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Politically Incorrect Participatory Media: Racist Nationalism on r/ImGoingToHellForThis

Sun, May 28, 8:00 to 9:15, Hilton San Diego Bayfront, Floor: 3, Aqua Salon D

Abstract

This paper examines how racism and nationalism flourish in participatory media spaces by analyzing user comments and images posted on the reddit community r/ImGoingToHellForThis in the week following widespread news coverage of the photograph of Alan Kurdi, a Syrian boy whose dead body was photographed on a beach in Turkey. The community is dominated by racist nationalist discourse that combines textual commentary with photographs and other visual media that have been remediated into offensive visual jokes. Through an in-depth study user-submitted comments and visual jokes, this paper argues that the ‘cloaks’ that obscure online racism can be at once obvious and highly effective. Rather than unmasking obscured racist online ideologies, scholars must also examine how these ideologies flourish while hiding in plain sight by tracing how racist discourses assemble in participatory media communities.

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