Togetherness after terror: The more or less digital commemorative public atmospheres of the Manchester Arena bombing’s first anniversary
September 18, 2023
This article examines the forms and feelings of togetherness evident in both Manchester city centre and on social media during the first anniversary of the 22 May 2017 Manchester Arena bombing. To do this, we introduce a conceptual framework that conceives commemorative public atmospheres as composed of a combination of ‘more or less digital’ elements. ...
Terrorism and the Digital Right-Wing
September 18, 2023
Elizabeth T. Harwood on networks of provocation. ...
Extreme Speech Online: An Anthropological Critique of Hate Speech Debates
September 18, 2023
Exploring the cases of India and Ethiopia, this article develops the concept of “extreme speech” to critically analyze the cultures of vitriolic exchange on Internet-enabled media. While online abuse is largely understood as “hate speech,” we make two interventions to problematize the presuppositions of this widely invoked concept. First, extreme speech emphasizes the need to ...
Understanding the Incel Community on YouTube
September 18, 2023
YouTube is by far the largest host of user-generated video content worldwide. Alas, the platform also hosts inappropriate, toxic, and/or hateful content. One community that has come into the spotlight for sharing and publishing hateful content are the so-called Involuntary Celibates (Incels), a loosely defined movement ostensibly focusing on men’s issues, who have often been ...
Digital Jihad: Online Communication and Violent Extremism
September 18, 2023
The internet offers tremendous opportunities for violent extremists across the ideological spectrum and at a global level. In addition to propaganda, digital technologies have transformed the dynamics of radical mobilisation, recruitment and participation. Even though the jihadist threat has seemingly declined in the West, the danger exists of the internet being an environment where radical ...
Weaponizing white thymos: flows of rage in the online audiences of the alt-right
September 18, 2023
The alt-right is a growing radical right-wing network that is particularly effective at mobilizing emotion through digital communications. Introducing ‘white thymos’ as a framework to theorize the role of rage, anger, and indignation in alt-right communications, this study argues that emotive communication connects alt-right users and mobilizes white thymos to the benefit of populist radical ...
Islamic State’s Online Activity And Responses
September 18, 2023
‘Islamic State’s Online Activity and Responses’ provides a unique examination of Islamic State’s online activity at the peak of its “golden age” between 2014 and 2017 and evaluates some of the principal responses to this phenomenon. Featuring contributions from experts across a range of disciplines, the volume examines a variety of aspects of IS’s online ...
“You Know What to Do”: Proactive Detection of YouTube Videos Targeted by Coordinated Hate Attacks
September 18, 2023
Video sharing platforms like YouTube are increasingly targeted by aggression and hate attacks. Prior work has shown how these attacks often take place as a result of “raids,” i.e., organized efforts by ad-hoc mobs coordinating from third-party communities. Despite the increasing relevance of this phenomenon, however, online services often lack effective countermeasures to mitigate it. ...
Interactive Search and Exploration in Discussion Forums Using Multimodal Embeddings
September 18, 2023
In this paper we present a novel interactive multimodal learning system, which facilitates search and exploration in large networks of social multimedia users. It allows the analyst to identify and select users of interest, and to find similar users in an interactive learning setting. Our approach is based on novel multimodal representations of users, words ...
Many Faced Hate: A Cross Platform Study of Content Framing and Information Sharing by Online Hate Groups
September 18, 2023
Hate groups are increasingly using multiple social media platforms to promote extremist ideologies. Yet we know little about their communication practices across platforms. How do hate groups (or “in-groups”), frame their hateful agenda against the targeted group or the “out-group?” How do they share information? Utilizing “framing” theory from social movement research and analyzing domains ...