Broadcasting the Movement and Branding Political Microcelebrities: Finnish Anti-Immigration Video Practices on YouTube

Abstract

This paper examines how the video-sharing platform YouTube was utilized by networks of anti-immigration activists that began emerging in Finland during the so-called refugee crisis in 2015. By combining network analysis with qualitative analysis, we identified three central strategies of video activism: movement building through documentation, discursive controversy generation, and personal branding practices. These strategies are firmly supported by the affordances of YouTube and by the way in which the platform enables the building of varying scales of media presence. Consequently, our findings highlight the increasingly common practice of microcelebrity branding in online political communication. This notion demonstrates the affinities between fragmented and contingently mobilized anti-immigration movements and the personalizing and performance-oriented logics of social media presence, in particular when explored from a post-movement perspective. In the algorithmic environment of YouTube, microcelebrity is a political and a platform-specific genre that occupies the post-movement political space by generating sustainable algorithmic visibility.

Uncivility, racism, and populism: Discourses and interactive practices in anti- & post-democratic communication

“…Of particular relevance is the work by Ekman (2019), who, analysing radical-and far-right uncivil society online, elaborated on its normalising effect with regard to so-called ambient racism (see also Sharma, 2018) which operates at both micro (interactive) and macro (wider-discursive) levels of online communication and spans from mundane statements to wider arguments which, once circulated online, eventually have a spill-over effect onto wider public spheres. The platform logic of online communication proves particularly useful for the spread of racist statements and contents online (see also Alvares & Dahlgren, 2016;Laaksonen et al, 2020) but also offline (including, e.g., the traditional media; Horsti & Nikunen, 2013).…”

Prompt-Rich CMC on YouTube: To What or to Whom Do Comments Respond?

“…Early research focused on the platform as a new mass media outlet [29], as well as on video sharing by individuals [18]. More recently, a number of researchers have become interested in how the platform is used by microcelebrities (YouTubers) who lead discussion about current events, such as the 2015 Finnish refugee crisis [16]. Communication on YouTube has also been studied in the context of mass shootings, natural disasters, and epidemics, including the Ebola virus [1,22].…”

“…Addressees varied across threads, with the Black thread differing from the other two in having both more replies to other commenters (perhaps due to the political themes in the video -YouTube commenters interact more on controversial topics [3]) and fewer comments addressed to Black himself. While Black is a microcelebrity on YouTube [16], the other threads were more focused on the mainstream celebrities in the videos.…”

Influence Without Metrics: Analyzing the Impact of Far-Right Users in an Online Discussion Forum

“…They are—unlike “elites” (Mills, 1956) or “agenda setters” (McCombs & Shaw, 1972) who control public discourse through their official positions of status in, for instance, politics or media—“regular” users who have grown increasingly important and famous in the eyes of others online (Lewis, 2020). Previous research has shown how far-right influencers coordinate movement activities (Donovan et al, 2019) and, importantly, that they enable the mainstreaming of far-right discourse through their “bridging” roles between varying levels of extremist settings, users and ideas, and the mainstream (Laaksonen et al, 2020; Lewis, 2020; Maly, 2020; Marwick & Lewis, 2017; Winter, 2019). They become successful due to their knowledge and skillful use of conventional social media platforms’ technological features and vanity metrics, boosting their statuses and increasing their exposure to broader audiences (Maly, 2020; Marwick & Lewis, 2017).…”