Is the Alt-Right Popular in Canada? Image Sharing, Popular Culture, and Social Media

IF 0.8 Q3 COMMUNICATION

Canadian Journal of Communication Pub Date : 2022-12-01 DOI:10.3138/cjc.2022-0021

F. McKelvey, Scott DeJong, Saskia Kowalchuck, Elsa Donovan

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background: In popular coverage and social media analysis, the alt-right has been described as a popular phenomenon. Following Stuart Hall’s understanding of popular culture, we question the status of the alt-right in Canada as both a political and methodological problem that requires critical attention to social media metrics and critical experimentation in developing new digital methods. Analysis: Our study developed a novel method to analyse image circulation across major social media platforms. We find that image sharing is marginal, yet the spread of images distinguishes political communities between Twitter hashtags, subreddits, and Facebook pages. We found a distinct alt-right community in our sample, active but isolated from other popular sites. Conclusion and Implications: While the findings suggest the limited significance of image sharing to conceptualize popularity in cross-platform analysis, our novel method offers a compelling alternative to corporate social media analytics and raises new questions about how popular politics, especially the popularity of the alt-right, may be studied in the future.

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另类右翼在加拿大受欢迎吗?图片分享、流行文化和社交媒体

背景:在大众报道和社交媒体分析中，另类右翼被描述为一种流行现象。根据斯图尔特·霍尔对流行文化的理解，我们质疑另类右翼在加拿大的地位，认为这既是一个政治问题，也是一个方法论问题，需要对社交媒体指标进行批判性关注，并在开发新的数字方法方面进行批判性实验。分析:我们的研究开发了一种新的方法来分析主要社交媒体平台上的图像流通。我们发现，图片分享是边缘的，但图片的传播区分了Twitter标签、子reddit和Facebook页面之间的政治社区。我们在样本中发现了一个独特的另类右翼社区，它很活跃，但与其他热门网站隔绝。结论和启示:虽然研究结果表明，在跨平台分析中，图像共享对概念化人气的意义有限，但我们的新方法为企业社交媒体分析提供了一个令人信服的替代方案，并提出了关于未来如何研究流行政治，特别是另类右翼的人气的新问题。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Canadian Journal of Communication COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

0.80

自引率

20.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The objective of the Canadian Journal of Communication is to publish Canadian research and scholarship in the field of communication studies. In pursuing this objective, particular attention is paid to research that has a distinctive Canadian flavour by virtue of choice of topic or by drawing on the legacy of Canadian theory and research. The purview of the journal is the entire field of communication studies as practiced in Canada or with relevance to Canada. The Canadian Journal of Communication is a print and online quarterly. Back issues are accessible with a 12 month delay as Open Access with a CC-BY-NC-ND license. Access to the most recent year''s issues, including the current issue, requires a subscription. Subscribers now have access to all issues online from Volume 1, Issue 1 (1974) to the most recently published issue.