2004/11/19 by Chris Atton · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Social Media and Politics
paper · doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748617692.003.0003
openalex publication_date 2004/11/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
This chapter examines how technological and cultural resources are being deployed by far-right media in the United Kingdom, paying attention to how these ‘repressive’ media are being reconstructed by their producers as forms of progressive politics. It looks at the discourse of the British National Party's (BNP) web site and analyses the site as a form of alternative media, focusing on how it involves members and supporters in its discursive construction of racism. The BNP site reminds us that ‘alternative media’ need not solely be concerned with struggles for social justice and the liberation of the oppressed. The repressive media of the far right, however, share aspects of their discourse with that of progressive media such as Independent Media Centres. Notions such as post-colonialism, repression and multiculturalism recur throughout both. In the case of the far right these terms are turned on their heads and employed to represent the constituencies of the far right as victims of repression themselves.