Episode 1: How Did We Get Here?

Reactionary Digital Politics

Politics used to be easy. There was the left. There was the right. There was a bit in the middle. Politicians wore suits and were awkward on television. Protestors marched in the streets for fewer wars and more rights. And then everyone went online and found that they hated each other. In the last decade reactionary movements, from the alt-right to QAnon, have transformed politics using digital technologies. What happened? How? Why? We’ve asked some experts (because we can’t get enough of them) and we found out a lot. This first episode lays out the jigsaw pieces we’ll be assembling over the course of this series. We think about the social and cultural context against which digital politics have taken shape. We talk about the rise of social media platforms, the growth in what we call ‘ideological entrepreneurs’, the blurring of politics into celebrity culture, the early adoption of the internet by the far-right and the impact of networked hate campaigns like #GamerGate. All of these laid the groundwork for new kinds of political ideology, style and identity.

Presented by: Alan Finlayson, Rob Gallagher, Sophie Ludkin & Rob Topinka

With: Clare Birchall, Florian Cramer, Matthew Feldman, Annie Kelly, Hugo Leal, Becca Lewis & Whitney Phillips.

Produced by: Sophie Ludkin

Special thanks to: Cassian Osborne-Carey

Music composed by Harriet Riley and produced by Tom Jacob

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