Politically incorrect participatory media: Racist nationalism on r/ImGoingToHellForThis

Abstract

This article 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, which “cloak” the racism. Through an in-depth study of user-submitted comments and visual jokes, this article argues that the “cloaks” that obscure online racism can be at once highly obvious and highly effective. Rather than unmasking obscured racist online ideologies, scholars must also examine how racism flourishes while hiding in plain sight by tracing how racist discourses assemble in participatory media communities.

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