ONLINE “LOONEY TUNES”

Abstract

This investigation orients to sociological propaganda (Ellul, 1965) and its implications in a new media environment. In particular, the investigation concerns seven reader-composed threads from the online version of the left-wing US publication, The Nation. The seven threads encompassed 931 posted comments in which posters clashed over contemporary US politics. I posit that the threads’ discourse reproduces sociological propaganda; specifically, the “American Way of Life” as channelled through a technological substrate that is assumed to be an enabler of vigorous democratic discourse. Alongside sociological propaganda, I unpack the ideology that is manifested in the topoi and uses of evidence that posters present (van Dijk, nd). Despite often heated confrontations between posters of the left and right, consensus was often part of the threads’ endgame in which the “American Way of Life” was affirmed laterally between citizens. This conclusion is also born out by the ensemble of posters’ dismissiveness toward a conspiracy poster who is not as easily squared with the prevailing sociological propaganda. On the basis of this sample, I conclude with an evaluation of new media's potential and limitations with respect to enhanced democracy.