Rojan Tordhol Ezzati

I am a sociologist and migration scholar. I have previously worked at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. In my PhD dissertation I examined debates about migration-related diversity after the 22 July 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway. I analysed op-eds about July 22nd in selected Norwegian dailies, and the Norwegian TV news coverage of the attacks as compared to the French TV news about the November 2015 terrorist attacks in France. Furthermore, I conducted interviews about perceptions of Norwegian debates about migration-related diversity with “elites” who had been involved in handling the attacks and with “non-elites” who had no direct connection to the attacks or their aftermath. This analysis allowed me to untangle the immediate expressions of unity after terrorist attacks and the disagreements and frictions that followed in Norwegian debates in the years that followed.

In my current post-doc project, I use the pandemic as a case to examine how Norwegian national authorities’ decisions were disseminated throught media outlets. Here, as in my PhD project, I seek to uncover what communication and debates during times of crisis say about, and which consequences they have for, public debates in a liberal democracy such as Norway.