Potholes and Power: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of “Look At This F*ckin’ Street” on Instagram

Abstract

The condition of road infrastructure in New Orleans is recognized among citizens as unacceptably poor. This problem is one in a long list of problems with the municipal government and city services that have combined to create an atmosphere of distrust and deep frustration. On Instagram, “Look At This F*ckin Street” (LATFS) exists to document failing local infrastructure and has over 94,000 followers and an active culture of crowdsourced user submissions and regular engagement in comments and reposts. In this article, I utilize Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to explore all of the relevant discursive modalities seen in the account in order to uncover how they work to challenge and ultimately undermine power. Via an open coding process, I identify three main strategies employed by the anonymous account manager and the participating followers: Shaming, Mocking, and Exposing. Within each of these strategies, I explore the specific techniques observed within these discourses that contribute to the effectiveness of these strategies. I argue that LATFS is an effective and powerful participatory platform for exposing a broad range of systemic problems and their causes, allowing residents to take back the narrative of their city’s infrastructure challenges, diminish and demean the powerful interests responsible, and ultimately attempt to reclaim the power lost to negligent or even bad-faith municipal authorities in New Orleans.