Seventh International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

On April 8, 2021, Tucker Carlson—the most-watched cable news host on US television—argued that American citizens’ rights were being stolen by immigrants and “outsiders.” Positioning this as a “voting rights question,” rather than racially motivated, he stated, “If you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who live there. So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised.” His language echoes the Great Replacement Theory, a core white supremacist worldview that has inspired violent extremists on a global scale. Through a discourse analysis of Great Replacement-related content espoused on Carlson’s show over the course of 2020 and 2021, this paper builds upon prior work on conservative news cultures to examine the role of Fox News in perpetuating an increasingly commonplace yet insidious ideology. This method allows us to explore not only the narratives crafted and disseminated by Fox News, but also the relational dynamics between the content creators, the audience, legacy and new media, and the media content itself. Responding to a distinct need to understand the current socio-political crises promoted by media networks, our paper provides an analysis of the affective discourse used to strengthen a reactionary base against a set of fictionalized threats. By doing so, our work examines the transition that media content such as this has made from banal nationalism to banal fascism, exporting the qualities of fascism to an audience primed for extremist content.

Presenters

Meghan Conroy
Investigator, Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, United States

Hanah Stiverson
PhD Candidate, American Culture, University of Michigan, Michigan, United States