Multimodal Genealogy. The Capitol Hill Riot and Conspiracy Iconography

The Capitol Hill riots on 6 January 2021 were an event of great importance not only be- 6 cause of their political and legal impact, but also because they allowed everyone to observe the 7 symbols, images, masks and other signs that were displayed in front of the cameras of many jour- 8 nalists and eyewitnesses. The iconography displayed on that occasion should not be dealt with as 9 an extemporary invention but considered the result of a process of semantic and narrative accumu- 10 lation produced in online and offline interactions. This article seeks to outline a theoretical-method- 11 ological framework of contemporary conspiracy images as multimodal forms of communication. 12 Starting with images collected on Capitol Hill along with a corpus of online conversations that oc- 13 curred on platforms such as Gab in particular between 2016 and 2021, examples of the dynamics of 14 constitution of conspiracy images and their genealogy will be provided. Keywords: keyword 1; key- 15 word 2; keyword 3 (List three to ten pertinent keywords specific to the article yet reasonably com- 16 mon within the subject discipline.)