Recontextualising partisan outrage online: analysing the public negotiation of Trump support among American conservatives in 2016

Kelly, Anthony (2023) Recontextualising partisan outrage online: analysing the public negotiation of Trump support among American conservatives in 2016. AI and Society, 38 (5). 2025 – 2036. ISSN 1435-5655

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Abstract

This article conceptualises the role of audience agency in the performance of American conservative identities within a hybridised outrage media ecology. Audience agency has been under-theorised in the study of outrage media through an emphasis on outrage as a rhetorical strategy of commercial media institutions. Relatively little has been said about the outrage discourse of audiences. This coincides with a tendency to consider online political talk as transparent and "earnest," thereby failing to recognise the multi-vocality, dynamism, and ambivalence—i.e., performativity—of online user-generated discourse. I argue the concept of recontextualisation offers a means of addressing these shortcomings. I demonstrate this by analysing how the users of the American right-wing partisan media website TheBlaze.com publicly negotiated support for Donald Trump in a below-the-line comment field during the 2016 US presidential election. These processes are situated with respect to the contested, dynamic, and creative construction of partisan identities in the contemporary United States.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.springer.com/journal/146
Additional Information:	© 2020 The Author
Divisions:	Media and Communications
Subjects:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General) T Technology J Political Science > JK Political institutions (United States) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date Deposited:	13 Nov 2020 10:09
Last Modified:	28 Oct 2025 07:33
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/107437

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