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Identitarian Aesthetics in the Age of Social Media: A visual semiotic analysis of Génération Identitaire

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posted on 2025-02-04, 09:57 authored by Ilda Cuko

Emerging in France in 2012, Génération Identitaire (GI) is a far-right, Islamophobic youth movement advocating for what it considers the preservation of Europe’s ethnic, demographic, and cultural identity, against what it conceptualises as threats posed by the growing presence of (perceived) Muslim individuals on the continent, and the government elites facilitating this phenomenon. Since its inception, GI has received widespread media coverage, and has successfully been able to reach mainstream audiences.

This thesis explores how how GI was mainstreamed within the context of actually existing liberal democracies, and the integral role played by the visual in its mainstreaming process. In doing so, it argues that as a far-right Islamophobic youth-led social movement, GI was able to succeed in the mainstreaming of its organisation across Europe and beyond, by adopting liberal aesthetics in the visual articulations of its racism, Islamophobia, and broader movement. In adopting a quantitative content analysis (QCA) and visual semiotic analysis of GI’s visuals as presented across its public Telegram channel, this thesis argues that by adopting liberal aesthetics in the visual construction and communication of its movement, GI was able to tailor the supply of its movement to the demands of the mainstream. In doing so, this thesis explore the mainstreaming of GI as dependent on both the efforts of its movement, and of the affordances of the mainstream political context in which it was located in.

History

Supervisor(s)

Chris Allen; Jess Urwin

Date of award

2024-12-10

Author affiliation

School of Criminology

Awarding institution

University of Leicester

Qualification level

  • Doctoral

Qualification name

  • PhD

Language

en

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