Paper short abstract:

This paper draws from online research on the transatlantic culture wars to explore the reconfigurations of the anti-woke movement during the Covid-19 and Ukraine crises. We examine the pandemic's divisive impact on the movement and how the war abruptly shifted 'the conversation' away from Covid.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws from long-term online research on the transatlantic culture wars to explore the reconfigurations of the anti-woke (aka heterodox) movement during the Covid-19 and Ukraine crises. Through leading anti-woke figures such as JK Rowling, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying, and Sam Harris - all highly skilled media practitioners - we track the effects of the pandemic and of the Ukranian war as critical media 'events' (Sewell 2005) on this transnational world. The varied responses to each crisis, we suggest, shed 'luminous' ethnographic data (Katz 2001, 2002) on obscure causal relations across this dynamic space of content production and cultural criticism (Johansen 2021). We start by examining Covid's divisive impact on the movement as some of its key figures - supposedly paragons of Western science and rationality - began to promote alternative treatments (e.g. ivermectin) and to display deep-seated scepticism towards the medical establishment and mainstream media. Taking our cue from public debates within the movement, we ask to what extent this schism was a product of algorithmic 'audience capture' - a self-reinforcing feedback loop that rewards content creators for telling their audiences what they want to hear. We then turn to how the Ukrainian war abruptly shifted the movement's 'conversation' away from Covid.