JBS Vol 26. Num 2. 2024. Article 5 - #Vairal Phenomenon Hero Alom - Social Media, Bad Taste, and Digital Politics in Bangladesh

Hero Alom is a Bangladeshi media entrepreneur whose online content has generated a huge, often negative, response. The response to his public presence, frequently expressed in a violent, gendered, and classed rhetoric of taste, appears outsized compared to the low production value music videos and short films he produces. In this article we analyze this virulent response to Hero Alom’s content as an index of broader transitions in media infrastructure in Bangladesh that has reorganised the possibilities for crowd politics in the country. We suggest that in the conjoined transformation of media infrastructure and legal controls on public speech, Hero Alom uses the under-determined aspects of new media to produce a style of publicness that gathers online and offline crowds of supporters and detractors. Part of digital circulation machines, his style of publicness provides insight into the centrality of publicity to public order and political presence in Bangladesh.