Radical right parties and anti-feminist speech on Instagram: Vox and the 2019 Spanish general election

Abstract

Radical right-wing parties often use the attack on feminism as a central argument in their political discourse. The Spanish political party Vox, born in 2013, is a good example of this phenomenon. This paper analyzes Vox’s Instagram posts for the party’s two last electoral campaigns previous to the two successive general elections held in Spain in 2019. After the collection, selection and quantification of these data, we carried out a qualitative analysis of the semantic networks created through the utilization of images, videos, texts, interactions, hashtags and emojis. Our findings identify five fundamental arguments: classic gender nationalism, anti-Muslim gender nationalism, delegitimization and ridicule of feminism, discrediting the concept of gender, and the idea that Vox is, in fact, the party that most advocates for women. An outstanding discursive strategy used throughout the sample is that of contrast and association. Signifiers with a strong positive signified and broad social acceptance (euphoric terms) are associated with this party and its political positions. In contrast, negatively charged signifiers and hate-instigating terms (dysphoric) are associated with feminism and the so-called “gender ideology.”

COVID-19 as a Trigger for Sustainable Tourism and Eco-Influencers on Twitter

“…The analysis of the hashtag #Sus-tainableTourism has corroborated this hypothesis, although it has shown that the accounts with the most influence and activity are those of official entities, well above individual or personal accounts. According to the commented authors, Twitter is the social network most chosen by official entities, governments, political parties or politicians in office [46,47,48,49,50,51,52]. The research data confirm that the most active accounts in sustainable tourism are of this nature and maintain the validity and timeliness of these previous research [23,24,25].…”

“…The chosen social media has been Twitter because it allows you to view tweets without having to be registered as a user. Likewise, Twitter is considered the social network where governments, politicians and institutions are most present [46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54]. Considering the reports of the introduction and underlining that the ecological commitment must come from governments, institutions and companies [55,56,57,58,59], the social media for microblogging was chosen as the most adequate to meet the objectives of the study.…”

VOX Spain: The Organisational Challenges of a New Radical Right Party

“…The party champions traditional, highly conservative values. It is resolutely antifeminist, putting centre-stage its opposition to "gender ideology" and the dismantling of what it refers to as feminist, LGBTQ, and other leftist "lobbies" (Bernardez-Rodal et al, 2020;Olivas Osuna & Rama, 2021). In this way, it shares traits with Poland's Law and Justice Party.…”

“…The first study concludes that VOX's posts aim to recruit activists: "The discourse is that of a civil resistance movement" (Aladro Vico & Requeijo Rey, 2020, p. 221). According to Bernardez-Rodal et al (2020, p. 3), VOX's social media strategy was designed, in part, by Trump associate Steve Bannon, who appeals to basic emotions and seeks to construct a "closed group identity built around the feeling of loss of traditional values. "…”

Surviving but not thriving: VOX and Spain in times of Covid-19

“…This reflects authoritarianism since certain roles are considered to be pre-determined and every attempt at modifying them entails a reaction. In the discourse of VOX this is particularly evident about gender roles and anti-feminist rhetoric (Bernardez-Rodal et al, 2020). This results in a patent hostility towards feminism as an ideology with the proposal of suppressing "subsidized radical feminist organization (VOX Manifesto: 17).…”