Fixing points on a shifting landscape: Truth, lies and politics in two reader comments pages

Abstract

This paper focuses on reader comments published in two online UK newspapers (Mail Online and Independent) in response to articles about one discreditable incident involving a far-right political leader. The concepts of articulation and fixation are used to examine how these readers engage with the politician’s actions using ethical categories. While Independent readers build theoretical articulations between the politician’s actions and a generalised crisis of confidence in politics, readers of the Mail Online, regardless of their political sympathies, accept ethical categories as fixed points to anchor the discourse.