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Social Representations of Sociopolitical Groups on r/The_Donald and Emergent Conflict Narratives: A Qualitative Content Analysis
Author(s) -
McLamore Quinnehtukqut,
Uluğ Özden Melis
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
analyses of social issues and public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.479
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1530-2415
pISSN - 1529-7489
DOI - 10.1111/asap.12212
Subject(s) - ideology , politics , narrative , sociology , immigration , content analysis , social media , content (measure theory) , race (biology) , qualitative research , gender studies , media studies , social psychology , political science , social science , psychology , law , linguistics , mathematical analysis , philosophy , mathematics
Social media has been integral for the organization and success of right‐wing populist movements in the United States and Europe. Within online communities, discussions take place in which ideologies are formulated, iterated upon, and disseminated. One particular forum, hosted on the popular website reddit.com, r/The_Donald, has received media attention for its political influence. Despite the influence of online spaces in populist, far‐right movements, relatively little attention has been paid to qualitative content of discussions that take place within such spaces, including r/The_Donald. Guided by a social representations approach, we analyzed how discussions on r/The_Donald represent sociopolitical groups. We focused on discussions of political affiliations, race relations, immigration, and culture. From a dataset of 8,198 posts, we selected 1,292 segments from 883 unique Reddit usernames and analyzed them using qualitative content analysis. The results showed that the majority of posts discussed liberals, race relations, and conspiracy theories, and in these posts, liberals and liberal ideas were delegitimized and mocked through their representations. These posts represented conservatives through antinomic contrast and comparison to liberals and liberal policies. The meanings of those representations in intergroup relations are discussed.