Online Library

Chapter in book, ‘Finding the Right Place on the Map’, Jakubowicz & Miklos Sükösd (eds.). The chapter looks at the role of the Internet in the street protests in Hungary in 2006 and examines how the protests played out online. Content analysis of extreme right-wing online media (major websites, news portals, mailing lists, discussion forums and online media in the period between 17 September and 4 November 2006)

Departing from Jessie Daniels’s 2013 review of scholarship on race and racism online, this article maps and discusses recent developments in the study of racism and hate speech in the subfield of social media research. Systematically examining 104 articles, we address three research questions: Which geographical contexts, platforms, and methods do researchers engage with in studies of racism and hate speech on social media? To what extent does scholarship draw on critical race perspectives to interrogate how systemic racism is (re)produced on social media? What are the primary methodological and ethical challenges of the field? The article finds a lack of geographical and platform diversity, an absence of researchers’ reflexive dialogue with their object of study, and little engagement with critical race perspectives to unpack racism on social media. There is a need for more thorough interrogations of how user practices and platform politics co-shape contemporary racisms.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

■ Internet subcultures take advantage of the current media ecosystem to manipulate news frames, set agendas, and propagate ideas.

■ Far-right groups have developed techniques of “attention hacking” to increase the visibility of their ideas through the strategic use of social media, memes, and bots—as well as by targeting journalists, bloggers, and influencers to help spread content.

■ The media’s dependence on social media, analytics and metrics, sensationalism, novelty over newsworthiness, and clickbait makes them vulnerable to such media manipulation.

■ While trolls, white nationalists, men’s rights activists, gamergaters, the “altright,” and conspiracy theorists may diverge deeply in their beliefs, they share tactics and converge on common issues.

■ The far-right exploits young men’s rebellion and dislike of “political correctness” to spread white supremacist thought, Islamophobia, and misogyny through irony and knowledge of internet culture.

■ Media manipulation may contribute to decreased trust of mainstream media, increased misinformation, and further radicalization.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.