Insta-hate: An exploration of Islamophobia and right-wing nationalism on Instagram amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benson Rajan ◽  
Shreya Venkatraman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Online Spaces

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light a crisis of racism and violence on social media by right-wing nationalists in India. Twitter and Instagram have become the online spaces to spew misinformation about the pandemic. Instagram pages such as Hindu_Secret and Hindu_he_hum have been unrelenting and vicious in spreading Islamophobic campaigns using the COVID-19 pandemic. This has opened up opportunities for targeting the Muslim community in India. This study positioned itself within the theoretical framework of Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding theory to uncover the visual and textual codes used to create stigma and blatant stereotypes that dehumanize and demonize certain communities using social media. This is an explorative inquiry that engaged in a semiotic analysis of the Instagram pages of Hindu_Secret and Hindu_he_hum. The study found encoded stereotypes of threat in the use of colour, religious structures, clothes and other physical markers of cultural identity in generating content for Islamophobia. Coronavirus was portrayed to have Islamic parentage in the memes; thus, it portrayed the Muslim community of nurturing and intentionally spreading the virus across India.

scholarly journals Muslims with Tattoos: The Punk Muslim Community in Indonesia

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-70
Author(s):  
Mohammad Rokib ◽  
Syamsul Sodiq
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Group Discussion ◽  
Personal Meaning ◽  
Muslim Country ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
Social Media Communication

Tattooing is becoming increasingly popular in the predominantly Muslim country of Indonesia. While mainstream society continues to perceive the tattooing practice negatively, many individual Muslims attach positive personal meaning to tattooing. This paper provides some of the academic insights into contemporary perceptions of tattooing among Indonesian Muslims. It focuses on the existence of ‘Punk Muslims’ community whose tattoos form an important part of their cultural identity and on responses to their tattooing practices from the wider society. Data were collected by means of individual interviews, a focus group discussion, and interactive social media communication. This paper reveals that Punk Muslim community has personal meaning of tattoo, while society has different perception. This community considers to maintain their cultural identity as punker symbolized by tattoo and Islam signed by worship.[Tato menjadi semakin populer di negara mayoritas Muslim seperti Indonesia. Ketika sebagian besar masyarakat memandang tato secara negatif, banyak juga Muslim secara pribadi memiliki pendapat positif terhadap tato. Artikel ini menyuguhkan beberapa wawasan akademik atas persepsi kontemporer terhadap tato dalam masyarakat Muslim di Indonesia. Fokus dari artikel ini meliputi eksistensi komunitas Punk Muslim yang menganggap tato telah membentuk bagian sangat penting dari identitas kultural mereka dan juga fokus pada respons dari masyarakat terhadap praktik bertato. Data penelitian dikumpulkan dari interview secara personal, diskusi kelompok terumpun, dan komunikasi interaktif di media sosial. Artikel ini menyatakan bahwa komunitas Punk Muslim memiliki makna personal atas tato ketika masyarakat memiliki penilaian yang berbeda. Komunitas ini mempertimbangkan untuk mempertahamkan identitas kultural sebagai anak punk yang disimbolkan dengan tato dan sebagai orang Islam yang disimbolkan dengan ibadah.]

Bilingual brand communities? Strategies for targeting Hispanics on social media

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dino A. Villegas ◽  
Alejandra Marin Marin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Customer Engagement ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Four Levels ◽  
Facebook Pages ◽  
The Impact

Purpose This paper aims to explore different strategies used by brands to target the Hispanic market via social media from the lens of the Spanish language in a multicultural country like the USA. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a netnographic approach by drawing information from a study of the Facebook pages of 11 brands belonging to different industries. Findings Companies engage in four levels of cultural identity adaptation using different strategies based on ethnicity: language adaptation, identity elements, identity matching and Latino persona. The study also shows that merely translating Facebook pages do not generate high levels of communitarian interaction. Practical implications This study examines different strategies used by brands in the USA to target the Hispanic audience on social media to provide insights for brand managers to develop online engagement. Originality/value With the increase in cultural diversity in different countries and the rise of social media platforms, brand researchers need to better understand how cultural identity permeates marketing strategies in online spaces. Social media platforms such as Facebook offer flexible environments where strategies beyond product- and brand-related aspects can be used. This study extends the literature by showing the heterogeneity of cultural identity-based strategies used by companies to ensure customer engagement and brand loyalty and the impact of such strategies on users.

Facework on Social Media in China

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoli Tian ◽  
Qian Li
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Interpersonal Interactions ◽  
The World ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
The Face ◽  
Different Parts

With more social interactions shifting to online venues, the different attributes of major social media sites in China influence how interpersonal interactions are carried out. Despite the lack of physical co-presence online, face culture is extended to online spaces. On social media, Chinese users tend to protect their own face, give face to others, and avoid discrediting the face of others, especially when their online and offline networks overlap. This chapter also discusses the different methods used to study facework online and offline and how facework is studied in different parts of the world. It concludes with a brief discussion of how sociological research has contributed to the study of social media in China and directions for future research.

scholarly journals Social Media, Peer Surveillance, Spiritual Formation, and Mission: Practising Christian Faith in a Surveilled Public Space

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-532
Author(s):  
Bex Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Spiritual Formation ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
The Individual

Social media has become a part of everyday life, including the faith lives of many. It is a space that assumes an observing gaze. Engaging with Foucauldian notions of surveillance, self-regulation, and normalisation, this paper considers what it is about social and digital culture that shapes expectations of what users can or want to do in online spaces. Drawing upon a wide range of surveillance research, it reflects upon what “surveillance” looks like within social media, especially when users understand themselves to be observed in the space. Recognising moral panics around technological development, the paper considers the development of social norms and questions how self-regulation by users presents itself within a global population. Focusing upon the spiritual formation of Christian users (disciples) in an online environment as a case study of a community of practice, the paper draws particularly upon the author’s experiences online since 1997 and material from The Big Bible Project (CODEC 2010–2015). The research demonstrates how the lived experience of the individual establishes the interconnectedness of the online and offline environments. The surveillant affordances and context collapse are liberating for some users but restricting for others in both their faith formation and the subsequent imperative to mission.

scholarly journals Social Media for Social Justice in Adult Education: A Critical Theoretical Framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Careless
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Adult Education ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Future Research Project ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Digital Engagement ◽  
Network Form

Social media as a communicative forum is relatively new, having been around for only ten years. However, this form of digital engagement has revolutionized the way many people interact, network, form relationships, learn, generate and share knowledge. As a noncentralized tool for communication, social media may provide space for critical discourse around issues of social justice, as discussion can be global in scope and is controlled by users themselves. This paper outlines a critical theoretical framework through which to explore the use of social media in adult education to foster such critical and social justice-themed discourse. Drawing upon five critical theorists and their work, this framework sets the stage for a future research project – one that is significant for this increasingly digital world in which we live.

scholarly journals Quantifying and contextualizing the impact of bioRxiv preprints through automated social media audience segmentation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jedidiah Carlson ◽  
Kelley Harris
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Research Evaluation ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Audience Segmentation ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Game Developers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Media Audience

AbstractEngagement with scientific manuscripts is frequently facilitated by Twitter and other social media platforms. As such, the demographics of a paper’s social media audience provide a wealth of information about how scholarly research is transmitted, consumed, and interpreted by online communities. By paying attention to public perceptions of their publications, scientists can learn whether their research is stimulating positive scholarly and public thought. They can also become aware of potentially negative patterns of interest from groups that misinterpret their work in harmful ways, either willfully or unintentionally, and devise strategies for altering their messaging to mitigate these impacts. In this study, we collected 331,696 Twitter posts referencing 1,800 highly tweeted bioRxiv preprints and leveraged topic modeling to infer the characteristics of various communities engaging with each preprint on Twitter. We agnostically learned the characteristics of these audience sectors from keywords each user’s followers provide in their Twitter biographies. We estimate that 96% of the preprints analyzed are dominated by academic audiences on Twitter, suggesting that social media attention does not always correspond to greater public exposure. We further demonstrate how our audience segmentation method can quantify the level of interest from non-specialist audience sectors such as mental health advocates, dog lovers, video game developers, vegans, bitcoin investors, conspiracy theorists, journalists, religious groups, and political constituencies. Surprisingly, we also found that 10% of the highly tweeted preprints analyzed have sizable (>5%) audience sectors that are associated with right-wing white nationalist communities. Although none of these preprints intentionally espouse any right-wing extremist messages, cases exist where extremist appropriation comprises more than 50% of the tweets referencing a given preprint. These results present unique opportunities for improving and contextualizing research evaluation as well as shedding light on the unavoidable challenges of scientific discourse afforded by social media.

scholarly journals Abjection overruled! Time to dismantle sexist cyberbullying in academia

Organization ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 135050842110417
Author(s):  
Emmanouela Mandalaki ◽  
Mar Pérezts
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
Act Up

In this essay, we draw on a personal experience of sexist cyberbullying unleashed, on social media, against one of our academic papers, to act up against increasing instances of cybersexism, in the academy. Reading our experience in the context of feminist insights on impurity and abjection, we assert the need to dismantle cybersexism targeting non-conforming academic knowledge, namely feminist. We also discuss the potentials of the cyberspace to provide opportunities for communal solidarity, as a source of empowerment for targets of academic cybersexism. Writing this text is an activist expression of voice and resistance, whereby we call our community to collective action and increased institutional support against sexism in academia, particularly in online spaces.

scholarly journals The Role Of Ethno-Confessional Leaders In The Political Life Of Society

2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (01) ◽  
pp. 364-373
Author(s):  
Khurshid A. Mirzakhmedov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
World Religion ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Media ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Media Reports

In the article, the authors are based on the verdict that the main and most important element of world religion is the phenomenon of the prophets. However, at the beginning of the New century as a world. Similarly, in regional terms, the media reports about false prophets and insults to religious prophets, including the great prophet Muhammad, which negatively affects the feelings of believers in the Muslim world. According to the authors of the article, this seriously depresses the international political situation, since the cult of the Holy prophets is recognized as the meaning-forming basis of the Muslim faith. The article proves that the goal of Islam in the formation and development of the socio-cultural life of Muslims is based on the strengthening of spiritual and cultural identity, based on the priority of recognizing the Majesty of the prophet Muhammad, that any skepticism or insults is a threat to the entire system of Islam's ideology. The authors note that the life of the great Muhammad is generally accepted as an example of the righteous organization of the personal and collective life of the Muslim community, which forms the highest qualities of spiritual and moral culture among believers.

scholarly journals e-Campaigning in the 2014 European elections

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Ceron ◽  
Luigi Curini
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Electoral Campaign ◽  
The Relationship

The article explores the relationship between the incentives of parties to campaign on valence issues and the ideological proximity between one party and its competitors. Building from the existing literature, we provide a novel theoretical model that investigates this relationship in a two-dimensional multiparty system. Our theoretical argument is then tested focusing on the 2014 European electoral campaign in the five largest European countries, through an analysis of the messages posted by parties in their official Twitter accounts. Our results highlight an inverse relationship between a party’s distance from its neighbors and its likelihood to emphasize valence issues. However, as suggested in our theoretical framework, this effect is statistically significant only with respect to valence positive campaigning. Our findings have implications for the literature on valence competition, electoral campaigns, and social media.

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