Open AccessMELODRAMATIC PLATFORMS: THE AFFECTIVE THEATRE OF POLARIZED POLITICAL STORYTELLING ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Author(s) -
Míchílín Ní Threasaigh,
Megan Boler
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
selected papers of internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2162-3317
DOI - 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12218
Subject(s) - narrative , storytelling , polarization (electrochemistry) , social media , politics , sociology , plot (graphics) , media studies , social psychology , psychology , political science , literature , art , law , chemistry , statistics , mathematics
Once a site of promise for democratizing mass communication, theinternet has also become a site of problematic information and polarized affect. Contrary toclaims that polarization is not necessarily encouraged by social media platforms; ourtwo-year, mixed-methods study of affect and narratives of race and national belonging insocial media discourses of the 2019 Canadian and 2020 U.S. federal elections reveals clearlypolarized collective political storytelling constructing conflicting meta-narratives markedby a highly affective moralizing tone and clear binaries of us versus them and good versusevil. Surprisingly, there is very little research that has drawn on either narrativeemotions analysis or melodrama to understand the kinds of polarization that take placewithin social media platforms. This talk shares our finding; achieved through our innovativeapproach to affective discourse analysis developed through iterative, grounded theoreticalqualitative study; that discourse communities formed according to social as well aspolitical identities construct these polarized meta-narratives in the genre of melodrama,readily ensuring the emotional engagement of social media users through “sensationalism andpredictable plot lines of good battling evil, plots and characters that do not encouragereflection, and refusal of nuance” (Loseke, 2018, p. 517).