Viral nationalism: Right wing media and the aesthetics of distributed participation

Abstract

Globally, far-right populisms are seeing a new resurgence fueled by digital technologies. This paper explores such modalities by taking the case of Hindu right-wing mobilization in social media- and physical- spaces in India. Specifically, I examine the media event around the release and reception of The Kashmir Files in 2022, which, while only one in a series of similar films, is exemplary for the scale of its jingoistic reception. While the study is rooted in India, its implications are wider and provide a model for understanding transmedia, convergent, right-wing ecologies elsewhere. Such ecologies enforce an understanding of how the aesthetic object (in this case, film), moves beyond its intended frame (the screen). Rather, through acts of repeated circulation, fragmentation, and de/re-contextualization, they produce a distributed, affective form of populist participation that can be described as viral nationalism.