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Moral Panic 2.0: White Nationalism, Convergence Culture, and Racialized Media Events Ruari Shaw Sutherland PhD in Geography The University of Edinburgh 2016 Abstract In the four decades since Stanley Cohen (1972) first theorised the ‘moral panic’, there has been immense technological change in the field of communications and media. Whilst Cohen’s original model relies on elite-driven mediated narratives, I argue that moral panics have taken on a memetic quality in the convergent and participatory mediascape. In other words: in an age of social media, moral panic discourses are increasingly open to contestation, reinterpretation, and recirculation by multiple actors and groups. In this thesis, I examine one such group – the web’s largest white nationalist (WN) forum, Stormfront. To do so, I trace three racialized media events as they circulate on and through the Forum. Here, I show how the mechanics of the moral panic have fundamentally shifted in the digital age. I explore the means by which Stormfront users exploit this semi-democratised mediascape in an attempt to ‘manage’ and exploit moral panics surrounding episodes of racialized violence. To this end, I explore the topologically entangled shuttling back and forth of ‘online’ and ‘offline’ lives and spaces to argue for a more-than-digital geography of computer mediated communication. Here, I show how the Forum’s ‘collective voice’ is often given expression through selective quotation by mainstream media surrounding racialized moral panics. This process of remediation, I argue, allows explicitly racist groups fugitive access to mainstream discourse, and turns mainstream media outlets into unwitting nodes in a white nationalist broadcast network. However, I argue that this public-facing process, opens WNs up to increased scrutiny, leading to strategic and contingent deployments of contradictory repertoires of race. In doing so, I examine repertoires of race in such WN interventions - highlighting their flexible and contingent construction of racialized categories in the negotiation of contemporary structures of feeling (Williams 1977; Anderson 2014). I contend that a digitally-inflected antiracism must attend to the contingent, translocal, and assembled nature of racism online if it is to be effective. Lay Summary With a sharp rise in far-right politics across Europe and the USA, a better understanding of reactionary racist movements is increasingly pressing. In this thesis I examine the media practices of the web’s largest white nationalist (WN) web forum – Stormfront (SF). By tracing three episodes of racist violence as they circulate on and through the site, I explore SF users’ understandings and framings of space, as well as their contingent and flexible constructions of race. Furthermore, I show how SF users’ use of digital media has allowed them to easily connect with other WNs - making them easier for antiracists to find, yet harder to attack. I also demonstrate that the boundaries of ‘whiteness’ and ‘otherness’ are not clear-cut, and that WN responses to racist violence are as much a reflection of circulating public feeling as they are of ideology. Finally, I contend that social media has allowed such marginal groups greater access to public discourse – allowing them to contest and manage their stigmatized identity through the use of internet memes and viral media. Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................... I DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY ....................................................................................... II TABLE OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ III TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................. IV CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 1 STORMFRONT: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 8 THREE MOMENTS OF DISCURSIVE TURBULENCE ............................................................... 10 THESIS STRUCTURE ...................................................................................................... 21 CHAPTER 2. (RE)MEDIATION, RACE, AND GEOGRAPHIES OF THE DIGITAL ...... 27 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 27 CONVERGENT MEDIASCAPES, (RE)PRODUCERLY TEXTS, AND MORAL PANIC 2.0 .................. 30 THINKING RACE: RACE-THINKING .................................................................................. 45 GEOGRAPHIES OF THE DIGITAL ..................................................................................... 59 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 69 CHAPTER 3. ‘LURKING’ AS METHOD: ‘MANUFACTURING’ FIELD AND ARCHIVE .................................................................................................................................. 71 FORMATIVE FAILURES ................................................................................................... 73 EVENT-FOCUS ............................................................................................................. 78 DISCURSIVE STRUGGLE AND CONJUNCTURAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS .................................. 82 TO ‘LURK’ OR NOT TO ‘LURK’? ...................................................................................... 85 REFLEXIVE ANTIRACIST RESEARCH ................................................................................. 89 CHAPTER 4. ‘NAILING A MILLION PAMPHLETS TO A MILLION TREES’: TOPOLOGIES AND MATERIALITIES OF CONNECTION ........................................ 93 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 93 MATERIALITY AND TOPOLOGY ...................................................................................... 96 ‘TELL THE TRUTH AND FEAR NO ONE’ – COMMUNITY AND THE SPACE OF ‘RIGHTEOUS TRUTH’ ................................................................................................................................ 120 CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................... 126 CHAPTER 5. ‘THE FERGUSON OPPORTUNITY’: (MEDIA)(TION), REMEDIATION, AND THE MANAGEMENT OF RACIALIZED MORAL PANICS .............................. 128 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 128 MORAL PANICS ......................................................................................................... 130 STORMFRONT’S CONVERGENT MEDIA PRACTICES ......................................................... 145 MEMESIS: PANIC AS MEME ......................................................................................... 151 FUGITIVE ACCESS TO DISCURSIVE STRUGGLE: REMEDIATION AND STORMFRONT BROADCAST ................................................................................................................................ 158 ENTANGLEMENTS OF (WHITE) POWER AND RESISTANCE ................................................ 163 CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................... 166 CHAPTER 6. ‘NO ONE GRIEVES FOR US!’: REPERTOIRES OF RACE AND WN MORALITY .............................................................................................................. 168 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 168 REPRESENTATIONS OF ‘WHITENESS’ ............................................................................ 170 REPRESENTATIONS OF ‘THE OTHER’ – ABSTRACT OBJECTS, CONCRETE SUBJECTS, AND FLEXIBLE MORALITY .................................................................................................... 181 CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................... 198 CHAPTER 7. TOWARD A DIGITALLY-INFLECTED ANTIRACIST PRAXIS .............. 200 TOPOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHIES OF THE DIGITAL ........................................................... 200 MEDIA AND MORAL PANIC ......................................................................................... 202 RACISM, MORALITY, AND THE CONTINGENCY OF RACE ................................................. 204 DIGITAL METHODS ....................................................................................................