Twenty-four hours in the alt-right media ecosystem: analyzing race, space, and labor in Breitbart’s coverage of the Mollie Tibbetts murder

ABSTRACT

This article examines media coverage of the murder by a Mexican farmworker of Mollie Tibbetts, a white college student, in the digital alt-right publication Breitbart as a case study analyzing the historicized racialized rhetoric of immigration in the American press. Examining all articles published within the 24-hour period of the discovery of Tibbetts’ body, this article argues that the rhetoric in Breitbart’s coverage of the case demonstrates the re-emergence of racialized themes that are rhetorically deployed to protect white spaces, such as the rural national imaginary, and white-dominated structures, such as the labor market. In the contemporary global, digital age Breitbart’s coverage of the Tibbetts case demonstrates the dominance of nostalgic alt-right fantasies of paternalistic white possession of spaces and structures in the far-right media ecosystem. Drawing on the principles of critical discourse analysis and engaging in a close textual reading of Breitbart’s coverage of the Tibbetts case, this article emphasizes the continued salience and significance of white possession.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• digital media
• immigration
• labor
• alt-right