Blog responses to the Covid-19 crisis: The case of extreme-right blogs in Greece

Blogs are a tool belonging to the digital era of media. What makes them more attractive than social media platforms is that in their case, the administrator is the one responsible for their content. While social media platforms account for the uploaded material, blogs lack that accountability. Thus, blogs have become viral among extreme-right groups. They are pretty comfortable in use, impersonal, and easy to be found, even though without a social media account. In the Greek digital sphere, extreme-right groups had a very dense presentation until 2013 and Pavlos Fyssa΄s murder. Anti-systemic and offensive against Golden Dawn most of the times, their discourse has adapted neo-nazi characteristics, while they openly favour both conspiracy theories and the Greek Orthodox Church. Conspiracy theories – a preferred story for extreme-right – were strengthened due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown that took place in many countries. Their content became attractive for parts of the Greek society, creating a clash in the public life between a conspiracist and a mainstream part of the society. Acclaiming the lack of time to understand what effects have the presence of such an offensive discourse in the public sphere, we set the following research question: - How the Greek extreme-right blogs covered the Covid-19 pandemic in Greece and especially the period of the national lockdown? Having constructed our research framework, we have also specified our focus on the two months of national lockdown. In that way, we will be capable of highlighting the production of public discourse and the use of blogs from the extreme-right groups, while pandemic has reached Greece. Notably, it could offer us the ability to observe how conspiracy theories are transformed in the globalisation era and how that is imported in daily life. To achieve that, we will approach our content through the use of bibliography about blogs and conspiracy theories, attempting to introduce them in the study of extreme-right groups. In the Greek digital sphere, extreme-right organisations had a very dense presentation until 2013 and Pavlos Fyssa΄s murder.