Jordan McSwiney is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. He completed his PhD at The University of Sydney in 2021.

Jordan’s research focuses on the far right, with a particular focus on their communication and organisation. His work has been published in Information, Communication & Society, New Media & Society, and Patterns of Prejudice, among others. He is the author of Far-right political parties in Australia: Disorganisation and electoral failure (Routledge).

At the Centre, Jordan is working on the project ‘Democratic Resilience: The Public Sphere and Extremist Attacks’ (Discovery Project, funded by Australian Research Council, 2021-25)

Key Publications

• McSwiney, J. (2024). Far-right political parties in Australia: Disorganisation and electoral failure. Routledge.

  
  

• McSwiney, J., & Sengul, K. (2024). Humour, ridicule, and the far right: Mainstreaming exclusion through online animation. Television and New Media, 25(4), 315-333.

  
  

• Jasser, G., McSwiney, J., Pertwee, E., & Zannettou, S. (2023). ‘Welcome to #GabFam’: Far-right virtual community on Gab. New Media & Society, 25(7), 1728–1745.

  
  

• McSwiney, J., Vaughan, M. Heft, A., & Hoffman., M. (2021). Sharing the hate? Memes and transnationality in the far right’s digital visual culture. Information, Communication & Society, 24(16) 2502-2521.

  
  

• McSwiney, J. (2021). Social networks and digital organisation: Far right parties at the 2019 Australian federal election. Information, Communication & Society, 24(10), 1401-1418. 

A full list of Jordan McSwiney’s publications is available here.

Public Engagement

• Australian efforts on Islamophobia flag despite Christchurch wake-up call. Al Jazeera. 2024, March 15.

  
  

• Recovering the ‘Aryan worldview’: the Western Australian book publisher under scrutiny over far-right texts. The Guardian. 2024, January 15

• “It’s just a joke”: why we need to pay attention to far-right humour. RightNow! Blog, Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX). 2024, January 8.

• Why it’s so hard to stop neo-Nazi public hate parades. The Age. 2023, November 12.

  
  

• Far-right groups targeting young people, inquiry finds. The Age. 2022, August 30.

  
  

• Right-wing parties line up for make-or-break Victorian state election. The New Daily. 2022, 22 June.

  
  

• Dr Jordan McSwiney on One Nation & Western Civilisation. Yeah Nah Pasaran! 2022, 9 June.

  
  

• Labor and the Liberals are waging an election meme war – but what is the point? The Guardian. 2022, May 1.

Visiting Appointments

• 2023 - Visiting Fellow. Centre for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo, Norway.

  
  

• 2020 - Research Fellow, Digitalisation and the Transnational Public Sphere, Wizenbaum Institute, Berlin, Germany

  
  

• 2019 - Doctoral Fellow, WZB Berlin, Berlin, Germany