Walls and Cows: Social Media, Vigilante Vantage, and Political Discourse

• Main Author: Megan Ward
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2020-06-01
• Series: Social Media + Society
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120928513

Vigilante groups in the United States and India have used social media to distribute their content and publicize violent spectacles for political purposes. This essay will tackle the spectacle of vigilante lynchings, abduction, and threats as images of vigilante violence are spread online in support of specific candidates, state violences, and election discourse. It is important to understand the impact of not only these vigilante groups, but understand the communicative spectacle of their content. Using Leo R. Chavez’s understanding of early 2000s vigilante action as spectacle in service of social movements, this essay extends the analysis to modern vigilante violence online content used as dramatic political rhetoric in support of sitting administrations. Two case studies on modern vigilante violence provide insight into this phenomenon are as follows: (1) Vigilante nativist militia groups across the United States in support of border militarization have kidnapped migrants in the Southwest desert, documenting these incidents to show support for the Trump Administration and building of a border wall and (2) vigilante mobs in India have circulated videos and media documenting lynchings of so-called “cow killers”; these attacks target Muslims in the light of growing Hindu Nationalist sentiment and political movement in the country. Localized disinformation and personal video allow vigilante content to spread across social media to recruit members for militias, as well as incite quick acts of mob violence. Furthermore, these case studies display how the social media livestreams and video allow representations of violence to become attention-arresting visual acts of political discourse.