Reactionary Digital Politics Part 1

05/08/23 • 42 min

Digital technologies are increasingly used as ideological weapons of misinformation, manipulation, propaganda, and radicalization. But how exactly are social media platforms and memes used by ideological extremists? And what are they trying to achieve? In this episode, Dr. Sara Grimes (Director of the KMDI) chats with three researchers from the Reactionary Digital Politics Research Group, a multi-disciplinary collaboration based in the UK that has spent the past five years tracking the rise and spread of extremist and "alt-right" political ideologies, rhetorics, and aesthetics online. Dr. Alan Finlayson is a Professor of Political and Social Theory at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich England, and the author of Making Sense of New Labour (Lawrence and Wishart, 2003). Dr. Robert Topinka is a Senior Lecturer in Transnational Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and the author of Racing the Street: Race, Rhetoric and Technology in Metropolitan London, 1840-1900 (University of California Press, 2020). And Dr. Rob Gallagher is a Lecturer in Film and Media in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University and author of Videogames, Identity and Digital Subjectivity (Routledge, 2017). In the first of a special two part series, the Reactionary Digital Politics team discusses some of their findings, as well as key arguments advanced in Dr. Finlayson's recent article, entitled “Neoliberalism, the Alt Right and the Intellectual Dark Web," published in Theory, Culture & Society in 2021.
Type of research discussed in today’s episode: rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis, media studies, content analysis, critical analysis.

Keywords for today’s episode: reactionary politics, extremism, alt-right, cultural influencers, ideological entrepreneurs, the dark web, inequality, intertextuality.
For more information and a full transcript of each episode, check out our website: http://kmdi.utoronto.ca/the-critical-technology-podcast/
Send questions or comments to: [email protected]

Previous Episode

The Artist and the Automaton

While Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, and other popular AI-image systems have rekindled the debate about the future of creative work in the digital age, many cultural industries are already heavily reliant on machine learning and automation to produce content traditionally created by artists and designers. A key example is the digital games industry, where game engines, procedural content generation, and AI systems play an increasingly prominent role. In this episode, Dr. Sara Grimes (Director of the KMDI) chats with Dr. Aleena Chia, Lecturer in the Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, about her research on the ongoing transformation of creative work in the digital games industry. The discussion is focused on two of Dr. Chia’s recent articles: “The Artist and the Automaton in Digital Game Production,” published in Convergence (2022); and "The Metaverse, but not the way you think: Game engines and automation beyond game development," published in Critical Studies in Media Communication (2022).
Type of research discussed in today’s episode: political economy of communication research; digital game studies; ethnography; labour studies.
Keywords for today’s episode: procedural generated content (PCG); game engines; creative work; affective labour; automation; outsourced labour; racial capitalism; human-in-the-loop.

For more information and a full transcript of each episode, check out our website: http://kmdi.utoronto.ca/the-critical-technology-podcast/

Send questions or comments to: [email protected]

Next Episode

Reactionary Digital Politics Part 2

Games, memes, and parodies are increasingly used by extremist groups to spread misinformation and to lower the barriers to entry into extreme ideologies. But is there a deeper strategy at work? And if so, what's the end game? In Part 2 of this special two part interview, Dr. Sara Grimes chats with three researchers from the Reactionary Digital Politics Research Group, a multi-disciplinary collaboration based in the UK that has spent the past five years tracking the rise and spread of extremist and alt-right political ideologies, rhetorics, and aesthetics online. Dr. Alan Finlayson is a Professor of Political and Social Theory at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich England, and the author of Making Sense of New Labour (Lawrence and Wishart, 2003). Dr. Robert Topinka is a Senior Lecturer in Transnational Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and the author of Racing the Street: Race, Rhetoric and Technology in Metropolitan London, 1840-1900 (University of California Press, 2020). And Dr. Rob Gallagher is a Lecturer in Film and Media in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University and author of Videogames, Identity and Digital Subjectivity (Routledge, 2017).
In this episode, the Reactionary Digital Politics team discusses findings and arguments advanced in Dr. Topinka's recent article, entitled "Back to a Past that was Futuristic: The Alt-Right and the Uncanny Form of Racism," published in b2o: an online journal in 2019.
Type of research discussed in today’s episode: rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis, media studies, content analysis, critical analysis.
Keywords for today’s episode: reactionary politics, extremism, alt-right, cultural (re)appropriation, reactionary racism, insider/outsider identity, identity politics.
For more information and a full transcript of each episode, check out our website: http://kmdi.utoronto.ca/the-critical-technology-podcast/
Send questions or comments to: [email protected]