Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 19:5 (2020) ► pp.809–830

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

“They are just a danger”

Chronotopic worlds in digital narratives of the far-right

ORCiD logo with link | Binghamton University (SUNY)
ORCiD logo with link | Binghamton University (SUNY)
Published online: 4 May 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.19073.jer
Abstract
In recent years, there has been much discussion about the role of social media platforms in the reproduction of exclusionary rhetoric leveled against social “others” in far-right contexts across the globe. While scholars have examined the ideologies underpinning exclusionary discourses, few have analyzed the discursive mechanisms through which such ideologies and “othered” social types become meaningful to ordinary citizens. In this article, we extend this conversation by analyzing digital discourses on Facebook and YouTube that pertain to Philippine “drug users” and racialized remarks against migrants in Italy through a chronotopic lens. We demonstrate that despite the historical, economic, and social differences, far-right ideologies are ordered through chronotopes of national crisis in both cases. Through these chronotopic worlds, despicable, “othered” social types such as “extracomunitari” in Italy and drug users in the Philippines, acquire coherence.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Far-right narratives on digital platforms
  • 3.Chronotopes as scaling mechanisms
  • 4.Chronotopes as imagined worlds populated by social types
  • 5.Social “others” in the Philippines and in Italy
  • 6.Constructing the “other”
    • 6.1Chronotopes of national crisis in the Philippines
    • 6.2“Extracomunitari are just a danger”
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
References (38)
References
Agha, Asif. 2007. “Recombinant Selves in Mass Mediated Spacetime.” Language and Communication 27(3): 320–335. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. “Voice, Footing, Enregisterment.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1): 8–59. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Albahari, Maurizio. 2015. Crimes of Peace: Mediterranean Migrations At the World’s Deadliest Border. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Armillei, Riccardo. 2016. “‘Reflections on Italy’s Contemporary Approaches to Cultural Diversity: The Exclusion of the ‘Other’ From a Supposed Notion of ‘Italianness’.” Australia and New Zealand Journal of European Studies 8 (2): 34–48.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arnaudo, Dan. 2017. “Computational Propaganda in Brazil: Social Bots During Elections.” Computational Propaganda Research Project Working Paper No. 2017.8.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bello, Walden. 2017. “Counterrevolution, the Countryside and the Middle classes: Lessons from Five Countries.” The Journal of Peasant Studies. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blanton, Ryan. 2011. “Chronotopic landscapes of environmental racism.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 21(S1), E76–E93. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2007. “Sociolinguistic Scales.” Intercultural Pragmatics 4(1): 1–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. “Chronotopes, Scales, and Complexity in the Study of Language in Society.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 441, 105–116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan and Anna De Fina. (2015). “Chronotopic Identities: On the Timespace Organization of Who We Are.” In Diversity and super-diversity: sociocultural linguistic perspectives, ed. by Anna De Fina, Didem Ikizoglu, and Jeremy Wegner, 1–14. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bulut, Ergin and Erdem Yörük. 2017. “Digital populism: Trolls and Political Polarization of Twitter in Turkey.” International Journal of Communication 111: 4093–4117.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cabañes, Jason and Jayeel Cornelio. (2017). “The Rise of Trolls in the Philippines (and what we can do about it).” In A Duterte Reader: Critical Essays on Duterte’s Early Presidency, ed. by Nicole Curato, 231–250. Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneto de Manila University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cammelli, Maddalena Gretel. 2015. Fascisti del Terzo Millennio: per Un’antropologia di Casapound. Verona, Italy: Ombre Corte.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cavalera, Fabio. 2003. Basta Rinvii, Cacciare i Clandestini Con la Forza. Corriere della Sera.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chun, Elaine, and Keith Walters. 2011. “Orienting to Arab Orientalisms: Language, Race, and Humor in a YouTube Video.” In Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media, edited by Crispin Thurlow, and Kristine Mroczek, 251–272. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Curato, Nicole. 2017. “Politics of Anxiety, Politcs of Hope: Penal Populism and Duterte’s Rise to Power. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs (35)31: 91–109.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dick, Hilary. 2010. “Imagined Lives and Modernist Chronotopes in Mexican Nonmigrant Discourse.” American Ethnologist 37(2): 275–290. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. 2016. “Scale making: comparison and perspective as ideological projects. In Scale: Discourse and Dimensions of Social Life, ed. by E. Summerson Carr & Michael Lempert, 91–111. Oakland: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gumperz, John. 1982. Discourse Strategies. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hinton, Alexander. 2005. Why did they kill? Cambodia in the shadow of genocide. Berkeley, Los Angeles, & London: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holmes, Douglas R. 2000. Integral Europe: Fast Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2016. “Fascism 2.” Anthropology Today 32(2): 1–3. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2019. “Fascism at Eye Level: The Anthropological Conundrum.” Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 841, 62–90.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith and Susan Gal. 2019. Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koven, Michelle. 2013. “Antiracist, Modern Selves and Racist, Unmodern Others: Chronotopes of modernity in Luso-descendants’ Race Talk.” Language & Communication 33(4): 544–558. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pagliai, Valentina. 2011. “Facework, and Identity in Talk About Immigrants in Italy.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 211, 94–112. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perrino, Sabina. 2011. “Chronotopes of Story and Storytelling Event in Interviews.” Language in Society 40 (1): 91–103. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. “Recontextualizing Racialized Stories on YouTube.” Narrative Inquiry 27(2): 261–285. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “Exclusionary Intimacies: Racialized Language in Veneto, Northern Italy.” Language & Communication 591, 28–41. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Narrating Migration: Intimacies of Exclusion in Northern Italy. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rosa, Jonathan. 2015. “Racializing Language, Regimenting Latinas/os: Chronotope, Social Tense, and American Raciolinguistic Features. Language & Communication 461:106–117. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto, and Celeste GonzaÌlez de Bustamante. 2012. Arizona Firestorm: Global Immigration Realities, National Media, and Provincial Politics. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tehankee, Julio C. (2016). “Duterte’s Resurgent Nationalism in the Philippines: A discursive Institutionalist Analysis.” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 35(3): 69–89. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vokes, Richard and Katrien Pype. 2018. “Chronotopes of Media in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Ethnos 83(2): 207–217. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, Majid Khosraviik, and Brigitte Mral. 2013. Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn. 2012. “Is the Personal Political? Chronotopes and Changing Stances Toward Catalan Language and Identity.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 16(2): 210–224. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. 2016. Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Atwater, Sara
2025. Staging class and gender in women’s cabaret in the German Ruhr area. Comedy Studies 16:1 ► pp. 28 ff. DOI logo
Divita, David
2023. Radical-right populism in Spain and the strategy of chronopolitics. Language in Society 52:5 ► pp. 757 ff. DOI logo
Cabañes, Jason Vincent A
2022. The imaginative dimension of digital disinformation: Fake news, political trolling, and the entwined crises of Covid-19 and inter-Asian racism in a postcolonial city. International Journal of Cultural Studies 25:3-4 ► pp. 428 ff. DOI logo
Shvetsova, T. V. & V. E. Shakhova
2021. Chronotope of Russian Works about Robinson. Nauchnyi dialog :5 ► pp. 287 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue