Conspiratorial Memory on the Far-Right: "Memory-Holing" and Ephemerality on 4chan
Once a relatively unknown and innocuous subcultural online imageboard, 4chan and its self-described "Politically Incorrect" /poll-users have over the past decade become synonymous with contemporary far-right reactionism. Central to their ideology is the conspiracy of an ever-present. megalomanic evil struggling for world domination. typified as the Jew, the radical leftist, the globalist. etc. Colloquially known as ·memory-holing" in 4chan terminology. one strategy of this supposed cabal is the manipulation of media narratives of societal events. thereby imposing an Orwellian censorship on collective memory itself. In this session, dMSA will be hosting a conversion between two experts about the role of memory on 4chan and its connection to far-right conspiracies online. Accompanying this discussion, voices from 4chan users themselves will also be presented in a curated format.
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Online Event
Organizer
dMSA Spring 2024 session 3: Conspiratorial Memory on the Far-Right: “Memory-Holing” and Ephemerality on 4chan, hosted by: Phillip Stenmann Baun
Join us for the UPAST x dMSA Spring 2024 webinar series where three researchers from Aarhus University invite activists and academics from their respective research areas to take part in online conversations about memory studies in practice.
This third and final event in the series will be hosted by PhD-fellow Phillip Stenmann Baun, who is currently working on the project “Reject degeneracy; Remember tradition!” A Study of Far-Right Digital Memory Practices. Baun has invited Daniel Bach, an expert on online subcultures from Roskilde University, for a conversation about the ontologies, conspiracies, and memory practices on the far-right /pol/-board on 4chan. Adding to this conversation will be a curated selection of voices from anonymous /pol/-users, talking about what they understand as “memory-holing”.
Presenter and Speaker
Phillip Stenmann Baun is a PhD fellow from Aarhus University, Department of Global Studies. In his main doctoral research project, he explores far-right digital memory practices, combining insights from far-right studies, memory studies, and digital humanities. Gathering data from 4chan’s /pol/ forum from 2013 to 2022, Phillip analyses how memories of the past are radically mobilized in response to users’ estrangement to contemporary society. Employing a combination of machine learning, quantitative statistics, and interpretative readings, the project bridges disciplinary gaps in order to better understand the ever-evolving culture of online extremist communities. Phillip has previously published work on the nexus between terrorism and history, how the war in Ukraine is being contested by the far-right, as well as how digital methods can be used to study memory.
Guest Speaker
Daniel Bach is a Ph.D. researcher at Roskilde University, Department of Communication and Arts and the Roskilde University Interdisciplinary Centre for Big Data, where he studies the worldviews and ontologies of online subcultures with a specific interest in the intersection between ethnographic and digital research methods. His Ph.D. research focuses on how right-wing extremist communities form on the 4chan imageboard and how the site’s specific affordances of anonymity and ephemerality play a role in shaping collective relations. This research comes from a mixed methods approach based equally on ethnographic embeddedness and large-scale data analysis techniques. With a background in Techno-Anthropology and a focus on media studies and STS, his research interests are related to the workings of the social internet from a socio-technical viewpoint.