Contestation in the Colbert Nation: Participants,producers and the struggle over digital dialogue

Abstract

This article traces tensions between participants and producers on the official Colbert Report discussion boards. Employing critical discourse analysis, it examines the flow of power between the program’s producers and fans as they struggle over how the parody’s meanings will be interpreted, and how fans’ digital labor and content will be used. I begin by recounting the conflicted history of the message boards, and then analyze a sample of discussion threads in order to illustrate the vibrant and boisterous community created there. Finally, I explore strategies of migration, refusal and offline communication used by participants to express agency and power in relation to the boards’ producers. Throughout, I argue that theoretical approaches to participatory culture must take into account the corporate drive to centralize, manage and profit from users’ communicative desires, as well as audiences’ corresponding efforts to resist such control.