The Visual Transformation of Security Narratives: Visual Culture of the German Querdenker Movement on Instagram

Sammanfattning: Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic the post-truth and increasingly radicalized anti-vaccine movement has gained worldwide attention as a major opponent of Covid-restricting efforts. In Germany, the anti-vax movement Querdenker have staged several large-scale protests opposing the ’undemocratic’ government. With increasing online identity expression through fast-paced visual platforms, the Querdenker utilize the global, visual environment of Instagram to facilitate and sustain an ontological security narrative while affected by Instagram’s content moderation efforts. An explanatory sequential design is used, combining a quantitative content analysis of the three movement-connected hashtags with a qualitative semiotic and text analysis of selected profiles’ meme content. Applying mixed methodology allows the thesis to draw reflections on the embeddedness of content while also providing insights into commonly used visual signs and narrative tools to construct security. The findings indicate that Querdenker security narratives rely on defining the Other as a threat to continuity of the Self. The ‘Radicalized Other’ is here interpreted in line with populist anti-elitism while non-movement members of society are seen as similar to the ‘Orientalized Other’ that needs to be guided and taught. As society changes, the movement displays tendencies of holding on to traditional worldviews and value systems to establish a securitized context in which protest and resistance become necessary to sustain their identity. On the other hand, censorship affects textual elements within Instagram content. Users have also reported several strategies of countering censorship, thus raising the question if algorithmic filtering approaches are ineffective in detecting and sustaining content moderation according to misinformation guidelines. Comedic visual content, however, proved to make memes more resilient to censorship and potentially more effective in sustaining ontological security narratives.