India

VOX-Pol Blog post. ...

This article uses the context of the widespread circulation of accounts about “CoronaJihad” in India during the COVID-19 pandemic to examine how public WhatsApp groups that participate in disseminating such accounts function within the ecosystem of hate around Hindutva majoritarianism in the country. The manner in which the WhatsApp platform operates within this ecosystem is ...

With almost 500 million Internet users, and a history of mis- and disinformation spreading on social media and messaging apps and occasionally resulting in violence, content moderation has been a pressing issue in India for quite some time. Regulation of content is covered by different legislations under the Indian Penal Code, the Information Technology Act ...

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 ...