This is how we .win! Capital-building and media manipulation practices on The_Donald

Abstract

ABSTRACT Scholars have grown increasingly interested in the ways media and communication technologies facilitate the spread of problematic information as well as how their affordances manifest in practice. While we have learned much about the structure and use of popular social media platforms, we have more to learn about less mainstream platforms, and about the ways their usage helps actors amass and wield media power. Accordingly, this paper examines networked political actors’ use of alternative media to generate capital and facilitate the spread of problematic information. Drawing data from two years of research on the pro-Trump internet forum The_Donald following its ban from Reddit, the analysis considers how users develop, debate, and deploy media-related practices, and what role those practices play in shaping the broader political culture in which they exist. In addition to gleaning insights from sustained participant-observation in the forums, a content analysis of activist meta-discourse examines the technological structure and affordances of The_Donald as well as the most salient themes and broader discursive patterns, focusing specifically on those aspects of the forum that pertain to practices of manipulation and expressions of media power. This analysis shows how the structure and culture of the forum enable and encourage manipulative media practices. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the unique combination of affordances and political opportunities available to actors allowed them to generate and wield novel forms of networked media capital.