21 Feb 2024: Kate Barber

Hyperlinks as a quasi-objectification strategy in the legitimation of assertions in extremists’ blog posts

Wednesday 21st February 2024 (week 4 of term): Kate Barber, Cardiff University

12:10pm in Room 3.58 of the John Percival Building on Colum Drive and via Zoom

Hyperlinks embedded in blog posts play a key role in supporting and verifying claims made by bloggers but, as yet remain underexplored in terms of their linguistic form and as a legitimation strategy in critical and sociocognitive discourse analyses research. This seminar talk draws on Hart’s (2010, 2011) work on subjectification and objectification categories of epistemic legitimation to examine the linguistic features and epistemic functions of anchor text – the clickable in-text sentence fragments used to index hyperlinks – in extreme discourses written by far-right and misogynistic bloggers. Incorporating findings from a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of blog posts, I argue that the lack of transparency in the support of claims through anchor text can be considered a quasi-objectification category of epistemic legitimation. I also discuss the linguistic forms of anchor text and how these relate to the alternative functions of hyperlinks, for example, regarding search engine optimisation (SEO) and automatic visual salience formatting. Finally, I outline how the study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the ways assertions are legitimised in polarising texts and how digital literacy education on mis/disinformation in online discourses can be developed.

(CW: the data used in this talk includes racist and misogynistic language, and reference to sexual violence)

This seminar will be hybrid although Kate will be present and we encourage in-person attendance in Room 3.58 of the John Percival Building. To join online click here.