Mobilizing collective hatred through humour : Affective-discursive production and reception of populist rhetoric

This research examines the mobilization of populist rhetoric of the 2019 Finns Party election video. By focusing on both the FP’s election video (production) and Youtube users’ comments (reception), we examine the constructions and uses of social categories and humour as well as responses to their rhetorical deployment among like-minded supporters and opponents. The multimodal analysis of the production of a populist campaign video demonstrates the construction of social categories and humour through the five steps of collective hate. These humorous messages are differently received by like-minded and opposing YouTube users. Two supportive affective–discursive practices – glorification and schadenfreude – both express shared joy and laughter, but while glorification emphasizes the positive self-understanding of the in-group, schadenfreude belittles the ‘political Other’. Two opposing affective–discursive practices – irritation and scorn – place FP voters in subject positions of morally and intellectually inferior fascists, racists, and idiots. The populist message fosters expressions of social anger and polarization between FP supporters and opponents. Humour entangled with hatred encourages a sense of moral superiority in both groups. This study contributes to the current knowledge of mobilizing populist rhetoric and polarization, and responds to the call to broaden analysis of political communication in the field of multimodality.Peer reviewe

‘Pray for the fatherland!’ Discursive and digital strategies at play in nationalist political blogging.

Political blogs have come to constitute important channels for expressing nationalist and anti-immigration political views. The new forms that this rhetoric may take, comprising an intricate intermingling of verbal, digital, (audio-)visual, and communicative elements, present challenges for qualitative research. In this article we propose a way for analysing this new" nationalist political discourse from a qualitative social psychological perspective. The suggested approach combines analytical procedures form critical discursive and rhetorical psychology with social semiotic and rhetorical studies of images, completed with analytical tools and concepts from narrative psychology and research into online political communication. Using two empirical examples of nationalist and anti-immigration political blog-entries written during the 2015 refugee crisis," we show this approach enables the researcher to adequately study how such political messages are conveyed through the multitude of elements provided by the blogs. In so doing, our ultimate goal is to contribute to the analytical capacity of qualitative social psychological research into contemporary political communication and persuasion.Peer reviewe

Dehumanization through humour and conspiracies in online hate towards Chinese people during the COVID-19 pandemic

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been widespread conversations about the origins of the virus and who to blame for it. This article focuses on the online hate directed at Chinese and Asian people during the pandemic. Taking a critical discursive psychological approach, we analysed seven online threads related to COVID-19 and China from two Finnish websites (Suomi24 and Ylilauta) and one US (8kun) site. We identified three discursive trends associated with dehumanising Chinese populations: 'monstrous Chinese', 'immoral Chinese' and 'China as a threat', which created different forms of dehumanisation on a continuum from harsher dehumanisation to milder depersonalisation. The animalistic metaphors, coarse language, humorous frames and conspiracy beliefs worked to rhetorically justify the dehumanisation of Chinese individuals, making it more acceptable to portray them as a homogeneous and inhumane mass of people that deserves to be attacked. This study contributes to the field of discursive research on dehumanisation by deepening our knowledge of the specific features of Sinophobic hate speech.Peer reviewe

Myths, the Bible, and Romanticism as ingredients of political narratives in the Finns Party election video

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Boosting nationalism through COVID-19 images : Multimodal construction of the failure of the 'dear enemy' with COVID-19 in the national press

Using a multimodal discursive approach, this study explores how the COVID-19 pandemic is constructed and used in press reportage to mobilize intergroup relations and national identities. We examine how press reporting about the development of COVID-19 in Sweden is cast as a matter of nationalism and national stereotyping in the Finnish press. The data consist of 183 images with accompanying headlines and captions published in two Finnish national newspapers between January 1 and August 31, 2020. We found three multimodal rhetorical strategies of stereotyping: moralizing, demonizing, and nationalizing. These strategies construct discourses of arrogant, immoral, and dangerous Swedes sourcing from national stereotypes. The study contributes to current knowledge about the work on national stereotypes by illustrating how they are used in media discourse to achieve certain rhetorical ends, such as to persuade, mitigate, or justify intergroup relations. Furthermore, the study offers insight into the multimodal constructions and functions of stereotypes.Peer reviewe

How newspaper images position different groups of people in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic : A social representations approach

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Analysing Multimodal Communication and Persuasion in Populist Radical Right Political Blogs

This chapter discusses how populist radical right politicians utilise political blogs for political communication and persuasion. Applying a critical discursive and visual rhetorical analytical approach on a case example of a Finnish populist radical right-wing political blog, the chapter shows that use of digital and visual communicative tools allows politicians to express negative views about immigrants and minorities without expressing an explicit personal opinion, thus avoiding coming across as xenophobic or prejudiced. The chapter discusses the social and political implications of the political blog discourse and draws attention to the importance of the social media for the electoral fortunes of populist radical right-wing parties. Finally, it encourages discursive researchers in the future to pay analytic attention to various non-verbal, especially visual, forms of online political communication and persuasion.Peer reviewe

Visual (de)humanization : construction of Otherness in newspaper photographs of the refugee crisis

This study examines how Otherness is constructed visually in newspaper photographs of the refugee crisis. This visual rhetoric analysis examines the form, content, and function of images and explores the rhetorical strategies deployed in visualizations of the refugee crisis in a mainstream Finnish national newspaper from 2015 to 2016. The data consisted of 1,473 images. The study identified six rhetorical strategies used for dehumanizing refugees: massifying, separating, passivating, demonizing, individualizing, and recontextualizing the Other. The rhetorical strategies in turn constructed four discourses related to refugees, namely those of threat and victimhood aimed at dehumanizing as well as personhood and distance aimed at humanizing the Other. The paper contributes to the current knowledge on dehumanization and humanization of refugees in public discourse by unpacking the subtle visual mechanisms through which these processes occur.Peer reviewe

“Sanna, Aren’t You Ashamed?” : Affective-Discursive Practices in Online Misogynist Discourse of Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin

This research examines online misogynist discourse related to the Finnish prime minister (PM) Sanna Marin's image published in Trendi magazine in October 2020. The affective-discursive analysis of online commentaries resulted in the identification of four affective-discursive practices: an immoral woman, incompetent woman, calculating woman and inferior woman. Misogynist discourse related to the PM Marin took the form of a moral act, drew from stereotypical images of women as less rational than men, appeared as accusations targeted at Marin for playing the gender card as a political tactic, and constructed an image of Marin and female politicians as objects of men's sexual desires and as inferior to men. These affective-discursive practices mobilized dehumanizing discourse ranging from milder forms of derogation, scorn and other-condemning practices to harsher forms of belittlement, humiliation and animalistic dehumanization. This study contributes to the current knowledge on the affective-discursive processes underlying online misogyny against female politicians.Peer reviewe

The Past as a Means of Persuasion : Visual Political Rhetoric in Finnish Dairy Product Advertising

This study investigates the role of advertising and visual rhetoric in political persuasion. Analysis of Finnish dairy product video advertisements from 2010–2016 focuses on those that exploit time as the main reference framework. A better understanding of how advertising is used as a tool of political persuasion is sought by exploring the following questions: How are advertisements used in political communication? How is time used as a means of persuasion in advertising? What role do visual rhetoric and social representations have in the process of persuasion? The analysis shows how advertisements objectify work as a tradition and anchor it as a Finnish value. The results show how advertisements employ enthymeme as a major rhetorical tool to assert that the tradition of Finnish employment is under threat but the consumption of Finnish dairy products and favouring a pro-agrarian policy would ensure that the tradition is transmitted to new generations. The contributions of the study are twofold: First, the combination of social representations theory and classic rhetoric provides a theoretical and analytical perspective for the analysis of visual rhetoric in political persuasion. Secondly, by exploring the advertisements as political communication, the study shows how commercials are used to advocate ideological and political projects, such as certain kind of agricultural policy – an angle largely overlooked in the previous research of social and political psychology.Peer reviewe