: | bmr573@hum.ku.dk |
| Webpage: |
