After the Storm: Visual storytelling about the Capitol Hill siege in right-wing online communities on both sides of the Atlantic

This paper investigates the visual storytelling strategies of American and European far-right digital activists in interpreting the storming of the US Capitol on January 6th. Drawing on work at the intersections of social movements, sociology, and political communication, we combine computational methods with qualitative visual and discursive analysis to identify the pictorial tropes linked to prominent narratives about the Capitol Hill siege by far-right actors in German, French, and North American online ecosystems. In order to show how different right-wing communities incorporated visuals to narrate their version of what happened at the Capitol, we link features of digital images to characters, plots, and genres of storytelling. For instance, although we find actors like Donald Trump and the Proud Boys depicted as heroes in some contexts, in others they are depicted as turncoats, pawns, or characters to be pitied. By documenting the visual narrations of the Capitol insurrection, as embedded in the online networks of transnational right-wing groups, this research sheds light on the ways in which different right-wing communities use visuals to police the boundaries of community membership and populist leadership.