The Analysis of Affective Atmospheres in Audiovisual Media

Abstract

The far-right is an integral part of the political everyday life in Germany. Far-right projects are always geopolitical projects too, as they aim to reorganize space, power and identities. Within the spreading of far-right worldviews and ideologies music videos play an important role as they seem particularly suitable for conveying identity constructions affectively. Research in feminist geography has focused on the role of affects and emotions in the production of collective identities and emphasized that national affiliation is not cognitively known, but primarily felt. Based on a relational understanding of affect and the concept of affective atmospheres, I propose in this article a set of methods with which the affective production of identities in multimodal arrangements can be explored. I understand affects as an important part of discourse and media analysis and would like to open up a perspective that enables affective atmospheres to be attached to formal and content-related features: Following current theoretical discussions in the social sciences and political geography, I show how affective atmospheres and affect potentials can be analyzed in audio-visual media referring to affective markings, the explicit articulation of affects and affective movements and interactions. Using the example of far-right rap music, I sketch how collective identities are conveyed in pop-cultural contexts. In doing so, I trace that the far-right does not aim exclusively at a consolidation of national identity, but at a division within society. Accordingly, the examined videos produce affective atmospheres that alternate between fear, anger and sadness and make political goals and offered identities appear achievable primarily through violence.