Reclaiming the People: Counter-Populist Algorithmic Activism on Israeli Facebook

2022 ◽  
pp. 152747642110594
Author(s):  
Yoav Halperin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Interface Design ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Online Ethnography ◽  
The People ◽  
New Form

This article examines a new form of resistance to right-wing populist discourse on social media which I define as counter-populist algorithmic activism. Practitioners of this type of activism exploit platforms’ automated ranking mechanisms and interface design to bolster the online visibility of counter-populist voices. By so doing, activists seek to stymie the digitally mediated spread of right-wing populist rhetoric and advance an alternative, non-exclusionary vision of “the people.” To explore this nascent form of resistance, this study draws on a year-long online ethnography of a Facebook group of Israeli activists called Strengthening the Left Online. Through an observation of the group’s activities during 2017, as well as interviews with its main administrator and other left-wing Facebook users, I elucidate the distinctive nature of the motivations, strategies, and goals that guide counter-populist algorithmic activists.

What Is Urgent Publishing?

APRIA Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-43
Author(s):  
Florian Cramer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
New Form ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

Publishing is increasingly being challenged through instantaneous social media publish- ing, even in the fields of scholarship and cultural, philosophical and political debate. Memetic self-publishers, such as the right-wing 'YouTube intellectual' Jordan Peterson and his left-wing counterpart Natalie Wynn, seem to tap into urgent needs that traditional publishing fails to identify and address. Does their practice amount to a new form of urgent publishing? How is it different from non-urgent publishing on the one hand and from propaganda on the other? Which urgencies can be addressed by urgent publishing? What is the role of artists and designers in it?

scholarly journals Is there another people? Populism, radical democracy and immanent critique

2020 ◽  
pp. 019145372091045
Author(s):  
Victor Kempf
Keyword(s):  
Radical Democracy ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Constructivist Approach ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
The People ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Open Question

This article explores the possibility of a notion of left-wing populism that is conceptually opposed to the identitarian logic of embodiment that characterises right-populist interpellations of ‘the people’. In the first part, I will demonstrate, that in Laclau’s constructivist approach, any populist embodiment of the people actually has a partial, subaltern and performative origin. On this basis, it becomes possible to distinguish between a radical-democratic version of the people that is self-reflexively aware of this origin and a regressive and reified one that ideologically betrays and negates its own subaltern tradition of democratic struggle by proclaiming to embody a positive, pre-established substance of ‘rooted’, ‘well-born’ community. In the second part of the article, I will focus on this self-negation as a starting point for an immanent critique of right-wing populism. Such an immanent critique is promising, because it could overcome the shortcomings of decisionism and moralism that limit the contemporary critique of right-wing populism. However, it remains still an open question how to defend and define a negativist truth of political community and subjectivation that is necessary for developing such a left-Hegelian critique of regressive and reified notions of ‘the people’.

scholarly journals A simulated cyberattack on Twitter: Assessing partisan vulnerability to spear phishing and disinformation ahead of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections

First Monday ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Bossetta
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Private Information ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Breaking News ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Midterm Elections ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Twitter Users

State-sponsored “bad actors” increasingly weaponize social media platforms to launch cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns during elections. Social media companies, due to their rapid growth and scale, struggle to prevent the weaponization of their platforms. This study conducts an automated spear phishing and disinformation campaign on Twitter ahead of the 2018 United States midterm elections. A fake news bot account — the @DCNewsReport — was created and programmed to automatically send customized tweets with a “breaking news” link to 138 Twitter users, before being restricted by Twitter.Overall, one in five users clicked the link, which could have potentially led to the downloading of ransomware or the theft of private information. However, the link in this experiment was non-malicious and redirected users to a Google Forms survey. In predicting users’ likelihood to click the link on Twitter, no statistically significant differences were observed between right-wing and left-wing partisans, or between Web users and mobile users. The findings signal that politically expressive Americans on Twitter, regardless of their party preferences or the devices they use to access the platform, are at risk of being spear phished on social media.

Character assassination as a right-wing populist communication tactic on social media: The case of Matteo Salvini in Italy

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110392
Author(s):  
Carlo Berti ◽  
Enzo Loner
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Communication Strategy ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
The People ◽  
Individual Traits ◽  
Social Media Communication

The article conceptualizes character assassination (CA) as a tactic of populist communication on social media by using the case study of Italian politician Matteo Salvini. CA consists of personal attacks aimed at damaging the reputation of individuals, used as political means to attack the “enemies of the people.” By means of CA, populists operate a shift from issues and arguments toward individual traits and behaviors. CA’s importance is linked to the features of social media communication (i.e. disintermediation, speed, virality, fragmentation, emotionality). The article uses content analysis of tweets, and qualitative analysis of relevant examples; it demonstrates the strategic nature of CA in Salvini’s communication and identifies five functions (i.e. polarizing, personalizing, symbolic, discriminating, emotional) of CA in right-wing populist communication. CA’s logic is unpacked, by showing how the delegitimization of individuals is used to reinforce a populist communication strategy. Potential implications and responses to CA are discussed.

scholarly journals Populism and exclusionary narratives: The ‘other’ in Podemos’ 2014 European Union election campaign

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 552-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Sanders ◽  
María Jesús Molina Hurtado ◽  
Jessica Zoragastua
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
The People ◽  
Discursive Positioning ◽  
Dramatistic Pentad

Populist political parties have become a key feature of the European political landscape. In addition to claiming to be identified with the people, many of these parties are characterized by exclusionary narratives which centre on groups such as immigrants and religious minorities, a feature considered by many analysts as specific to right-wing populism. Left-wing populism is frequently defined as sharing right-wing populism’s identification with the people and its anti-elitism but not its attachment to exclusionary narratives. This study joins other recent work in challenging that assumption, providing evidence for the contention that anti-elitism is also a form of excluding populist communication. Using Van Dijk’s methodological approach to the analysis of the discursive positioning of ‘Us/Them’ and elements of Burke’s dramatistic pentad, this article examines the party and electoral communication of Podemos, the self-described, left-wing populist Spanish political party, from its foundation in January 2014 up until the close of the European Union parliamentary election campaign in May 2014. The study shows that an exclusionary narrative was integral to Podemos’ campaign communication in that a group of people identified as the caste ( la casta) constituted the stigmatized out-group in contraposition to the in-group of the ‘people’ which included immigrants and the leaders of Podemos. This suggests that populist parties or politicians of all ideological stripes may be characterized by exclusionary and stigmatizing narratives.

scholarly journals SUNSET AND MEMORIES: HOW WE BURY AND MOURN DEAD PLATFORMS

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Van der Nagel
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Research Project ◽  
The People ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
New Form

Over social media’s first decade, we as users grew to trust that platforms play a role as memory machines: they enable us to share and store our media traces to look back on later, as we remember and make sense of our lives. But not all platforms last forever. What happens when social media platforms are, to borrow a business term, sunsetted? This paper investigates how platforms end, and how people remember them after they are gone. I first conducted a thematic analysis of 20 sunset posts: the final declaration of what a platform has been. I discovered that this genre of communication is designed to spark a sense of loss for the platform that was, and trust in the people who are moving on to new projects. This opened up further questions about if people remember dead platforms, and if so, how they remember them. Responses to a survey of social media users about a platform they used to use that no longer exists will undergo a thematic analysis to identify common themes and patterns in terms of online remembering, nostalgia, archiving, and forgetting. As social media platforms are a relatively new form of media, this research project aims to gain an understanding of how people shift from platform to platform, and how media traces and platforms are remembered and forgotten.

scholarly journals Populist Disinformation: Exploring Intersections between Online Populism and Disinformation in the US and the Netherlands

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hameleers
Keyword(s):  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
The People ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mainstream Press

The discursive construction of a populist divide between the ‘good’ people and ‘corrupt’ elites can conceptually be linked to disinformation. More specifically, (right-wing) populists are not only attributing blame to the political elites, but increasingly vent anti-media sentiments in which the mainstream press is scapegoated for not representing the people. In an era of post-truth relativism, ‘fake news’ is increasingly politicized and used as a label to delegitimize political opponents or the press. To better understand the affinity between disinformation and populism, this article conceptualizes two relationships between these concepts: (1) blame attributions to the dishonest media as part of the corrupt elites that mislead the people; and (2) the expression of populist boundaries in a people-centric, anti-expert, and evidence-free way. The results of a comparative qualitative content analysis in the US and Netherlands indicate that the political leaders Donald Trump and Geert Wilders blame legacy media in populist ways by regarding them as part of the corrupt and lying establishment. Compared to left-wing populist and mainstream politicians, these politicians are the most central players in the discursive construction of populist disinformation. Both politicians bypassed empirical evidence and expert knowledge whilst prioritizing the people’s truth and common sense at the center stage of honesty and reality. These expressions resonated with public opinion on Facebook, although citizens were more likely to frame mis- and disinformation in terms of ideological cleavages. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the role of populist discourse in a post-factual era.

Ironic humor on social media as participatory boundary work

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 729-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noam Gal
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Boundary Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Social Division ◽  
Digital Environments

This article explores the use of irony for boundary work in social media. It suggests that the combination of the polysemy inherent to ironic humor and new decontextualized digital environments entails greater potential for misinterpretation, thus turning humorous interactions into segregating tools. Using the case of left-wing mockery of a far-right-wing group in Israel, I trace the ways in which online irony serves as a means for social consolidation and differentiation. Findings indicate that the combination of medium (Facebook), keying (ironic humor), and content (social divides) works to empower one group and marginalize the other, potentially deepening existing social gaps. In addition, I show how this triangle leads to the construction of a new overarching social division between intellect (associated with left-wingers) and physicality (associated with right-wingers). Finally, I discuss the implications of social divides for our understanding of relations between irony and power structures in digital environments.

Friends or foes? Europe and ‘the people’ in the representations of populist parties

Politics ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 026339572093853
Author(s):  
Juan Roch
Keyword(s):  
Right Wing ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Reciprocal Influence ◽  
The People ◽  
Precise Relationship ◽  
Hierarchical Relation ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Populist Party

This article seeks to shine a light on the diversity of populist discourses about Europe and the European Union (EU). It is built upon the existing literature on populist Euroscepticism to elaborate on two underexplored aspects of the relationship between populist discourses and EU contestation. First, it explores the variable and even ambivalent representations of the EU and its main political processes exhibited by populist actors. Second, it focuses on the precise relationship between populism and the representations of the EU to determine whether there is a hierarchical relation, reciprocal influence, or they function as separated ideational ensembles. This research takes a corpus-assisted approach to discourse analysis that is based on the exploration of manifestos and party leadership speeches between 2013 and 2017 of Podemos in Spain, a left-wing populist party, and the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, a right-wing populist party. The findings reveal that the populist discourse has variable effects on the forms of EU contestation depending on its centrality and that ambivalence is a crucial feature to capture the forms of EU contestation of populist parties. Finally, the article draws several theoretical implications for the research on populism and EU contestation.

#IamMetiria: A qualitative case study of agonistic welfare policy debates on Twitter

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482198969
Author(s):  
Leon A. Salter
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Future Study ◽  
Qualitative Case Study ◽  
Welfare Policy ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Green Party ◽  
Policy Debates

#IAmMetiria began on Twitter in July 2017, after a speech by New Zealand Green Party co-leader, Metiria Turei, challenging political consensus on welfare policy. Turei confessed she lied to authorities in the 1990s, prompting a flood of supportive posts. Soon after, right-wing oppositional tweets were posted ( n = 288) contesting the arguments of Turei and her supporters, and left-wing responses to those arguments ( n = 214). Drawing on Mouffe’s dissensual model, this article undertakes a close, qualitative analysis of those 502 tweets, in order to move towards a method for empirically distinguishing between antagonistic and agonistic tweets, identifying the latter as putting forward arguments which can be identified by the researcher and potentially engaged with by ideologically opposed adversaries. The results show a majority of the tweets were agonistic, with implications for the future study of social media policy debates and for the online practices of scholars.

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