Reactionary Digital Politics Part 2 Artwork

Critical Technology

The Critical Technology podcast explores cutting edge research on the social, cultural, and political implications of new technological developments. For our second season, we're focusing on game changing scholarship and theories about children, youth, and digital technology -- in recognition of the adoption of General Comment 25: Children's Rights in the Digital Environment by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, in early 2021. The Critical Technology podcast is an initiative of the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) at the University of Toronto. Produced, edited and hosted by Dr. Sara Grimes (KMDI Director/Professor at the Faculty of Information). Audio mix and sound design by Mika Sustar. Music by Nicholas Manalo. Theme song by Taekun Park. Illustrations by Kenji Toyooka. Podcast logo by JP King. You can find additional info and materials for each episode on our website: http://kmdi.utoronto.ca/the-critical-technology-podcast/

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Critical Technology

Reactionary Digital Politics Part 2

July 17, 2023 • Season 3 • Episode 4

Games, memes, and parodies are increasingly used by extremist groups to spread misinformation and to lower the barriers to entry into extreme ideologies. But is there a deeper strategy at work? And if so, what's the end game? In Part 2 of this special two part interview, Dr. Sara Grimes chats with three researchers from the Reactionary Digital Politics Research Group, a multi-disciplinary collaboration based in the UK that has spent the past five years tracking the rise and spread of extremist and alt-right political ideologies, rhetorics, and aesthetics online. Dr. Alan Finlayson is a Professor of Political and Social Theory at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich England, and the author of Making Sense of New Labour (Lawrence and Wishart, 2003). Dr. Robert Topinka is a Senior Lecturer in Transnational Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and the author of Racing the Street: Race, Rhetoric and Technology in Metropolitan London, 1840-1900 (University of California Press, 2020). And Dr. Rob Gallagher is a Lecturer in Film and Media in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University and author of Videogames, Identity and Digital Subjectivity (Routledge, 2017).

In this episode, the Reactionary Digital Politics team discusses findings and arguments advanced in Dr. Topinka's recent article, entitled "Back to a Past that was Futuristic: The Alt-Right and the Uncanny Form of Racism," published in b2o: an online journal in 2019.

Type of research discussed in today’s episode: rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis, media studies, content analysis, critical analysis.

Keywords for today’s episode: reactionary politics, extremism, alt-right, cultural (re)appropriation, reactionary racism, insider/outsider identity, identity politics.

For more information and a full transcript of each episode, check out our website: http://kmdi.utoronto.ca/the-critical-technology-podcast/

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People on this episode

Sara Grimes

Host