Ico Maly

The importance of understanding and analyzing multimodal political legitimation cannot
be overestimated. Especially in post-digital times where all kinds of actors - be it politi-
cians, activists, (meta)political influencers, or journalists - try to claim legitimacy and
undermine their political adversaries, it is crucial to comprehend how these actors con-
struct and maintain their legitimate status. Legitimacy here can be understood as a pro-
cess through which something acquires the status of being licit, approved, and allowed
(mostly in connection to norms and values in a given society). Mackay's book sets out to
offer us a framework by which we can start to tackle such legitimation across a variety
of texts, including online articles, official political broadcasts, community dance produc-
tions, and even folk art.
The strength of this book is to be found in the author's efforts to theorize legitimation
as a process that is inherently multimodal. In eight chapters, Mackay takes on the chal-
lenging task of developing this analytical framework. She first zooms in on how theorists
like Aristotle, Bourdieu, Foucault, Latour, and Orwell understood legitimation, and how
the work of discourse analysists like Van Dijk, Kress, and Van Leeuwen can inform a
multimodal analysis of legitimation processes. The first chapter sets the stage for the
construction of the theoretical framework, which is rolled out in chapter 2. Here, Mackay
tries to fill the analytical gap in the analysis of legitimation processes by blending a
Discourse Historical Approach and a Social Semiotic approach with the two frameworks
of legitimation proposed by Van Leeuwen and Van Dijk.

Economy and ideology. Combine the terms and one immediately thinks of Marxism. As is commonly known, in the Marxist theoretical tradition, ideology is part of superstructure; while 'the economy' makes up the base of society. In its classic Marxist formulation, it is the base-that is the relations of production and the forces of production-that in last instance determines the ideas. Or more concretely, it is the ideology of the ruling class-that is the class that controls the social surplus product and thus has economic hegemony-that succeeds in normalizing their ideology. This ideology will dominate state discourses, will manifest itself in the law, the norms and values that people embrace, in religion, but also in science, art and literature: ergo, it will dominate superstructure. While this relation between base and superstructure is seen by many critics as too economically deterministic, the actual (or at least parts of that) Marxist tradition is less mechanical than its opponents like to assume. The underlying assumption of this relation between base and superstructure is that people are social and discursive creatures. In the words of Mandel, this means that 'everything humans do or produce, must "go through their heads" and is therefore accompanied by "ideological" representations (in the guise of ideas, systems of ideas, hopes, fears and other feelings) which react in turn on the material actions of those who experience them" (Mandel, 1994). Ideas, it is thought, exist or come into existence in a relation to the material world: people live their lives in certain labor and social circumstances, and this material reality influences how they think. But ideas are not mere byproducts. To a certain degree, ideas can influence how we see reality. If we understand work as empowerment or exploitation, it doesn't change the work itself, but it does change how we feel about it. This is where ideology comes in. How we see and frame the world impacts the structure of the world. If the powerful-usually under pressure of popular resistance-conclude that slavery is unethical, or the climate crisis a real problem, then policies can be put in effect to change these realities. There is thus a dialectical relation between base and superstructure and discourse plays a crucial role in that relation.

Starting from the idea that understanding Big Tech ideologies is a prerequisite for assessing how major tech corporations see a (re)organization of society, this paper offers an analysis of the opening statements of the CEOs of four of these corporations during 2020 antitrust hearings before the U.S. House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee. These statements were ‘critical discourse moments’ that foregrounded the beliefs of the CEOs in the collision between their discourse and that of government and politics. Using a critical perspective on discourse analysis as a main research approach, this research found that the opening statements blended (inter)national imaginaries, identity narratives and corporate values. Together, these factors communicated the notion of an ideal society in which tech companies awarded themselves a dual role: (1) national conductors towards what we call ‘techno/opportunity’ for individuals, and (2) politically neutral agents in the service of American world do...

Facebook has been facing heavy criticism in the last few years. Fake news, Russian propaganda, the targeting of insecure teens and former employees explaining how bad Facebook really is for your health: they all undermined the image of Facebook as a force of good. Mark Zuckerberg’s 2018 New Year’s resolutions to fix Facebook, even though they were carefully wrapped in idealistic rhetoric, are bad news for anyone who cares about diversity in the field of media and democracy in general.

'Vlamingen maken na 22 uur geen lawaai meer. Ze spreken Nederlands, zijn punctueel en vinden gezondheid heel belangrijk. De Vlamingen leven niet op straat, ze houden van rust en stilte.' Zo schetste de Vlaamse overheid in zijn legendarische 'starterspakket Inburgering' het beeld van 'de Vlamingen'. Zouden er vandaag nog mensen rondlopen die deze karikatuur ernstig nemen? Vertrekkend vanuit onderzoek naar en in wijken in Brussel, Antwerpen en Gent concluderen Ico Maly, Jan Blommaert en Joachim Ben Yakoub dat zelfs de vlag 'multiculturele maatschappij' tekortschiet om de diversiteit van de hedendaagse samenlevingen te begrijpen. Door toegenomen mobiliteit, globalisering en het internet is de wereld en ieders leven grondig veranderd. Daardoor moeten we onze democratie herdenken, verbeteren en verdiepen. Vergeet multiculti, hier is superdiversiteit. Bij wijze van voorsmaakje van de wereld van morgen.

Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator of the white nationalist terrorist attack in New Zealand, saw himself as a crusader for the white race, a white terrorist stepping in the footsteps of Breivik. This battle has an offline and an online dimension and it is crucial that we take this online/offline nexus on board when analyzing contemporary white terrorism.

De Pano-reportage over Schild en Vrienden geeft ons een interessante inkijk in het hedendaagse Nieuw Rechtse activisme. Wereldwijd zien we uiterst radicale conservatief revolutionaire activistische bewegingen opstaan die allen dezelfde taal, memes, ideologie en actiemethoden inzetten. Die gelijkenissen zijn geen toeval, ze tonen net een globaal opererend Nieuw Rechts netwerk.

This working book is part of an ongoing dialogue with my colleagues at the University of Tilburg and it focusses explicitly on the connection between people, culture, identity, language and semiotic material in a post-digital context. Or more concretely, it analyses how the symbolic economy of Ghent, Belgium is constructed in the neoliberal and post-digital 21st century. The online, global and mobile dimensions of the contemporary material world pose important methodological and theoretical challenges. The research presented here not only makes an empirical, but also a theoretical and methodological argument. I have the explicit aim to contribute and stimulate further interdisciplinary research on social groups and space in the post-digital constellation that characterizes superdiversity. Throughout this working book, I will address these challenges. I will start by tackling the methodological issues in the next chapter where I will introduce my methodology: Digital Ethnographic Lin...

... Over there. Zienkowski, Jan; Leeflang, Joan; Maeyer, De, Jessy; Maly, Ico (in: Cultu(u)r(en)politiek : over media, globalisering, en culturele identiteiten / Maly, Ico [edit.]; 2007). ... pragmatic study of discourse. Zienkowski, Jan (in: Discursive pragmatics / Zienkowski, Jan [edit.]; 2011). ...

We are all living algorithmic lives. Our lives are not just media rich, they increasingly take place in and throu algorithmically programmed media landscape.[1] Algorithms, as a result of digitalisation and th computerisation of the internet, are ubiquitous today. We use them to navigate, to buy stuff, to work from ho search for information, to read our newspaper and to chat with friends and even people we never met befo live our social lives in post-digital societies: societies in which the digital revolution has been realised. result, algorithms have penetrated and changed almost every domain in those societies. Algorithms have become a normal and to a large extent invisible part of our world. Hence they are questioned. Only when big issues erupt-think about Facebook's role in Trump's election, the role of cons theories in the raid on Capitol, or content moderation failures-do debates on the role of digital platform their algorithms become prominent. Otherwise, they just seem to be "there", just as the old media is part

Forum for Democracy (FvD) is a political party on the rise in the Netherlands. Thierry Baudet, the conservative revolutionary and dandyesque leader of the party, positions himself and his party as right-wing and as an acceptable ideological alternative to all the other Dutch parties. All media controversies about his radical right ideology are labelled by Baudet as the work of opponents trying to frame him and the party in a negative way. A careful analysis of WhatsApp messages of the youth divisions of the party, however, shows a different reality. The analysis of 900 Whatsapp messages of FvD-militants shows that mass media reporting helps shape a metapolitical discourse without 'de-radicalizing' the core ideology. How Thierry Baudet uses controversy to normalize his ideology Baudet likes to use controversy to normalize his ideology. We can illustrate this strategy by zooming in on his victory speech after the 2019 election and his review of Houellebecq's book Sérotonine for the American Affairs Journal. The two interventions were in essence about what he calls the decline of the boreal (or 'Northern') civilization and what Baudet sees as the devastating impact of what he calls the party cartel in particular and the individualization and atomization of society since the 18th century Enlightenment in general. This discourse is emblematic for Baudet's ideological position. He regularly echoes anti-Enlightenment, conservative revolutionary and new right thinkers, such as Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt, Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye. All the classic tropes from these thinkers are present in his discourse: the decline of the nation, the demographic question, the loss of identity and the traditional family and gender roles, and the devastating impact of globalization, liberalism and the French revolution. And, as with any new right radical right leader, he also loudly stresses the need for a national and civilizational rebirth. All media controversies about his radical right ideology are labelled by Baudet as the work of opponents trying to frame him and the party in a negative way.

The age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff deserves a productive public and academic debate. It should not only be read and discussed by a broad audience; we can only hope that scholars across disciplines engage with her argument, finetune and improve it.

The alt-right, the different chapters of the pan-European movement Generation Identity and the rise of the so-called radical right populist parties in the West have been responsible for the renewed interest in the metapolitical project of La Nouvelle Droite. In this

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On March 1st 2018, Diggit Magazine set up a Facebook experiment: for one day we tried to (1) follow the Facebook Guidelines for Publishers in detail and (2) to carry out a smallscale experiment that would hopefully give us some insights in the working of the algorithms and, more importantly, could enable us to set up more complex research experiments in the future.

This paper investigates how the discursive battle for the Flemish nation is waged by politicians of the Flemish nationalist party N-VA (New Flemish Alliance) in Belgium. More specifically, it analyzes the ways in which the N-VA tries to establish a banal Flemish nationalism in the context of a super-diverse Belgium (Blommaert, Rampton & Spotti (eds.), 2011). We thereby focus on the use and role of social sciences in the nationalist construction and deconstruction of the Flemish nation state. Anderson, Gellner, Hroch and Billig are being integrated in the discourse and strategy of the party to establish a Flemish nation. Especially the work of Billig plays a major role in the (communication) strategy of the party. It will be argued that N-VA uses the famous work of Michael Billig – Banal nationalism – as a manual for the construction of the Flemish nation state.

We leven in een geglobaliseerde wereld. Dat lijkt vandaag een open deur in trappen. En toch. Die globalisering is vaak heel ver weg als we spreken over migratie en diversiteit in onze samenleving. In het maatschappelijk debat en de politiek begint migratie schijnbaar pas als het België binnenkomt. En vanaf dan wordt het behandeld als een Belgisch, meer nog een Vlaams probleem. Een probleem van botsende waarden en normen in een voor de rest homogeen gebied. De ‘oplossing’ wordt dan niet zelden gevonden in een drang naar her-homogeneïsering dat geflankeerd wordt door een repressie-en disciplineringsapparaat. Wij vormen immers een samenleving van “rechten én plichten” en die plichten moeten afgedwongen worden. Wij moeten “onze waarden en normen” verdedigen. En voegen die stemmen er vaak aan toe: het moet nu maar eens uit zijn met al die toegevingen aan de dominante “multiculturalisme”-ideologie van de linkse kerk. Het heet dan dat we realistisch moeten zijn. Maar is dat ‘realisme’ wel zo realistisch? Dat is de centrale vraag waarop deze bijdrage antwoordt.

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Recently, the undercover cyber agent Julia Ebner spent two years inside right-wing extremist networks. For her book Going Dark—The Secret Social Lives of Extremists, she adopted five different identities and joined a dozen tech savvy extremist groups—from jihadists and Christian fundamentalists to white nationalists, conspiracy theorists and radical demagogues. First and foremost, right-wing extremist leaders create a protected and often rather secretive social bubble. This creates an aura of exclusiveness as well as the highly useful in-group-vs.-out-group (13) structure which establishes a sense of belonging for those admitted to the inner circle—somewhat like refashioning Germany’s Nazi SS. Unlike Nazi-Germany’s SS, today’s right-wing extremists create international hubs, using social networks and even dating apps (15). These lay the foundation for their growing global network. They also hack into systems. In March 2016, printers across U.S. college campuses produced, for example, printed Neo-Nazi flyers (17). In January 2019, right-wing hackers leaked personal details of hundreds of German politicians. To join one of these secretive discussion groups, the undercover cyber-agent had to send a picture of her hand together with a piece of paper reading MAtR (Men Among the Ruins, 21). Provided the hand is white enough, you are in. So far, no genetic testing proving your Aryan make up is needed. Next to MAtR, right-wing extremists also use WOTAN (Will Of The Aryan Nation), 4/20 (Hitler’s birthday), 88 (the 8th character of the alphabet is H, hence HH for Heil Hitler) as codewords. Men Among the Ruins is the work of Italian right-wing demagogue Julius Evola who wrote about spiritual racism, being motivated by Benito Mussolini and admiring Heinrich Himmler. To be admitted into the ring of Neo-Nazis, the undercover agent told them, “I am white and of Austrian stock.” The reply was, “you are vetted.” She was in. White supremacist forums like the U.S. site Stormfront operate in a similar way. Many right-wing extremists, Neo-Nazis, and white supremacists believe that every single aspect of their lives is ruled by Jews, the infamous global elites, and the cultural Marxists. Hitler’s mythical nonsense of a Bolschevistisches Weltjudentum [The Myth of JudeoBolshevism] is kept alive.

Far-right movements, activists, and political parties are on the rise worldwide. Several scholars connect this rise of the far-right at least partially to the affordances of digital media and to a new digital metapolitical battle. A lot has been written about the far-right’s adoption of trolling, harassment, and meme-culture in their metapolitical strategy, but researchers have focused less on how far-right vloggers are using the practices of influencer culture for metapolitical goals. This paper tries to fill this gap and bring new theoretical insights based on a digital ethnographic case study. By analyzing political YouTuber and #pizzagate propagator Brittany Pettibone, this paper contributes to our understanding of radicalization processes in relation to the use of digital media.

Populism studies tend to understand populism as a purely political phenomenon (MUDDE; KALTWASSER, 2017; MÜLLER, 2016). To categorize someone as a populist or not, is in many cases solely based on an evaluation of discourse, style or even ideology. It is much rarer to see approaches to populism that focus on the relation between politics and media and digital media in particular (welcome exceptions are CESARINO 2019 e SILVA, 2019). Throughout this contribution, I will argue that we cannot understand populism in full without focusing in detail on how populists and others actually construct the populist voice, how they communicate themselves on different platforms as the ‘true representatives of the people’. This inevitably means taking the changing media landscape into account as a key-context that shapes contemporary populism. The hybrid media system, its media logics, affordances and its culture of connectivity need to be considered when trying to make sense of populism and politics...

This paper investigates how the discursive battle for the Flemish nation is waged in the Flemish mass media by politicians of the Flemish nationalist party, the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA). I focus on the ‘new nationalism’ that N-VA politicians advocate as a means to ‘banalise’ a hot Flemish nationalism. I establish that N-VA spokespeople and especially their chairman Bart De Wever invoke discursive alliances with established scholars such as Anderson, Hroch, Calhoun and Billig. On the one hand, these alliances are used to sell their nationalism as a non-ideological or non-discursive project. On the other hand, the analyses of these intellectuals are used as manuals to ‘banalise’ a hot nationalism. The concept of ‘scientific’ nationalism refers to the entextualisation of scientific discourses in order to legitimate and banalise the nationalist project of the party as ‘in line with science’.

Through a critical review of existing literature on hipsters, and an analysis of online data, this article provides a description of ‘hipster culture’. To this end, we examine the reoccurring markers of hipster identity and, crucially, the accompanying identity discourses on hipsters. As a result, a picture of hipster culture emerges as a translocal and layered phenomenon with contextually specific claims to authenticity, and certain material infrastructures and effects emerge with the culture. Finally, we will propose the concept of ‘micro-population’ as a tool for making sense not only of hipsters, but identity in general in times of superdiversity.

This PhD thesis analyses the political ideology and communication of the New-Flemish Alliance (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie; N-VA). N-VA is a relatively new political party in Belgian politics. Their main political demand, in the long run, is the establishment of an independent Flemish state. Since 2007 this political party witnessed a spectacular rise: in 2010 they became the biggest Flemish party. Their chairman, Bart De Wever, is since then a central figure in the Flemish and Belgian political landscape. In this book two main questions are answered. First we investigate if the political project of N-VA is to be situated within what Zeev Sternhell in his 2010 book labeled as The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition. To answer this question we look at how N-VA understands democracy and the central val- ues of the Enlightenment, namely freedom and equality, and, more impor- tantly we investigate if the party is engaged in realizing these Enlightenment values. Our second question focuses on how t...

Digital media play an important role in the contemporary rise in visibility of New Right and far-right activist groups online, offline, and in the mainstream media. This visibility has boosted their online and offline mobilization power. Through a live digital ethnographic analysis of the rise of Schild & Vrienden, a recent Flemish far-right activist movement, I will argue that we should understand their online and offline activism as part of a “metapolitical battle” exploiting the affordances of digital media in a hybrid media system. Schild & Vrienden, just like most contemporary New Right movements, draws ideological and strategic inspiration from “ La Nouvelle Droite,” the French far-right school of thought. Following their lead, these activists focus first and foremost on the circulation and the normalization of ideas: the discursive or metapolitical battle for hegemony. Digital media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube prove to be ideal platforms for that metapoliti...

Discourse analysts have worked on digital data for decades now (see Herring, 1999; Thurlow & Mroczek 2011), initially treating digital data as human texts (Blitvich & Bou-Franch, 2018), then increasingly as human, multimodal interaction mediated through digital media (Androutsopoulous, 2015), also attending to digital platforms and their affordances in ethnographically inspired discourse analyses (

The alt-right, the different chapters of the pan-European movement Generation Identity and the rise of the so-called radical right populist parties in the West have been responsible for the renewed interest in the metapolitical project of La Nouvelle Droite. In this

On March 7, it will have been two years since the death of Guillaume Faye, former number two of La Nouvelle Droite. His death wasn't big news in mass media. In academic research, Faye exists mostly in the shadow of the French New Right's so-called number one, Alain de Benoist. This lack of academic attention contrasts with the uptake of his work in contemporary far right groups around the world (see Maly, 2022, for an elaborate discussion). Faye's critique of La Nouvelle Droite's metapolitics has proven especially influential. In this essay I will zoom in on Guillaume Faye's conceptualization of metapolitics and the birth of what I call metapolitics 2.0. After that I will show how 'The Golden One' , a Swedish bodybuilder, YouTuber, and new right metapolitical influencer, is emblematic of this new metapolitical battle. In the final section, I will further reflect on the role of algorithmic knowledge in contemporary metapolitics.

Digital media play an important role in the contemporary rise in visibility of New Right and far-right activist groups online, offline, and in the mainstream media. This visibility has boosted their online and offline mobilization power. Through a live digital ethnographic analysis of the rise of Schild & Vrienden, a recent Flemish far-right activist movement, I will argue that we should understand their online and offline activism as part of a “metapolitical battle” exploiting the affordances of digital media in a hybrid media system. Schild & Vrienden, just like most contemporary New Right movements, draws ideological and strategic inspiration from “La Nouvelle Droite,” the French far-right school of thought. Following their lead, these activists focus first and foremost on the circulation and the normalization of ideas: the discursive or metapolitical battle for hegemony. Digital media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube prove to be ideal platforms for that metapolitical battle enabling them to gain considerable discursive power in a hybrid media system. This article argues that the distribution of New Right content on these platforms presupposes digital literacy and algorithmic activism. “Algorithmic activists” are defined as activists who use (theoretical or practical) knowledge about the relative weight certain signals have within the proceduralized choices the algorithms of the media platforms make as proxies of human judgment, to reach their (meta)political goals. In this sense, “algorithmic activism” contributes to spreading their message by interacting with the post to trigger the algorithms of the medium, so that they boost the popularity rankings.

In this paper, I want to introduce a(n digital) ethnographic approach to populism that understands populism as a (digitally) mediatized chronotopic communicative and discursive relation. Populism, I argue, is not only constructed in a (mediatized) communicative relation between journalists, politicians and academics, but also in the relation to citizens, activists and computational agency. Attention to all these actors, and the media they use, is of crucial importance if we want to understand populism. Digital media are not just new media that populists use, their algorithms and affordances reshape their populism. In times of digitalization, we cannot understand populism by only looking at ‘the input’, the frame that actors prepare for uptake, it is about the uptake as well. More concretely, I will argue that digital media have given birth to a new form of populism: algorithmic populism. Understanding and focusing on populism as a ‘communicative relation’ between all these human and...

Digitalization gave birth to a new form of populism: algorithmic populism. If we want to understand contemporary populism, we should understand it in its social, political, economic and technological context. Algorithmic populism cannot be understood without taking the uptake and algorithmic activism in particular into account.

The age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff deserves a productive public and academic debate. It should not only be read and discussed by a broad audience; we can only hope that scholars across disciplines engage with her argument, finetune and improve it.

“Of ik de spil op links wil worden? De spil van de politiek zelfs.” Conner Rousseau heeft veel kwaliteiten in de aanbieding, de stereotype Vlaamse bescheidenheid hoort daar niet bij. Zijn parcours oogt dan ook indrukwekkend: als nobele onbekende werd hij voorzitter van sp.a, gooide ramen en deuren open en liet de radeloze partij vervellen tot de hippe nieuwe beweging Vooruit. In dit boek buigt Ico Maly, die eerder standaardwerken over N-VA en Nieuw Rechts schreef, zich over de vraag op welke manier Rousseau de sociaaldemocratie nieuw leven inblaast. Hoe gebruikt hij digitale media en digitale cultuur om de beweging op te bouwen? Verbeeldt Vooruit een nieuwe socialistische strijd? Kan het project, zoals Rousseau zegt, een dam tegen extreemrechts opwerpen? Een boek over matekes, sneakers, algoritmes, het dataficeren van inspraak, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez en Hendrik De Man.

This working book is part of an ongoing dialogue with my colleagues at the University of Tilburg and it focusses explicitly on the connection between people, culture, identity, language and semiotic material in a post-digital context. Or more concretely, it analyses how the symbolic economy of Ghent, Belgium is constructed in the neoliberal and post-digital 21st century. The online, global and mobile dimensions of the contemporary material world pose important methodological and theoretical challenges. The research presented here not only makes an empirical, but also a theoretical and methodological argument. I have the explicit aim to contribute and stimulate further interdisciplinary research on social groups and space in the post-digital constellation that characterizes superdiversity. Throughout this working book, I will address these challenges. I will start by tackling the methodological issues in the next chapter where I will introduce my methodology: Digital Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis or ELLA 2.0. This methodology puts space, or more precisely the geosemiotic landscape and the symbolic economy of spaces central. Space is analysed as constructed through (digitally mediated) social action in context. In Chapter 2, I will introduce the field. I will understand hipster the hipster as a translocal, layered and polycentric micro-population manifesting itself through a very specific style and identity discourse. And just like the hipster is a translocal phenomenon, we see that the hipster- city is also found all over the world. From this translocal introduction of the field, I will zoom in on the process of hipsterification in Ghent Belgium in the 21st century. In Chapter 3, I go back in time to the beginning of the 21st century and analyse the party scene in Ghent as a process of meaning making in the context of neoliberal capitalism. The identity discourse of the Culture Club as edgy, cosmopolitan and hip, created added value for all kinds of big brands. The hipster is not only a transnational, polycentric cultural phenomenon, or a consumer, but also a producer. The identity discourses and semiotizations of the hipster create added value which not only shape micro-enterprises but also cities and platforms. The imagination of Ghent as a hip city is therefor only partly the effect of the presence of hipsters, it is also the effect of neoliberal urban policies. In Chapter 4, I will show how the hipsterification of the historical centre of Ghent is expanding and how new hip infrastructures contribute to the understanding of Ghent as a hip city. At the same time, I will show how the construction of local hipness and originality cannot be understood in full without looking at the higher scales. Hipster culture is a niched, layered and translocal phenomenon and the cultural products and strategies of hipster entrepreneurs, seen from a global scale fit a genre or a format. In Chapter 5, we move from the centre of the city, to a poor and ‘superdiverse’ neighbourhood in the 19th century belt and show how ELLA 2.0 allows us to describe the changes in the social composition of the neighbourhood and the process of hipsterification. In Chapter 5, we move attention to two other sites in the 19th century belt – The Old Docks and the Watt complex – to show how authenticity discourses and hipster semiotics are used to start up a process of hipsterification. I end with a more general reflection and conclusion on the relation between people, cities and capitalism in post-digital Ghent and on the theoretical and methodological impact of the findings. I will explicitly do this from the ethnographic perspective on social space, social groups and social action I developed throughout the book. Maybe even more than a mere methodological contribution, I hope that this book can help to get the conceptualization of superdiversity ‘out of sociolinguistics’ that Arnaut (et al., 2017: 4) hopes for.

Het zou een quizvraag kunnen zijn: wat hebben Trump, alt-right, Alternative für Deutschland, het Front National, Thierry Baudet en de N-VA gemeen? Dat ze overal voor een ruk naar rechts zorgen? Uiteraard. Dat ze een antwoord op de neoliberale globalisering vonden dat aanslaat? Zeker. Dat ze ‘zeggen waar het op staat’? Eveneens. Maar volgens Ico Maly is er nog een belangrijke overeenkomst die velen over het hoofd zien: al die mensen, partijen en groeperingen delen de strijd tegen gelijkheid, vrijheid en universele mensenrechten. Tegen de waarden van de verlichting. Een complex spel van sociale, politieke, economische, ecologische en digitale evoluties versnelde hun opmars. De grensoverschrijdende internetcultuur zorgde voor een boom. Over populisme, ideologie, Pepethe-frog-versies van Trump en Baudet, Theo Francken als meme in keizerskostuum, Breitbart en Gramsci.

Het zou een quizvraag kunnen zijn: wat hebben Trump, alt-right, Alternative für Deutschland, het Front National, Thierry Baudet en de N-VA gemeen? Dat ze overal voor een ruk naar rechts zorgen? Uiteraard. Dat ze een antwoord op de neoliberale globalisering vonden dat aanslaat? Zeker. Dat ze ‘zeggen waar het op staat’? Eveneens. Maar volgens Ico Maly is er nog een belangrijke overeenkomst die velen over het hoofd zien: al die mensen, partijen en groeperingen delen de strijd tegen gelijkheid, vrijheid en universele mensenrechten. Tegen de waarden van de verlichting. Een complex spel van sociale, politieke, economische, ecologische en digitale evoluties versnelde hun opmars. De grensoverschrijdende internetcultuur zorgde voor een boom. Over populisme, ideologie, Pepethe-frog-versies van Trump en Baudet, Theo Francken als meme in keizerskostuum, Breitbart en Gramsci.

In Superdiversiteit in Oostende brengt Ico Maly (Kif Kif – RITS) Oostende en meer bepaald éénn wijk in Oostende, het Westerkwartier, in kaart. Hij doet dat aan de hand van een etnografisch onderzoek en meer bepaald etnografisch linguïstisch landschapsonderzoek. De titel maakt meteen duidelijk dat ook in Oostende superdiversiteit een onontkenbaar feit is. Maly beschrijft niet alleen, hij analyseert en verklaart ook de structuur van die Oostendse samenleving, wijst op de problemen en schetst de contouren van een toekomstperspectief.
Volgens Jan Blommaert (Tilburg University) zit de meerwaarde van het werk van Maly erin dat het aantoont ‘dat superdiversiteit, incluis z’n vele ongelijkheden, nu ook een kenmerk is van kleinere steden, van centra die op een veel lager schaalniveau te situeren zijn dan de grote miljoenensteden die magneten zijn voor migratie. Superdiversiteit is dus niet langer een uitzonderlijk, exotisch of “freak” fenomeen: het is een algemeen fenomeen dat zich dus niet laat vatten in à la carte bedenkingen en maatregelen, maar een algemene aanpak vereist.'’
Het boekje kadert binnen een groter onderzoeksproject, ‘Een ander land’ genaamd. Het project wordt aangedreven door een samenwerkingsverband met de naam ‘De toekomstfabriek’. In dat samenwerkingsverband bundelen verschillende Gentse middenveldorganisaties de krachten (www.detoekomstfabriek.be) met als doel om na te denken over de toekomst van ons land, uitdagingen in kaart brengen en op zoek te gaan naar praktijken die een ander land voorafspiegelen. Het boek is een verdieping en dus complementair aan de gelijknamige documentaire over de stad. Ook deze documentaire komt binnenkort op Kif Kif.

""Zondag 13 juni 2010. Vlaanderen heeft gekozen voor Verandering met hoofdletter V: voor het eerst in haar prille geschiedenis kroont de Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA) zich tot grootste partij. Leeuwenvlaggen wapperen, Latijnse spreuken vliegen in het rond. Maar anders dan na de zegetochten van Vlaams Blok en Vlaams Belang hoeft niemand het met rode kaken te gaan uitleggen in het buitenland. N-VA-voorzitter Bart De Wever spreekt van een gezond nationalisme dat meer democratie wil bewerkstelligen. Een nationalisme dat openstaat voor de wereld. Een nationalisme van de 21ste eeuw. Ruim twee jaar later – De Wever is inmiddels algemeen erkend als 'Slimste mens van Vlaanderen' – analyseert Ico Maly het programma en de ideologie van de N-VA. Wat verstaat de partij precies onder de strijd voor meer democratie en hoe staat zij tegenover de erfenis van de verlichting? Wat vindt de N-VA van nieuwkomers die lid van haar natie willen worden? En wat te zeggen van de manier waarop aanhangers het partijdiscours doen circuleren binnen de massamedia? Colofon: isbn: 9789491297304 · 2012 · paperback (15 x 22,5 cm) - ca. 550p. · prijs: circa € 29.50 · het boek verschijnt oktober 2012""

Een reportage op tv. Een islamoloog spreekt over jongeren en criminaliteit, zonder de woorden ‘allochtoon’, ‘migrant’ of ‘moslim’ in de mond te nemen. Alleen: zijn uitleg wordt gemonteerd op stereotiepe beelden: een vrouw met een hoofddoek, mannen in djellaba, een paar schoffies op straat. Voor de argeloze kijker is de boodschap duidelijk: allochtonen veroorzaken criminaliteit.

Op zo’n momenten veert Ico Maly verontwaardigd op uit zijn zetel. Wat er de laatste jaren niet allemaal gezegd en geschreven wordt over ‘de’ islam en ‘de’ moslims... Botsende beschavingen, burkini’s, halalvlees en jihad: kan u de extra bijlagen, boeken, films en series nog bijhouden? En hoe scherper en ongenuanceerder, hoe langer ze op het licht van de schijnwerpers kunnen rekenen.

Dat is geen toeval. Al die bijlagen, boeken en films zijn producten van een industrie die niets anders doet dan ‘kennis’ over ‘de’ islam verspreiden. Niet omdat ze zo geboeid is door de profeet Mohammed, wel omdat die industrie een politiek-ideologisch verhaal is. Omdat het heersende discours over ‘de’ islam zorgt voor de legitimering van een beschavingsindustrie, die op volle toeren draait in onder andere Afghanistan en Irak, maar ook bij ons in Vlaanderen. Hoezo, strijd tegen ‘de’ islam in naam van de Verlichting? Zonder olie in het Midden-Oosten had niemand het vandaag over ‘de’ islam. Warm u op voor een rondrit langs de wereld met een angry young man als gids.

Colofon:
isbn: 9789064452291 · 2009 · paperback (12,5 x 20 cm) - 168p. · prijs: € 16.00

Influencers play a crucial role in the functioning of social media platforms and in socializing their audiences. One of the roles they perform is underreached. Influencers can also be analyzed as reproducers of platform ideologies. The influencer concept hides an enormous range of different categories of content producers on social media. We usually tend to see them as those who use their cultural status to sell products; from make-up artists, to fashionista's. Other influencer categories would be those who produce entertainment, try to sell their services to their audiences, activists and politicians adopting the influencer tactics (Maly, 2020 & 2021) or intellectuals catering for a special audience. Considering the topic of this article, it makes sense to look at still another category: namely the influencer that gathers a following because they seem to understand digital media and give advice to people who dream to become influencers or at least use social media in service of their business, their dreams or passion. Gary VaynerChuk is one of those influencers. And it make sense to analyze him as a reproducer of platform ideologies: a digital ideological entrepreneur. This working paper is part of a research project on Digital platforms and ideology. You can read a more theoretical foundation here

In this paper I will focus on the construction of the populist voice in an attention-based hybrid media system (Chadwick, 2017; Venturini, 2019) and argue that the contemporary 21st century populist uses the affordances of digital technology not only to attract the attention of common people and the legacy media, but to actually mobilize people to co-construct the idea that the party is truly representing ‘the people’. More concretely, I will focus on how the extreme-right party Flemish Interest (Vlaams Belang), uses digital technology (Facebook and the political engagement platform NationBuilder) to position themselves as the true representatives of the Flemish people against an elite that destroys its society, culture and identity. I will argue that by putting themselves in the center of attention and to gamifying their audience, they manage not only to steer information flows in the hybrid media system, but also to construct themselves as the ‘voice of the people’.

This paper argues that nationalism, and nationalistic activism in particular are being globalized. At least certain fringes of radical nationalist activists are organized as ‘cellular systems’ connected and mobilize-able on a global scale giving birth to what I call ‘global nationalistic activism’. Given this change in nationalist activism, I claim that we should abandon all ‘methodological nationalism’. Methodological nationalism fails in
arriving at a thorough understanding of the impact, scale and mobilization power (Tilly, 1974) of contemorary ‘national(istic)’ political activism. Even more, it inevitably will contribute to the naturalization or in emic terms the meta-political goals of global nationalist activists. The paradox is of course evident: global nationalism uses the scale- advantages, network effects and the benefits of cellular structures to fight for the (re)construction of the old 19th century vertebrate system par excellence: the (blood and soil) nation. Nevertheless, this, I will show, is an indisputable empirical reality: the many local nationalistic battles are more and more embedded in globally operating digital infrastructures mobilizing militants from all corners of the world for nationalist causes at home. Nationalist activism in the 21st century, so goes my argument, has important global dimensions which are easily repatriated for national use. This forces us to adjust our understanding of locality, nationalism and our methodological apparatus.

Methodological nationalism, discourse, global nationalism, network effects, cellular systems

In this paper, I want to introduce a(n digital) ethnographic approach to populism that understands populism as a (digitally) mediatized chronotopic communicative and discursive relation. Populism, I argue, is not only constructed in a (mediatized) communicative relation between journalists, politicians and academics, but also in the relation to citizens, activists and computational agency. Attention to all these actors, and the media they use, is of crucial importance if we want to understand populism. Digital media are not just new media that populists use, their algorithms and affordances reshape their populism. In times of digitalization, we cannot understand populism by only looking at ‘the input’, the frame that actors prepare for uptake, it is about the uptake as well. More concretely, I will argue that digital media have given birth to a new form of populism: algorithmic populism. Understanding and focusing on populism as a ‘communicative relation’ between all these human and non-human actors allows use to analyze ‘populism’ more precisely.

On March 1st 2018, Diggit Magazine set up a Facebook experiment: for one day we tried to (1) follow the Facebook Guidelines for Publishers in detail and (2) to carry out a smallscale experiment that would hopefully give us some insights in the working of the algorithms and, more importantly, could enable us to set up more complex research experiments in the future. Reading The Facebook Guidelines The starting point of this experiment was the announcemen byFacebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg that he would 'fix Facebook' in 2018. In a series of blog posts, he announced several upcoming changes in the Facebook algorithms. Mainstream media engaging in the Facebook Journalism Project were referred to the 'Facebook Guidelines for Publishers' if they wanted to know how to use Facebook as a publishing tool. Diggit Magazine decided to analyze these guidelines and find out what Facebook expects of publishers. In that document, Facebook presents itself as a tool and a platform publishers can use. Facebook reaches out to publishers andhe message seems to be that the medium is not a competitor and not an editor either. Facebook presents itself as a technological solution for publishers. The only thing they have to do, besides creating 'important and meaningful stories' is understanding that tool called Facebook and to follow its guidelines. This is where it gets interesting: the guidelines stipulate the 'ideal publisher on Facebook': the publisher that uses and thus reorganizes their production in order to use Facebook to the full. From the moment one puts all these guidelines together, you see how Facebook cannot be seen as a neutral technological tool: the Facebook guidelines not only promote certain types of content, they also create a very particular environment.

Facebook has been facing heavy criticism in the last few years. Fake news, Russian propaganda, the targeting of insecure teens and former employees explaining how bad Facebook really is for your health: they all undermined the image of Facebook as a force of good. Mark Zuckerberg's 2018 New Year's resolutions to fix Facebook, even though they were carefully wrapped in idealistic rhetoric, are bad news for anyone who cares about diversity in the field of media and democracy in general.

Both Simmel and Goffman were deeply persuaded that the big things in society, in actual observable reality are made up of a dynamic and complex system of interlocking and interacting small things. In this paper, I wish to examine the online-offline communicative and semiotic practices of one such “less conspicuous” social group: the Saabists. Based on long term digital ethnographic research I will provide a description and analysis of how Saabists discursively and semiotically construct identity on-and offline in a transnational niche. Saabists, I will argue, are a translocal and polycentric micro-population sharing a ‘culture’ – Saab culture or Saabism - and an ‘identity’. I clearly argue in favor of a materialistic approach to identity and group formation. The reasons therefore are evident: Identity should not only be understood in a certain chronotope, but is also embedded in ‘infrastructure’, what Arnaut, Karrebaek and Spotti (2016) call Poiesis-infrastructures.

There was a consensus among the elite journalists, mainstream politicians and Hillary Clinton supporters around the world: Donald J. Trump is a 'dangerous clown'. Not only is he badly informed; he is a liar, a misogynist, a birther and a racist. Ergo, Trump is not fit to be the commander-in-chief. One assumes that all of this is not only obvious, but also exudes a negative message. The counter-strategy was limited to pointing out his lies and his racist and sexist slurs. All the counter-discourse, in essence, conveyed one message: he is a dangerous idiot, a moron. This strategy overlooked the power of his message and failed to construct a potent counter-movement.

Chapter 8 in Papaioannou, Tao and Gupta, Suman eds. (2017). Media Representations of Anti-Austerity Protests in the EU: Grievances, Identities and Agency. Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies. London: Routledge.

This fine-grained description of the mobilization power of Hart Boven Hard shows that both extremes – cyber utopianism and cyber pessimism – in the debates on new media and politics are inevitably blind to some of the complex ways new media contribute and/or limit activism.

We leven in een geglobaliseerde wereld. Dat lijkt vandaag een open deur in trappen. En toch. Die globalisering is vaak heel ver weg als we spreken over migratie en diversiteit in onze samenleving. In het maatschappelijk debat en de politiek begint migratie schijnbaar pas als het België binnenkomt. En vanaf dan wordt het behandeld als een Belgisch, meer nog een Vlaams probleem. Een probleem van botsende waarden en normen in een voor de rest homogeen gebied. De ‘oplossing’ wordt dan niet zelden gevonden in een drang naar her-homogeneïsering dat geflankeerd wordt door een repressie-en disciplineringsapparaat.  Wij vormen immers een samenleving van “rechten én plichten” en die plichten moeten afgedwongen worden. Wij moeten “onze waarden en normen” verdedigen. En voegen die stemmen er vaak aan toe: het moet nu maar eens uit zijn met al die toegevingen aan de dominante “multiculturalisme”-ideologie van de linkse kerk. Het heet dan dat we realistisch moeten zijn. Maar is dat ‘realisme’ wel zo realistisch? Dat is de centrale vraag waarop deze bijdrage antwoordt.

Vaak denken wij over identiteit in termen van onveranderlijkheid. Of we refereren naar iets dat ons definitief gegeven zou zijn en dat misschien zelfs beschermd moet worden. Een visie die hardnekkig stand houdt.

In Brussel is deze thematiek veel meer voelbaar dan waar ook in België. Hoe gaan jongeren daarmee om? Hoe komen zij tot de constructie van een identiteit? Politicoloog en filosoof Bleri Lleshi zette een onderzoek op het getouw dat zowel een praktisch-empirisch als een theoretisch luik meekreeg. Hij stelde hierover een boek samen met Marc Van den Bossche, professor filosofie aan de Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

In het theoretische deel gaan Noël Clycq, Leen De Bolle en Marc Van den Bossche in op de sociologische en filosofische aspecten van identiteitsvorming. Identiteit wordt er beschreven als voortkomend uit dialoog en ontmoeting met de ander. In het praktische deel schetst Eric Corijn een beeld van Brussel als kosmopolitische stad in wording. Nadien volgen enkele getuigenissen van betrokken jongeren in het project Ideaal Brussel. Hoe gaan zij om met hun meerlagige identiteit in de Brusselse context? In deel drie maakt Bleri Lleshi een analyse van het discours achter concepten zoals diversiteit, integratie en inburgering. Olivia Rutazibwa sluit het boek af met een beschouwing over de meervoudigheid van interculturele identiteiten.

Dit boek verlaat de geijkte paden van het denken over cultuur en identiteit. De monoloog van politici en opiniemakers over de dreiging die uitgaat van ‘de ander’ maakt hier plaats voor een constructieve dialoog met respect voor de veelheid van stemmen die in het debat betrokken zijn, maar die veel te lang niet werden gehoord.

Vaak denken wij over identiteit in termen van onveranderlijkheid. Of we refereren naar iets dat ons definitief gegeven zou zijn en dat misschien zelfs beschermd moet worden. Een visie die hardnekkig stand houdt.

In Brussel is deze thematiek veel meer voelbaar dan waar ook in België. Hoe gaan jongeren daarmee om? Hoe komen zij tot de constructie van een identiteit? Politicoloog en filosoof Bleri Lleshi zette een onderzoek op het getouw dat zowel een praktisch-empirisch als een theoretisch luik meekreeg. Hij stelde hierover een boek samen met Marc Van den Bossche, professor filosofie aan de Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

In het theoretische deel gaan Noël Clycq, Leen De Bolle en Marc Van den Bossche in op de sociologische en filosofische aspecten van identiteitsvorming. Identiteit wordt er beschreven als voortkomend uit dialoog en ontmoeting met de ander. In het praktische deel schetst Eric Corijn een beeld van Brussel als kosmopolitische stad in wording. Nadien volgen enkele getuigenissen van betrokken jongeren in het project Ideaal Brussel. Hoe gaan zij om met hun meerlagige identiteit in de Brusselse context? In deel drie maakt Bleri Lleshi een analyse van het discours achter concepten zoals diversiteit, integratie en inburgering. Olivia Rutazibwa sluit het boek af met een beschouwing over de meervoudigheid van interculturele identiteiten.

Dit boek verlaat de geijkte paden van het denken over cultuur en identiteit. De monoloog van politici en opiniemakers over de dreiging die uitgaat van ‘de ander’ maakt hier plaats voor een constructieve dialoog met respect voor de veelheid van stemmen die in het debat betrokken zijn, maar die veel te lang niet werden gehoord.

The age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff deserves a productive public and academic debate. It should not only be read and discussed by a broad audience; we can only hope that scholars across disciplines engage with her argument, finetune and improve it.

The algorithmic platforms and technologies that vie for our attention have reconfigured how we produce and consume digital culture. They make sure we are entertained, informed, distracted, dazzled, polarized, surprised, persuaded, provoked, depressed and lure us into affective states. They teach us how to live our lives, how other people lead theirs, and how life could also be. They monitor, quantify and monetize how we use data. We wrangle, subvert, resist and avoid them. Understanding the effects of digitalization and datafication means understanding how we construct our identities and cultures using such platforms, how they attempt to direct the cultural politics of everyday life and how we thus interact with digital media as we go about our daily lives.