Publication Date
2020
Journal or Book Title
International Journal of Communication
Abstract
Much research within the noncritical perspective on the public sphere has been quantitative. To strengthen the argument for an ideologically disinterested approach to the study of publicity and counterpublicity, we use ethnomethodological discourse analysis to analyze how far-right movements claim counterpublicity, or “do being a counterpublic.” Specifically, we study the U.S. pundit Alex Jones and a prayer meeting of South Korean Evangelical Christians. For each, we considered how they created a shared discourse and attempted to change mainstream discourse while claiming being marginalized and different from the mainstream. Across these two case studies, the strategies for “doing being a counterpublic” are similar, even though they use different organizing symbols—conspiracy in the U.S. versus religion in Korea. These case studies show that the functionalist perspective yields benefits to understanding how publicity and counterpublicity are negotiated among various groups of activist citizens.
ISSN
1932-8036
Pages
5331-5350
Volume
14
License
UMass Amherst Open Access Policy
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Reijven, Menno H.; Cho, Sarah; Ross, Matthew; and Dori-Hacohen, Gonen, "Conspiracy, Religion, and the Public Sphere: The Discourses of Far-Right Counterpublics in the U.S. and South Korea" (2020). International Journal of Communication. 114.
Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/communication_faculty_pubs/114