Re-constructing borders through social news media: The normalization of immigrant exclusion within dominant discourse on Reddit

Abstract

Borders, as both physical and symbolic, delineate socio-cultural conceptions of belonging that exacerbate differences in power and contribute to migrant exclusion. Borders operate internally in the everyday lives of migrants by reproducing and reinforcing oppressive relations with the dominant social group. This study conceptualizes borders as part of a larger system of power and control that contributes to the marginalization and racialization of vulnerable populations within the nation as well as internationally. The media plays a significant role in creating and managing public opinion on issues of culture, race, gender, and citizenship, and thus is useful for analyzing immigrant representation while illustrating the prevalence of additional, theoretical borders. The unification of coherent social actors in the media creates a shared interpretive framework and a collective knowledge within the platform that shapes how interactions are formed. Through an analysis of posted content on social news platform Reddit.com, this project aims to uncover the dominant discourse on immigration and its connection to processes of exclusion that illustrate the construction of theoretical borders in the everyday lives of migrants. The findings from this study indicate a normalization of exclusionary discourse through linguistic narratives that perpetuate social inequality by casting migrants as a cultural “other”.