JONATHAN LUNDBERG was born in 1995 in Asarum and is a freelance journalist and author. He made his debut in 2019 with the non-fiction book SVERIGEVÄNNER, where he investigated how the right-wing populist party the Sweden Democrats built their online movement – and why it became so successful.

In 2021, he released his second book, FRÅN VÄRLDSKRIG TILL NÄTKRIG, which is about the history of internet culture and how today's debate regarding social media is similar to the debate that raged a hundred years ago regarding mass media.

Furthermore, Jonathan is an appreciated lecturer on topics connected to both of his books. He regularly trains journalists in digital research through the Media Institute Fojo and is a board member of the Writers' Association's non-fiction section Minerva.

Jonathan’s new non-fiction book CICADA 3301: THE INTERNET’S BIGGEST MYSTERY will be published by Bokförlaget Polaris in January 2025.

Agent Maja Hjelm

TO BE PUBLISHED JANUARY 2025, BOKFÖRLAGET POLARIS
GENRE NON-FICTION
PAGES 272

CICADA 3301 is the story of how an internet mystery captured an entire world.

In early 2012, a strange message is posted on the world's largest anonymous online forum 4chan. A secret organisation called 3301 is looking for ‘highly intelligent individuals’ who want to change the world. The internet's brightest minds quickly rally round the challenge. Is it an intelligence agency recruiting? A hacker group? A cyber sect with delusions of grandeur?

For years, millions of people have been – and still are – fascinated by the ciphers and riddles planted by the organisation. This Da Vinci Code mystery of the internet becomes a perilous scavenger hunt that leads down the darkest corridors of the World Wide Web, but also out into the physical world, with clues placed all over the globe. Assumed winners seem to be recruited, but that's where all traces of 3301 end.

Thanks to unique interviews and over a million deleted chat logs, journalist Jonathan Lundberg can for the first time tell the whole story of the internet's biggest mystery. At the same time, the author takes us on an educational journey through everything from the history of encryption and Satanism, to cypherpunk and the struggle for freedom on the internet.

Who or what was 3301? After a decade of speculation, Lundberg believes he has found the answer.