Social media platforms play an increasing role in politics,
facilitating the circulation of populist texts disseminated by politicians, official
campaign media, and user-generated content, all of which contribute to voters’ perceptions
of politicians and political issues. The networks and affordances of social media platforms
allow for the development of an individualized, affective connection with voters, which is a
particularly important strategy for far-right politicians, who are often stigmatized.
Furthermore, social media enables the circulation of user-generated materials in a form of
digital political participation, allowing citizens to respond in real-time to political
developments. While digital political participation ostensibly offers the potential for the
expression of marginalized perspectives, digital texts predominantly emphasize and enforce
existing hierarchies, particularly the supremacy of whiteness. This panel explores visuals
and memes circulated on social media through the lenses of platform studies, whiteness
studies, nostalgia, and Critical Discourse Analysis. By examining both “top-down” media
disseminated by public figures and “bottom-up” user-generated content, this panel provides
an in-depth understanding of the social media ecosystems that work to preserve and extend
far-right values and white supremacy. Rachel Winter focuses on the influence of official
campaign materials on user-generated content, as well as the impacts of both on candidate
image management and the racial hierarchy of the United States. An analysis of
representations of race in user-generated Rafael “Ted” Cruz and Robert “Beto” O’Rourke memes
reveals an embedded valuation of whiteness and white supremacy to the detriment of other
racial demographics. Political memes collected from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr,
and Reddit uphold the importance of the white racial identity of candidates and, in so
doing, attempt to preserve White American identities from the perceived threat of
multiculturalism embodied in racially diverse politicians and their constituents. Julia
DeCook examines nostalgia and chronotopes in alt-right memes, contending that the emphasis
on “tradition” over “progress” is an attempt to unify the alt-right and preserve white
identity and supremacy from threats of globalization and feminism. The alt-right creates
virtual nation-states that use consistent linguistic strategies to enable these groups to
engage in a form of collective action. Examining white supremacist memes from Reddit and
Instagram, Panelist 2 explores the ways that time, memory, and the abstract conception of
“the past” are used in digital propaganda to appeal to younger voters and emphasize the myth
that whiteness must be protected from the threat of multiculturalism.
Shani on the Web: Virality and Vitality in Digital Popular Hinduism
