Kyle Rittenhouse and the Shared Meme Networks of the Armed American Far-Right
An Analysis of the Content Creation Formula, right-wing Injection of Politics, and Normalization of Violence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4086872 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hampton Stall (Critica Research, Washington, DC, USA, corresponding author), David Foran (Critica Research, Washington, DC, USA), David J Foran (0000-0002-0090-0055), Hari Prasad (0000-0003-0486-1919, Critica Research, Washington, DC, USA), H S Prasad |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 8 |
| Pages | 1625-1649 |
| Publication date | 2023-11-17 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Terrorism and Political Violence (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0954-6553 • E-ISSN: 1556-1836 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09546553.2022.2074293 |
| OpenAlex | W4283261078 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
This paper analyzes the meaning of iconography that constitute memes by reviewing a collection of memes propagated on social media related to the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting of protestors in Wisconsin. The authors collected 355 images from 37,774 tweets, supplemented by images found in Facebook groups, militia forums, and right-wing meme repositories related to Kyle Rittenhouse. The paper leads with an introduction to the American “alt-right” movement and the Rittenhouse shootings. The paper’s methodology deconstructs each meme into a set of constituent parts. This provides a process for classifying memes based on their templates, “aesthetic,” branding, events, iconography, and seemingly ambiguous references. This allows researchers to better attribute memes to specific socio-political and cultural groups, analyze the intent of the messaging, and situate memes in the broader knowledge base that, over time, solidifies into its own entity with its own kind of social and political agency
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Iconography · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Right wing · Social media · Social movement · Social science · Sociology · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · History · Law · Public Spaces through Art · Social Media and Politics
| Citations per year | 1.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |