What are they gabbin about?: A relational realist approach to small stories (re)told on Gab

Abstract

Informed by Tilly's (2005) and Tilly and Tarrow's (2007) work on the use of storytelling as a tool for the (re)construction of collective identities and boundary formation, Alexander's (2006) work on the civil sphere and its civil/anti-civil symbolic codes and discourses of liberty and repression, and Georgakopoulou's (2013) concept of 'small stories,' I conducted a narrative analysis focused on the 'small stores' that Gab users (re)told to produce an understanding of alt-right pillars of identity. In this paper, I detail many 'small stories' about political correctness, censorship, affirmative action, 'invasions,' and the dissolution of the traditional white, nuclear family that transform into one big story of the so-called '(((communists')))' plot to manufacture a 'white genocide.'