Racism in Reform UK’s Facebook communication leading up to the 2024 UK General election

The internet has proven to be an important arena for disseminating far right discourse into public debate and political actors with racist views have benefitted from social media platforms for seeking, obtaining and spreading information (Titley 2019; Åkerlund 2022; Ekman 2015). It has also been suggested that affect and emotion are crucial for political engagement, by for example creating a sense of belonging or recognition (Ahmed 2014; Ekman 2023). Emotions such as love, hate and fear can also align individuals with collectives (or networks) through an ideal or common enemy, establishing a sense of belonging by excluding others from the collective (Ahmed 2014). The aim of this study is to gain understanding of how racist imaginaries are shaped and circulated through posts on the Facebook page of the populist Reform UK party during the weeks leading up to the 2024 general election in the United Kingdom (which saw Reform UK take more than four million votes). Here, digital racism is understood as a form of cultural politics of emotion in which the content of the Facebook posts constitutes what Ahmed terms ‘objects of feeling’, which people feel love, anger, pity, or fear towards (Ahmed, 2014, pp. 8–9). These emotions can be collective or individual, established historically and culturally, and are manifest in responses to events or objects (Ahmed in Gregg & Seigworth 2010, pp. 29– 51). This study explores the characteristics, compositions and make-up of Reform UK Facebook posts, together with comments and numerical data on follower interactions.