Going “Rogue”: National Parks, Discourses of American Identity and Resistance on Twitter

Abstract

This chapter examines three ‘alternative’ national parks Twitter accounts created in response to censorship about climate change imposed by the Trump administration in 2017. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis and theory by Fairclough (Language and power. Longman, London, 1989), Tracy and Robles (Everyday talk: Building and reflecting identities. The Guilford Press, New York, 2013) and Foucault (The archaeology of knowledge. Pantheon, New York, 1972), this chapter finds that the tweets call upon ideas of US national identity through the use of themes like pristine wilderness, historic legacy and wisdom by past American leaders. The authors identify Twitter as a platform that allows a space for protest and collective resistance. The tweets engendered civic participation around a perspective counter to the official line, and in doing so, foregrounded a romanticized sense of national identity.