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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 15:4 (2016) ► pp.369–398

Red Scare 2.0

User-generated ideology in the age of Jeremy Corbyn and social media

| University of Westminster

This paper asks: How has Jeremy Corbyn been framed in discourses on Twitter in an ideological manner and how have such ideological discourses been challenged? It uses ideology critique as method for the investigation of tweets mentioning Jeremy Corbyn that were collected during the final phase of the Labour Party’s 2015 leadership election. The analysis shows how user-generated ideology portrays Jeremy Corbyn by creating discourse topics focused on general scapegoating, the economy, foreign politics, culture and authoritarianism.

Keywords: social media, Twitter, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, anti-socialist ideology, Red Scare, redbaiting, socialism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical foundations: ideology critique or ideology theory?
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Context: Anti-socialist ideology
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Anti-corbyn hatred: “Jeremy Corbyn is a lunatic socialist pig”
    • 5.2Security policy: “Corbyn is a friend of Britain’s enemies”
    • 5.3Economy: “Corbyn wants a Stalin-like command economy and hates the free market”
    • 5.4Culture: “Corbyn is a loony-left hippie”
    • 5.5Politics: “Jeremy Corbyn just like Stalin and Mao wants a totalitarian state”
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 October 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.15.4.01fuc
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