The Internet’s Town Square? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Parler’s “Past Imaginary”

Abstract

The discursive construction of sociotechnical imaginaries by the leaders of platform companies can help legitimate their platforms, shaping how they are perceived and ultimately regulated. Scholars have identified the construction of “future imaginaries” by large platform companies such as Meta—but do smaller platforms also seek to construct imaginaries, and if so, what form do they take? In this article we undertake a critical discourse analysis of statements by John Matze, co-founder and CEO of the fringe social media platform Parler, that garnered media coverage in 2020. Parler gained significant popularity among US right-wing users during 2020, before it was removed from Apple and Google’s app stores in January 2021 following the riot at the US Capitol. Using Van Leeuwen’s framework for discursive legitimation, we analyze a curated dataset of 186 news articles to identify the legitimating themes that Matze invoked in media coverage of Parler in 2020. We find that Matze foregrounded free expression, and with it the vision of Parler as a “town square,” which can be seen as an attempt to legitimate the fledgling platform. However, this discursive legitimation must be understood in the context of Parler’s base of predominantly US right-wing users, many of whom turned to Parler because of the perceived “bias” and “censorship” of mainstream platforms. We argue that, in contrast to the future imaginaries constructed for large platform companies such as Meta, Matze’s discursive strategy constructed an imaginary that was fundamentally retrograde. Parler’s “past imaginary” resembles efforts by far-right groups to justify and legitimate hate speech in increasingly platformized societies.