Digital nativism: Twitter, migration discourse and the 2019 election

Abstract

Given its significance for society’s character, future and identity, migration has dominated media discourse. At present, the ascendance of digital platforms which broaden opportunities to produce, share and access content online has ignited debates about migration’s discursive construction. Often approached as promoting tolerance and inclusivity, social media are also believed to unleash xenophobia and intergroup antagonism. Working with a cross-section of tweets from the 2019 Canadian Federal election, this article asks how was migration framed, which users influenced the flow and substance of discourse and did Twitter diverge from conventional media space? It finds, while chains of citizen-users overwhelmingly employed Twitter to distribute original content, anti-immigration communications and actors were disproportionately featured. Considering these results, this article introduces the concept of digital nativism to clarify how technical affordances, user intentions and wider socio-political conditions intersect to produce emergent patterns of anti-immigration discourse and mobilization that are participatory, interactive and broadly distributed.

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