Abstract

This article explores how acts of citizenship are negotiated across populist, political, and networked mediascapes. This is done through a discursive analysis of rights-claims originating in a YouTube video depicting a young boy, who is denied broccoli at a refugee detainment and repatriation centre in Denmark. Besides the video the data consists of digital views and comments, texts sourced from citizen media publications, social media sites, digitally born and mainstream media. We make a distinction between alternative/citizen media, digitally born and mainstream media to examine how different types of media play a role in discursively constructing populist logics. Our key findings show that alternative/citizen media forward political acts and rights-claims for the people by the people, whereas mainstream media generally invite elite sources to speak for the people. Finally, digitally born media encompass elements of both, thus questioning journalistic boundaries. The networked media thereby produce the discursive construction of “the rights of the people” as an empty signifier.

摘要

本文探讨了如何在民粹主义、政治和网络媒体环境中协商公民行为。这是通过对 YouTube 视频中的权利主张进行话语分析来完成的，该视频描绘了一名小男孩在丹麦的难民拘留和遣返中心被拒绝提供西兰花的情况。除了视频之外，数据还包括数字视图和评论、来自公民媒体出版物、社交媒体网站、数字出生和主流媒体的文本。我们对另类/公民媒体、数字媒体和主流媒体进行了区分，以研究不同类型的媒体如何在话语构建民粹主义逻辑中发挥作用。我们的主要发现表明，另类/公民媒体通过以下方式为人民转发政治行为和权利主张：为民说话，而主流媒体一般都会邀请精英人士为民说话。最后，数字媒体包含了两者的元素，从而质疑了新闻的界限。网络媒体由此产生了作为空洞能指的“人民权利”的话语建构。