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Finlayson, Alan 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3939-349X and Topinka, Robert
(2024)
'We Have to Save the Children’:Ethos, Digital Affordances, and the Call to Adventure in Reactionary Digital Politics.
In:
Ethos, Technology and AI in Contemporary Society.
Routledge.
ISBN 9781032688503
Abstract
Social media have proved a congenial environment for an ideological ‘family’, which this chapter calls ‘Reactionary Digital Politics’. The chapter argues that on digital platforms, political ethos is best understood as an effect of the interactive, participatory relationship between speaker and audience as constituted by platform affordances. It is an ‘entanglement’ easily attuned to the reactionary repertoire. Reflecting on theories of rhetorical personae, it is suggested that we can see the emergence of a ‘fifth persona’, a certain ethos of participation and involvement to which online actors must conform, and which, when articulated in or as Reactionary Digital Politics, manifests as the acceptance of an invitation to go on a ‘hero’s journey’-participating in reactionary resistance without end. This is illustrated through two case studies drawn from QAnon (the conspiracy theory movement that believes that members of elite groups are trafficking children). These show how identification with the ethos of heroic participation is embedded within the very procedures for the creation and circulation of such material online and in what ways they are constitutive of Reactionary Digital Politics.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy and Area Studies |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Political, Social and International Studies Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Policy & Politics Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Cultural Politics, Communications & Media |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Nov 2024 14:30 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Dec 2024 00:43 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/97718 |
| DOI: | 10.4324/9781032688503 |
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