Mobile and platform users’ mediatized rituals in response to terrorist attacks: a discourse analysis of continuously collected screenshots

• Published in: Journal of communication Vol. 75; no. 3; pp. 207 - 219
• Main Author: Fitzgerald, Andrew A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.06.2025
• ISSN: 0021-9916; 1460-2466
• DOI: 10.1093/joc/jqae052

This article conducts a discourse analysis of continuously collected screenshot data capturing responses from US mobile users and their broader ecosystems to a series of Daesh (ISIS) terrorist attacks in Europe and North Africa in 2017. It identifies four genres of mediatized rituals in observed responses. Three micro-ritual genres focus on individual reparative action detached from systemic analysis or obvious collective action. The fourth genre, accretion of violence, draws on the micro-rituals while aiming to mobilize users against the specter of a left-liberal-Islamist alliance, the decline of “Western Civilization,” and coming sectarian violence. These mediatized ritual genres overlap beyond a confined “space” or “time” as we might understand more traditional conceptions of ritual, and traverse platforms and events. Most urgently, the accretion of violence articulates transnational far-right authoritarian and conspiratorial discourses. The ritual accretion of violence reveals mediatized dynamics among contemporary anti-democratic subjects, with political implications beyond personalized reparative actions.