University of Gothenburg
University of Gothenburg
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Anton Törnberg

Senior Lecturer

Department of Sociology and Work
Science
Mail
anton.tornberg@gu.se
Visiting address
Skanstorget 18
41122 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 720
40530 Göteborg

About Anton Törnberg

Background

Anton Törnberg defended his doctoral thesis in 2017, titled: ”The wicked nature of social systems – a complexity approach to sociology”. The thesis investigates how the interdisciplinary field of Complexity Science can inform both sociological theory and methodological practice. Empirically the focus in the theses lies on digital data and social movements.

Anton has previously worked as a research assistant within several projects at the Department of Physical Resource Theory at Chalmers University of Technology, and has been assegno di ricerca at the European Centre for Living Technology (ECLT) at Ca’Foscari University of Venice, Italy.

Specialist Fields

  • Complexity Science/Theory
  • Social media and Big data
  • Social Movement Theory
  • Critical/Complex Realism
  • Agent-based Modelling
  • Social Network Analysis
  • Automated Text Analysis
  • Philosophy of Science

Current research

Since 2019, Anton is employed as a postdoc at the Department of Sociology and Work Science at the University of Gothenburg. His research chiefly focuses on the radical right movement online, particularly radicalization processes and violent extremism. Methodologically, Anton combines various methods and techniques within machine learning, such as topic modeling, word embedding and sentiment analysis, together with qualitative analysis. He also combined social network analysis and text analysis in order to study how various concepts and discourses diffuse within digital networks.

Together with Mattias Wahlström, Hans Ekbrand and Petter Törnberg, Anton Törnberg is also involved in a project focusing on extreme-right discourses in social media and the potential impact of such discourses on offline action. The project is titled: “Online social media as discursive opportunity structure for attacks against refugee housing facilities”.

Cooperation

Anton has worked within several projects at the Department of Physical Resource Theory at Chalmers University of Technology, among others INSITE and the ED-FET project Emergence by Design: two research projects focusing on innovation dynamics and socio-technological change. Anton is also organizing an interdisciplinary PhD-course in Social Network Analysis together with two colleagues at Physical Resource theory. Anton has previously been a guest researcher at the University of Amsterdam, at ECLT in Venice and at UMASS, in Massachusetts, USA.