Digitally mediated satire as a site for liquid racism: Discourses of migration in Germany

This analysis of three YouTube videos by a German content creator focuses on his performance of a migrant persona, using exaggerated ethnic stereotypes juxtaposed with a non-ethnically marked Standard German. The ambiguity inherent to humor, and the resulting multiple interpretations of these videos by viewers, open up opportunities for competing discourses of migration. Although largely seen as satire, and arguably intended as a criticism of stereotypes of Muslim migrants, we see that some viewers interpret the migrant persona in the videos as the real identity of the performer, seemingly missing the joke and not recognizing the social criticism. This analysis shows how liquid racism is present through the ambiguity of humor in challenging ethnonational discourses, the hegemonic nature of ethnic stereotypes, and the affordances of the YouTube platform, which allow for commenters to reproduce anti-immigrant discourses and racialization of migrants which are amplified in the echo chambers of social media.