1. Open Access Kent State
  2. Dropkick Murphys vs. Scott Walker: Unpacking Populist Ideological Discourse in Digital Space
Author(s)
Abstract

On January 24, 2015, the folk punk band Dropkick Murphys penned a tweet to former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker that read “please stop using our music in any way…We literally hate you!!!” Within hours, thousands of users interacted with the post and a contentious mediated discussion materialized. By exporting the full conversation using the program BrandWatch and applying Sonja Foss’s ideological criticism approach, I found several recurrent ideological constructions reappear throughout the data. Through comments considering the band’s political activism as alienating, re-envisioning punk rock as right-wing, and framing Dropkick Murphys as inherently un-American and undesirable through Twitter comments, Walker supporters rhetorically dismiss the band and their message. These constructions show how new media audiences discursively construct ideologies to delegitimize opposition along the lines of political affiliation and illustrate the communicative mechanism of populism on a micro-level.
Format
Article
Identifier(s)
10.17645/mac.v10i4.5747
Publication Date
2022-11-29
Publication Title
Media and Communication
Publisher
Cogitatio
Volume
10
Issue
4
First Page
202
Last Page
212
Keywords
Subject
Rights
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/about/submissions#copyrightNotice
License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Community
College of Communication and Information
Permalink https://oaks.kent.edu/article/dropkick-murphys-vs-scott-walker-unpacking-populist-ideological-discourse-digital-space
Wilcox, C. (2022). Dropkick Murphys vs. Scott Walker: Unpacking Populist Ideological Discourse in Digital Space (1–). Media and Communication. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v10i4.5747
Wilcox, Connor. 2022. “Dropkick Murphys Vs. Scott Walker: Unpacking Populist Ideological Discourse in Digital Space”. Media and Communication. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v10i4.5747.
Wilcox, Connor. Dropkick Murphys Vs. Scott Walker: Unpacking Populist Ideological Discourse in Digital Space. Media and Communication, 29 Nov. 2022, https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v10i4.5747.