Article published in:
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Vol. 5:1 (2017) ► pp. 108–133

Like & share if you agree

A study of discourses and cyber activism of the far-right British nationalist party Britain First

| St. John's University, Taiwan
| Lancaster University, U.K.

This paper combines corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis methodologies in order to investigate the discourses and cyber activism of the British right-wing nationalist party, Britain First. A study of a corpus of texts produced by elite members of the group reveals a racist, xenophobic stance which constructs Islam and Muslims as the radical, dangerous ‘Other’. This creates a discourse of fear that threatens the way of life of the indigenous in-group of the British people. An investigation of the cyber activity of the group demonstrates that Britain First is able to achieve a significant amount of following on social media by publishing populist material that veils their true nature or ideological stance.

Keywords: corpus linguistics, Britain First, cyber activism, discourse analysis, Islamophobia


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 16 October 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.5.1.05bri

Full-text

Like & share if you agree
References

References

Atton, Chris
2006 “Far-right Media on the Internet: Culture, Discourse and Power.” New Media & Society 8(4):573–587. Crossref.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul
2014 Using Corpora to Analyze Gender. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michal Krzyżanowski, Tony McEnery, and Ruth Wodak
2008 “A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press.” Discourse & Society 19(3): 273–306. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 132 ]
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos and Tony McEnery
2013 Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes. The Representation of Islam in the British Press. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Paul, and Tony McEnery
2015 Corpora and Discourse Studies. Integrating Discourse and Corpora. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Matthew
2015 “The Truth about Britain First – The One-man Band with a Knack for Facebook.” In The Guardian, Feb. 25 2015.Google Scholar
Daniels, Jessie
2009 “Cloaked Websites: Propaganda, Cyber-racism and Epistemology in the Digital Era.” New Media & Society 11(5):659–683. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Geraint O.
2012 “A Comparative Discourse Analysis of the Construction of ‘In-groups’ in the 2005 and 2010 Manifestos of the British National Party.” Discourse & Society 23(3):245–258. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Foxton, Willard
2014 “The Loathsome Britain First Are Trying to Hijack the Poppy – Don’t Let Them.” In The Telegraph, Nov. 04 2014.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Paul
2015 “Far Right Extremist Group Britain First Threatens to Arrest Islamist cleric Anjem Choudary.” In The Independent, May 28, 2013.Google Scholar
Gerbaudo, Paolo
2012 Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Matthew
2013 How Might Changes in Political Allegiances Affect Notions of Identity in the Next Ten Years? Government Office for Science. https://​www​.gov​.uk​/government​/uploads​/system​/uploads​/attachment​_data​/file​/275765​/13​-511​-changes​-in​-political​-allegiances​-affect​-identity​.pdf
Gover, Dominic
2014 “Who Are Britain First? The EDL-BNP Fusion that Hates Islam.” In International Business Times. Nov. 20 2014.Google Scholar
Hart, Christopher
2014 Discourse, Grammar and Ideology. London: Bloomsburg.Google Scholar
Juris, Jeffrey S.
2012 “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social Media, Public Space and Emerging Logics of Aggregation.” American Ethnologist 39(2): 259–279. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kassimeris, George, and Leonie Jackson
2015 “The Ideology and Discourse of the English Defence League: ‘Not Racist, Not Violent, Just No Longer Silent’.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 17(1):171–188. http://​blogs​.lse​.ac​.uk​/politicsandpolicy​/not​-racist​-not​-violent​-just​-no​-longer​-silent​-is​-the​-edl​-racist/
Kilgarriff, Adam, Pavel Rychly, Pavel Smrz, and David Tugwell
2004 ‘The Sketch Engine.’ Proceedings of Euralex, Lorient, France; pp. 105–116. https://​www​.sketchengine​.co​.uk​/wp​-content​/uploads​/The​_Sketch​_Engine​_2004​.pdf
Prentice, Sheryl, Paul Rayson, and Paul Taylor
2012 “The Language of Islamic Extremism: Towards an Automated Identification of Beliefs, Motivations and Justifications.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 17(2):259–286. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak
2009 “The Discourse Historical Approach (DHA).” In Methods in Critical Discourse Analysis, edited by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 87–121. 2nd edn. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Simpson, Patricia Anne, and Helga Druxes
2015 Digital Media Strategies of the Far-Right in Europe and the US. London & New York: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth
2015 The Politics of Fear. What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London: Sage.[ p. 133 ] CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by other publications

Breeze, Ruth
2020. Angry tweets. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8:1 ► pp. 118 ff. Crossref logo
Carter, Pelham & Katherine Kondor
2020.  In Digital Extremisms, ► pp. 223 ff. Crossref logo
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria & Stuart Macdonald
2018. Othering the West in the online Jihadist propaganda magazines Inspire and Dabiq. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 6:1 ► pp. 79 ff. Crossref logo
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria & Lella Nouri
2020. The discourse of the US alt-right online – a case study of the Traditionalist Worker Party blog. Critical Discourse Studies ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 august 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.