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This article explores the concept of joking nationalism, which captures how seriousness and silliness as public modalities interact to shape sentiment and understanding of national identity. Combining humor studies concepts with online ethnography and rhetorical analysis, we show how joking nationalism allows for reflexivity regarding national identity ambiguities, in how the Reddit community r/Sweden responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent Swedish NATO-application process. r/Sweden offers space for open-ended, playful, and negotiating rhetoric, aiding communal self-exploration and emphasizing reflexivity, at a time when Swedishness is challenged. While joking might signal detachment, we argue that it reflects engagement with politics and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhetorical genres play a structuring role in public discourse by framing issues and influencing argumentation norms. In public controversy, struggles for dominance between genre frameworks can accompany substantive argumentation. This article presents a case study of the interconnected controversies about the Swedish school application system and public service legitimacy following a news satire programme Svenska Nyheter episode. It introduced a web tool simplifying applications, circumventing what was argued to be segregating effects of a fragmented first-come-first-serve system. The satiric framing invited carnivalesque civic engagement, while the private school sector's response promoted a forensic debate on the programme's legitimacy, with its own invitational pull. While these competing genres dominated different institutional media arenas, they significantly blended in online civic participation. Satirising techniques were appropriated to create agency in the "serious" forensic discourse and vice versa, indicating that boundaries of carnivalesque and serious modes are not as maintained by engaged citizens as by institutional actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]