Oppositional Music Mash Ups: Populist Manifestations in Online Criticism to UK Conservative Government Actions

Globally, populism is on the rise, evident in Putin's Russia, Oban's Hungary and Trump's America. The UK's Conservative governments since Margaret Thatcher have also been accused of being populist, despite populism, in all its forms, being divisive and polarising. One sphere in which we find resistance to populist governments is digital popular culture. Though memes, mash ups, parodies, animations and other forms of popular culture on social media are dismissed by some as "just a bit of fun", scholars have shown how these can also be political, infused and shaped by power relations and ideologies. Leaning on Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies, this paper analyses written and spoken lexica, images and musical sounds in a sample of musical mash ups produced by @PoliticsJOE. This analysis reveals how these rely on forms of populism as they represent and recontextualise UK Conservative governments and their actions from 2019 to 2024. It is through such a close reading that I consider the role(s) such digital popular culture can play in public discourse.