LIAS Focus Week: Panel Discussion: Right-Wing Memes, Right-Wing Affects, Right-Wing Entrepreneurs
Right-wing memes, right-wing emotional politics, right-wing influencers - everyday life on social media?
14. Jan
This event is open to everyone interested!
Tuesday, January 14th 2024, 6pm - 8pm
Location: Leuphana Campus | Lecture Hall 4
Language: German
Panel discussion organised by Vera Tollmann (CDC, Leuphana)
Panelists: Andrea Kretschmann (Leuphana), Laura Hille (Leuphana), Benjamin Hundertmark (Leuphana), Simon Strick (ZeM Potsdam), Moderator/ Respondent: Michael Koß (Leuphana)
Right-wing companies sell fashion, music or yoga videos for a right-wing everyday culture, right-wing activists organise fight camps and festivals (e.g. ‘White Boy Summer’ in Finland). They offer entertainment, group affiliation and security and aim to recruit new members and supporters, radicalise them and collect donations. The panel deals with the attention paid to right-wing ideologies and examines right-wing political successes using memes – the smallest, usually authorless text-image units that instrumentalise emotions. Right-wing networks adopt digital subcultural communication strategies, attempt to gain pop-cultural influence with the help of AI image and video generators, misuse digital research tools and operate at the boundaries of community guidelines with their content. This panel deals with the content, emotionalisation strategies and disinformation techniques of right-wing actors and their potential media effects. It also asks how the emergence, circulation and impact of right-wing memes can be scientifically analysed.
Simon Strick is a media scientist and author of Rechte Gefühle (2021). Since the publication of the book, he has been researching right-wing strategies online, in particular the mixing of lifestyle content and right-wing propaganda in everyday digital life.
Laura Hille is a sociologist and associate at the CDC and most recently, as part of the CDC's completed research focus ‘Silicon Valley Ideology’, she examined the far right ideas about the future of some tech entrepreneurs (and opinion leaders?) in California based on their social media posts.
The sociologist and criminologist Andrea Kretschmann is investigating the role of law as a medium for political interventions in her research project ‘Everyday life in dissent: A study on the use of (imaginary) law by Reichsbürger*innen. In a sub-project of the project, she and criminologist Ben Hundertmark are researching the meme cultures and affect politics of the conspiracy ideology scene of so-called ‘Reichsbürger*innen’.
Political scientist Michael Koß will respond to the contributions by Strick, Hille, Kretschmann and Hundertmark and moderate the subsequent discussion.