We’re back this week with another Signals in the Noise: Election Edition! Team ReFrame continues to monitor the post-election contours of the narrative ecosystem, where coverage continues to be informed by the blame game’s hot takes and takedowns. This edition focuses on content from November 10th to the 17th, though we go back in time to check our hunches and biases.
Here’s the TL;DR
- Conversations about the economy are at a high volume, with stories and content highlighting the cost of living and food. Stories focus on inflation and spending under the Biden administration. Despite the Trump campaign’s promises, fears of how the next administration will worsen these issues for vulnerable people are mounting. There is a risk that social safety net programs will be victim to racialized disinformation, respectability politics and classism, or that health and safety narratives will be used to impose austerity measures.
- With the 4B movement becoming part of conversations about reproductive rights and bodily autonomy post-election, there is an opportunity to organize loudspeakers into a more shared strategy around reproductive rights and freedoms and activate IRL spaces to give cisgender and trans women opportunities to organize and be in solidarity with each other.
- In post-election messages and stories, both the Democrats and Republicans are using narratives about the rule of law with their unique spin. This narrative deployment by both parties poses a risk for mass mobilizations around Inauguration Day, as the weaponization of law and order may be used to crush dissent and resistance.
Democracy Post-Election
From November 1st to the 17th, conversations about democracy were much lower than conversations about the elections (1.2 million mentions versus 20.4 million mentions). Compared to the same date range in 2022, mentions of democracy are down 81%, a drastic drop in volume. Compared to pop culture trends like “brat summer” (753k mentions) or “Project 2025” (18.3 million mentions), this drop in volume suggests that frames around protecting and saving democracy did not stick or saturate as much as they had in previous election cycles.
While the spike for democracy on November 6th at 208k mentions focused on the Democrats’ betrayal of the working class and their leaders’ waning influence, stories from November 11th to the 17th focus on the ways members of the Democratic party are gearing up to resist Trump’s policies and the threat they pose to “the rule of law.” Potential standoffs set the stage for weeks of unease, especially as the right-wing media ecosystem and MAGA loyalists call this tactic the formation of a shadow government or an insurrection, which is… ironic. These claims continue election stories about election integrity as votes are still being counted and verified in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Arizona. Expect law and order and safety and security narratives to be weaponized to crush dissent, regardless of who is at the front lines of the picket or protest. We can also expect these same narratives to be weaponized against organizations in the attempts to criminalize solidarity with Palestine, fast-tracking legislation to revoke non-profits and NGOs of their 501c3 status.
We track content and conversations about Trump’s picks like it’s the NFL draft. Here are some messages and narratives about the role of government in the post-election discourse:
- Through his cabinet appointees, Trump is developing the future political leaders of America
- Trump poses an existential threat to the United States (but/so what?)
- Biden and the Democrats should pass executive orders to shore up democracy before Inauguration Day
- We live in a gerontocracy
- Cronyism is antithetical to democracy
- America is not and has never been a democracy
- We must resist fascism
- We take care of us
- America can still live up to its promise as a transformative multiracial democracy
- The pro-democracy movement has failed
“Just Put the Fries in the Bag, Bro”
This week, discussions about the economy and governance are high in volume in relation to The Onion hilariously buying InfoWars and concerns about the economy's future under austerity measures, cronyism, crypto and billionaire pump-and-dump schemes. In spikes about the economy and the cost of living, trending stories and conversations focus on the cost of food and inflation under the Trump administration, highlighting that his economic policies will be a net negative for poor and working class people. While some content and conversations focus on the current administration’s choice of wartime spending over the American people, we note the beginning of attacks on social safety nets like SNAP. Right now these conversations are mostly happening on X and are being leveraged by conservatives and economists. We believe there is a risk that social/government programs will come under fire through racialized disinformation (think wokeness or DEI), values of respectability, and narratives about capitalism, the deserving versus the undeserving, protecting children, and the weaponization of public health and safety. These same values and narratives are playing out in trends and pop culture as popularized in retorts like “just put the fries in the bag, bro,” or “I don’t know what this means, I’m employed,” both of which, at their core, are classist. All of this may help manufacture consent to a range of legislative measures, including stricter guidelines on food stamps and gutting the budget for temporary assistance programs like TANF.
4B and Other Acronyms
Discussions about swearing off men, popularized in South Korea as the 4B movement, skyrocketed post-election day in response to the potential federal crackdown on women’s rights and Nick Fuentes’ misogynistic “your body, my choice” tirade. 4B is shorthand for the word “no” in Korean and is a protest against violence against women where they opt to revoke their labor from cisgender men, including sex, dating, marriage and childbearing. Young women lead the content and share of voice on Instagram and TikTok. Their content about the “sex strike” features right-wing influencers’ satirical content using narratives rooted in traditional femininity and desirability politics. However, conversations led by South Korean women and leftists in the U.S. are discussing 4B in the U.S. from a different angle, educating their followers on the fact that the movement has a transphobia problem. Within these conversations, there is an outsized focus on bodily autonomy, intimate partner violence (IPV), and the need for community between women and femmes, suggesting there is an opportunity to organize loudspeakers in long-term shared strategy around reproductive rights and freedoms and activate IRL spaces to provide opportunities for cisgender and trans women to organize in and solidarity. As we’ve already clocked, there is a risk that networks of trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) and sex worker exclusionary radical feminists (SWERFs) will use this as an opportunity to masquerade their gender essentialist anti-trans ideology under the umbrella of 4B content to recruit liberal women (it’s already happening).
We’re rocking with some nuanced post-election hot takes about voting blocs. For Prism, Rann Miller discusses how Black men were scapegoated through the election, while Briana Ureña-Ravelo asks (and answers) questions about the Latine vote. Meanwhile, Julian Rose writes about what “the Left” gets wrong about the South for Scalawag Magazine. Before you dive in, grab a pen, paper, cup of tea and get comfy.
In the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, mutual aid groups have not just stepped up to help their neighbors but have also found themselves on the frontlines of disinformation inoculation efforts. Read about the ways these groups promote narratives that demand good governance and structural change to address extreme weather events and shore up the infrastructure needed to prevent disaster.
November 18th honors the Battle of Vertières, a vital fight in Haiti’s liberation struggle. We welcome you to listen to Ayiti Pou Ayiti’s rendering of a battle song of the Haitian Revolution (it’s a protest anthem, too!), reminding us just how sacred archiving stories, photos, songs and chants are to keeping our radical traditions alive.
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