“X is the voice of the people”

How Elon Musk styles X as a newsroom

Bibliographic Data

ID22231037
AuthorsRose See (Columbia University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume12
Issue1
Publication date2025-12-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHumanities and Social Sciences Communications (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2662-9992 • E-ISSN: 2662-9992
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/s41599-025-06187-8
OpenAlexW4417328052
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited23

Since purchasing Twitter in October 2022, Elon Musk has branded the platform as a decentralized newsroom operated by and for citizens. While this assertion can easily be dismissed as performative, contradictory, and self-serving, Musk and his platform are nonetheless increasingly central to conservative politics and culture in the United States. This paper considers the stylistic and rhetorical strategies that Musk uses to make his vision salient. It is based on social media content from October 2022 to January 2024. It asks, first, how Musk discursively and stylistically claims authenticity and authority to validate his vision of X, with attention to the “cultural and symbolic referents” that are used to make content “socially meaningful” (Peck 2019, 16). Second, drawing on Hall’s (1988) assertion that radical alternatives appear in relation to a “dominant bloc,” it explores the aspects of mainstream journalism, politics, and technology that Musk is re-articulating. This paper argues that it is the very inconsistencies within Musk’s vision that lend it salience amidst a crisis in professional journalism (Knight and Gallup 2022 ). By drawing upon the transgressive elements of populism, the efficiency of technocracy, the authority of traditional masculinity, and the cultural capital of working-class aesthetics, Musk lays claim to authenticity and authority

Assertion · Mainstream · Narrative · Politics · Popular culture · Rhetorical question · Stupidity · The Symbolic · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Media Studies and Communication · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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