Defining Networked Constructed Reality: Hyperpopulism, Hypercriminality, and the 2024 UK “Far-Right Riots”

Abstract

Networked constructed reality (NCR) is an evolving concept which encapsulates how events and identities are shaped, framed, and experienced through mass digital media and interconnected technologies across time and space. But despite its growing significance, there is not yet a clear taxonomy or definition that clarifies NCR's characteristics together with its functionality as a tool of social control. This article explores NCR as a theoretical framework and a lived phenomenon that constructs political, cultural, and social realities through reimagined narratives and complex forms of remediation. Through a temporally and analytically layered mixed-method digital observation utilizing Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis, it examines the place of NCR in the “far-tight riots” in the UK in 2024. It focuses on the interplays between two emergent forms of NCR. The first is hyperpopulism, a far-right digital ideology that undermines liberal democratic values and the second is hypercriminality, where digital engagement fuels real-world criminal action. It considers how NCR was manufactured and amplified through information disorder, algorithmic bias and virality and dynamic power relations among influencers, authorities, and the public. By identifying NCR's key characteristics, this article offers an analytical framework for understanding its societal impacts, a taxonomy of core characteristics and highlights potential targeted digital interventions.