Them! Ingroup-outgroup dynamics in Flemish anti-woke discourses on X

Abstract

Since the early 2020s, “woke” has emerged as a key term in culture war discourse in the U.S. and internationally. A key characteristic of this discourse is the sharp opposition between “us” and “them”, anti-woke actors presenting “the woke movement” as radically other. Drawing on international literature on social and media discourses about woke, this paper analyses the way #woke is used on X in Flanders, Dutch-language Belgium. While analyses of Belgian legacy media disclose balance in reporting on woke, this paper analyses X as a more anonymous setting with less content moderation and a tendency towards incivility. Using a combination of quantitative content analysis and qualitative thematic analysis, all Flemish tweets introducing #woke on X in 2023 are analysed (N = 449). The paper explores the overarching tone and dominant actors in these tweets, which actors tweet most negatively about woke, and how “us” and “them” are constructed in anti-woke discourse. The results show that most of the tweets (61.2 %) are negative, and that citizens are the most important actors (83.7 %). While politicians constitute a minority of the users tweeting #woke (11.4 %), right-wing politicians tweet most negatively about woke (97.2 %). The qualitative analysis of anti-woke tweets discloses a chain of equivalence creating a sharp opposition between “us” and “them”, whereby the former is mostly implicitly defined as the opposite of the latter. These tweets address an affective public, an imagined community defending “our freedom” (against cancel culture), “our nation” (against racial and religious others) and “ordinary people” (against elites).