Memes, Tweets, and Photographs: False Narratives, Real Objects, Race, and Ethnic Nationalism in the Internet Age
- Kate Kolpan (Iowa State University)
Abstract
Throughout history, physical objects (monuments, buildings, objects, bones) have been utilized to initiate or perpetuate racist, ethnocentric and nationalistic ideologies. Though the objects are often real, the narrative used to prop up these skewed ideological interpretations of history is purely mythological. It used to be that these kinds of alterations of history persisted, but often did not hold sway with larger swaths of society. People recognized urban legends, but did not regard them as fact. Enter the magical invention known as the internet. This talk examines how internet users took the internet—an incredibly useful tool in regard to the dissemination of knowledge—and utilized actual objects, particularly physical bodies, to create or reinforce racist and nationalistic narratives based on falsehoods and misinformation. It also examines how, much like pandemics, these perversions of reality are further aided by the compression of time in cyberspace. What would have taken weeks or months or years to circumnavigate the globe, now only takes a few clicks of the keyboard to distort real objects and press them into the service of racism, ethnocentricity and nationalist causes.