scholarly journals Zur sprachlichen und visuellen Konstruktion rechter Diskursgemeinschaften in Social Media. Von PEGIDA zur Identitären Bewegung

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 119
Author(s):  
Derya Gür-Şeker
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Discourse Communities ◽  
Visual Patterns ◽  
Data Basis ◽  
User Comments ◽  
Naming Practices

<p>The article examines how right-wing discourse communities are linguistically and visually constituted in social media in the context of flight, migration and Islam. The PEGIDA Facebook Corpus covering user comments (2014–2015), the PolRrA Corpus containing right-wing populist speeches (2016–2017) and the Instagram Corpus of the hashtag #identitäre (2019–2020) with postings and user comments are the data basis. Thus the corpus consists of different language-based and multimodal entities. The aim is to show how right-wing discourse communities in Germany are constituted by <em>us</em>-<em>you</em> relations, naming practices and visual patterns across time, platform and organization.</p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Insults, criminalization, and calls for violence: Forms of hate speech and offensive language in German user comments on immigration

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sünje Paasch-Colberg ◽  
Joachim Trebbe ◽  
Christian Strippel ◽  
Martin Emmer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Text Annotation ◽  
User Comments ◽  
News Websites ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Offensive Language

In the past decade, the public discourse on immigration in Germany has been strongly affected by right-wing populist, racist, and Islamophobic positions. This becomes evident especially in the comment sections of news websites and social media platforms, where user discussions often escalate and trigger hate comments against refugees and immigrants and also against journalists, politicians, and other groups. In view of the threatening consequences such sentiments can have for groups who are targeted by right-wing extremist violence, we take a closer look into such user discussions to gain detailed insights into the various forms of hate speech and offensive language against these groups. Using a modularized framework that goes beyond the common “hate/no-hate” dichotomy in the field, we conducted a structured text annotation of 5,031 user comments posted on German news websites and social media in March 2019. Most of the hate speech we found was directed against refugees and immigrants, while other groups were mostly exposed to various forms of offensive language. In comments containing hate speech, refugees and Muslims were frequently stereotyped as criminals, whereas extreme forms of hate speech, such as calls for violence, were rare in our data. These findings are discussed with a focus on their potential consequences for public discourse on immigration in Germany.

Discourse Communities: From Origins to Social Media

2015 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Deoksoon Kim ◽  
Oksana Vorobel
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Discourse Communities

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 “You Go, Girl:” How Facebook and Instagram impacted the post-feminist construction of Electric Forest’s Women’s Program

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Krauss
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Music Festival ◽  
User Comments ◽  
Media Applications ◽  
The Way

In February of 2016, Electric Forest — a four-day electronic music festival from June 23-26 in Rothbury, Michigan —announced a women’s only program called Her Forest. The initiative’s aim was to facilitate feelings of “connection, inspiration, and comfort” (Weiner, 2016) amongst the festival’s female guests. This MRP draws from past research on influence and postfeminism to consider how the Electric Forest brand, as well as its online followers, constructed and discussed Her Forest via Facebook and Instagram. A directed qualitative analysis was applied to 21 of Electric Forest’s Facebook and Instagram posts and 110 associated user comments. The analysis emphasized the powerful impact that social media applications have on the way in which corporate messages are expressed, received, reshaped, supported, and challenged.

scholarly journals P112 SMILE: Sustaining Medical Education In a Lockdown Environment.Using social media to develop a free online access medical education platform during lockdown

BJS Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Pascoe ◽  
Paul Foster ◽  
Muntasha Quddus ◽  
Angeliki Kosti ◽  
Francesca Guest ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Medical Education ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
User Comments ◽  
Surgical Trainees ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Online Access ◽  
Education Platform

Abstract Introduction SMILE is a free online access medical education (FOAMEd) platform created by two UK surgical trainees and a medical student that delivered over 200 medical lectures during lockdown. Method The role of Social Media in the development of SMILE was interrogated using a survey sent to all SMILE participants and by analysing activity on SMILE social media platforms. Results 1306 students responded to the online survey with 57.2% saying they heard of SMILE through Facebook. Engagement using facebook remained highest with 13,819 members, over 800 user comments and &gt;16,000 user reactions. 4% of the students heard of SMILE through Twitter or Instagram. Facebook analytics revealed the highest level of traffic when lectures were most commonly held suggesting students used Facebook to access lectures. Other educators were able to find SMILE on social media, leading to collaborations with other platforms. Throughout the survey many mentioned how social media created and maintained a community of medical students enhancing group-based learning Conclusions We demonstrate that social media platforms provide popular and cost-effective methods to promote, sustain & deliver medical education for students and educators.

The Web of Hate: Fragmentation of Media Authority and its Link to Right-Wing Populism and Cyber Islamophobia

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-243
Author(s):  
Zeynep Aydin ◽  
◽  
Albrecht Fuess ◽  
Thijl Sunier ◽  
Araceli González Vázquez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Blowing Up ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Right Wing Populism

The twenty-first century has been marked strongly with two extremely significant developments, firstly the increase in international terror attacks and secondly the evolution of media and information consumption based on technological advancements. These phenomena together have led to the figurative and literal blowing up of mass media coverage, but, increasingly and more importantly, social media traffic. This shift in information consumption by the general public, especially after terror attacks, is leading to a fragmentation of authority that traditional media gained after years of being the monopoly of verified information exchange. The increased usage and wide accessibility of social media is allowing more people to feel connected globally after terror attacks and is leading to the creation of mediascapes by defining in-groups of like-minded people against Islam, as a common enemy, which leads to a drastic increase in online hate against Islam and Muslims. Digital mediascapes therefore have the ability to unify participants around an “us” that is specifically against the “other” that is labeled as an enemy. Islamophobia thus has become a useful tool for right-wing populists not only to gather a large following online but for right-wing parties to assemble electors in several European nation-states. This, in turn, can provoke the escalation of right-wing populism where people, who are experiencing the echo chamber first hand or those perceiving the viral developments from outside, can become easy prey for political influence. Therefore, social media groups, hashtags and sites can be seen as the feeding ground for right-wing populist political parties. Keywords: Echo-chamber, Islamophobia, cyberspace, social media, right-wing populism.

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.

White Noise and Black Boxes: Social Justice Discourses and Social Media Practices

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 310-318
Author(s):  
Didem Uca
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
White Noise ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Black Boxes ◽  
The Us ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Digital Spaces

Social media has long been a powerful tool for marginalized individuals to connect and form communities. Yet the digital tools used to facilitate these modes of communication, including the hashtag, can also be overpowered by misuse from users outside of these communities. This essay analyzes recent efforts by people of colour in Germany and the US to curate digital spaces by creating and utilizing hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeTwo that center their voices, while also discussing appropriation and right-wing responses to progressive social justice activism that threaten the hashtag’s ability to make meaningful content available to the users who need it.

Platform Politics: The Emergence of Alternative Social Media in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-276
Author(s):  
Prashanth Bhat
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Bharatiya Janata Party ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Corporate Social ◽  
Widespread Dissemination

Widespread dissemination of hate speech on corporate social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube has necessitated technological companies to moderate content on their platforms. At the receiving end of these content moderation efforts are supporters of right-wing populist parties, who have gained notoriety for harassing journalists, spreading disinformation, and vilifying liberal activists. In recent months, several prominent right-wing figures across the world were removed from social media - a phenomenon also known as ‘deplatforming’- for violating platform policies. Prominent among such right-wing groups are online supporters of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, who have begun accusing corporate social media of pursuing a ‘liberal agenda’ and ‘curtailing free speech.’ In response to deplatforming, the BJP-led Government of India has aggressively promoted and embraced Koo, an indigenously developed social media platform. This commentary examines the implications of this alternative social platform for the online communicative environment in the Indian public sphere.

Networked Collective Actions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyunjin Seo
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Change ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
South Korean ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Key Participants

Massive and sustained candlelight vigils in 2016–2017, the most significant citizen-led protests in the history of democratic South Korea, led to the impeachment and removal of then President Park Geun-hye. These protests took place in a South Korean media environment characterized by polarization and low public trust, and where conspiracy theories and false claims by those opposing impeachment were frequently amplified by extreme right-wing media outlets. How then was it possible for pro-impeachment protests seeking major social change to succeed? And why did pro-Park protesters and government efforts to defend Park ultimately fail? An agent-affordance framework is introduced to explain how key participants (agents), including journalists, citizens, social media influencers, bots, and civic organizations, together produced a broad citizen consensus that Park should be removed from office. This was accomplished by creatively employing affordances made available by South Korea’s history, legal system, and technologies. New empirical evidence illustrates the ongoing significant roles of both traditional and nontraditional agents as they continue to co-adapt to affordances provided by changing information environments. Interviews with key players yield firsthand descriptions of events. The interviews, original content analyses of media reports, and examination of social media posts combine to provide strong empirical support for the agent-affordance framework. Lessons drawn from citizen-led protests surrounding Park Geun-hye’s removal from office in South Korea are used to offer suggestions for how technology-enabled affordances may support and constrain movements for social change elsewhere in the world.

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