Structures in Discourse

Though criticized for attracting bigots and haters, ‘below the line’ (BTL) comment spaces extend the public sphere to include vernacular voices that rarely figure in mainstream democratic debate. This study examines interaction among commenters in a corpus of comments posted to the British newspaper the Express on the divisive issue of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. It shows how in this context regular BTL commenters create and perform an authentic ‘Brexiter’ identity in oppositio