ENCODE guest lecture by Søren M. Andreasen (Department of Child Welfare and Social Work, UiT Alta)
Abstract:
While many studies have addressed and deconstructed rightwing online discourses and strategies of Othering, it is seldomly considered how such bellicose messages are rendered culturally plausible and, as such, ‘recognizable’ to the public. In this presentation, I attempt to enter this discussion by comparing how the Norwegian extreme-right media outlet the Human Rights Service (HRS) discursively constructs Muslim and so-called non-Western immigrant identities in relation to self/Other distinctions frequently encountered in Hollywood war cinema. Identifying three shared framing patterns, namely (a) differential allocation of (de)humanizing characteristics, (b) regulation of facial recognition, and (c) restricted perspective-taking, I will argue that a structurally similar framework for Manichean conflict perception extends from popular war culture into public political discourse. Attention is directed to how the HRS’s representations play into, and draw tacit plausibility from, broader interpretive frames and how bellicose discourses about incomprehensible, evil “Others” may assert their discursive effects by resonating with hegemonic backgrounds of meaning. In times of what Ang (2021, 605) has termed the “huge upsurge” of reactionary and far-right movements contesting basic aspects of the normative frameworks of cohabitation underpinning liberal democracies, I conclude by reflecting on the relationship between the HRS’s representations and processes of liberal democratic erosion.
Søren M. Andreasen is senior lecturer at the Department of Child Welfare and Social Work at UiT's campus Alta.