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Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 13:1 (2022) ► pp.85–106

Performing right-wing political identities on reader comments pages

 | Universidad de Navarra
Recent discourse research has examined the rise of right-wing populism. Yet the predominant focus on political parties and politicians means that we know less about how right-wing identities are performed among ordinary people with different degrees of political engagement. This paper examines reader comments pages in three British newspapers, analysing how participants perform, defend and reinforce their political identities in online fora. It traces how supporters of the far-right United Kingdom Independence Party perform collective identities and enact political antagonisms. The conclusions emphasise how online media particularly propitiate the blending of personal and societal discourses, and suggest that the internal dynamics of affordances such as comments pages propel conflict escalation and heighten antagonism.
Keywords: discourse analysis, political discourse, digital discourse, reader comments, right-wing populism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Collective identities and social media
  • 3.Material and methodology
  • 4.Performing and negotiating identities
    • 4.1Identity symbols: Creating a recognisable online “we”
    • 4.2Rational arguments and narratives supporting the UKIP position
    • 4.3The relational “we”: Our origins, allies and allegiances
    • 4.4Projecting adversaries and performing antagonism
  • 5.The dynamics of antagonism
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.18063.bre
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