Online Library

The 2016 US election and the victory of Donald Trump are closely connected to a perceived rise of the far-right in the United States. We build upon public sphere and alternative media theory to discuss the relevance of alternative media for the US (far-)right and whether the election period and the candidate Trump allowed far-right alternative media to establish themselves in the (far-) right networked public sphere. We investigate whether it has come to a convergence of topics between the right and the extreme far-right. We analyze the topics nine right-wing outlets, ranging from Fox News to the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, covered in 2015/2016 during the US presidential election. We show through topic modeling of 21,919 articles how Breitbart established itself as a media outlet between the extreme far-right and mainstream right by both covering more extreme and more classic conservative topics. We show through time series clustering how Breitbart and Fox News converged in their coverage of Islam and immigration. Finally, we show through hyperlink analysis that the connection between the far-right and the mainstream right is mostly one-sided; while the alternative outlets link to more established ones, the established outlets mostly ignore the outlets from the far-right.

This volume has been made possible by the valuable collaboration between two esteemed organisations, namely SETA and Hedayah. Their collaboration was embodied in the form of a research project that aimed at shedding light on the burning issue of the violent radicalisation and extremism of individuals and groups that belong to – or at least are sympathetic to – the non-mainstream right currents in European countries. In this way, the current volume draws attention to the non-religious dimension of the phenomena of radicalisation and violent extremism and contributes to a relatively small body of works, as opposed to the dominant approach in the
relevant literature which, for the most part, affiliates the phenomena with religious forces and elements. This approach is important since overemphasising one aspect of the phenomena runs the risk of blinding societies and policymakers to the other aspects and, therefore, making them less effective in terms of fending off the negative impacts of the phenomena. This work aims to be conducive to the due recognition of the overlooked aspects of these phenomena and hopefully serve as the first step towards tackling them.

Facebook facilitates more extensive dialogue between citizens and politicians. However, communicating via Facebook has also put pressure on political actors to administrate and moderate online debates in order to deal with uncivil comments. Based on a platform analysis of Facebook’s comment moderation functions and interviews with eight political parties’ communication advisors, this study explored how political actors conduct comment moderation. The findings indicate that these actors acknowledge being responsible for moderating debates. Since turning off the comment section is impossible in Facebook, moderators can choose to delete or hide comments, and these arbiters tend to use the latter in order to avoid an escalation of conflicts. The hide function makes comments invisible to participants in the comment section, but the hidden texts remain visible to those who made the comment and their network. Thus, the users are unaware of being moderated. In this paper, we argue that hiding problematic speech without the users’ awareness has serious ramifications for public debates, and we examine the ethical challenges associated with the lack of transparency in comment sections and the way moderation is conducted in Facebook.

Adam Gadahn’s Abbottabad letter offers a rare opportunity to examine how this Al Qaeda Senior Leadership (AQSL) media operative and spokesman conceptualizes and executes media warfare. In this article, I first introduce, depict, and employ the author’s Terrorist Quadrangle Analysis (TQA) as a useful heuristic for conceptualizing and representing the four interrelated components of the AQSL terrorist enterprise: political objectives, media warfare, terrorist attacks, and strategic objectives. This TQA construct is then employed to conceptualize Gadahn’s media warfare acumen. Gadahn is shown to be an adept communications warfare operative who conscientiously disaggregates and evaluates key target audiences, messengers, messaging, and media. Gadahn’s vehement critique of select ‘‘jihadi’’ groups, in particular Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP), al-Shabaab, and the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), is then described. Key here is how and why Gadahn denounces their indiscriminate, murderous terrorist attacks on Muslim non-combatant civilians and other protected persons as effectively subverting his intended AQSL media warfare strategy and undermining AQSL strategic and religio-political objectives. A concluding section briefly summarizes these chief findings, offers select implications for scholarship and counter-AQSL messaging strategy, and identifies study limitations.

Information and communication technologies shape, direct, and deter political behaviour and institutions as the increase in internet usage regulate our daily lives. The advance of internet and digital media also shape political involvement, partisanship, and ideology. Internet, as the new media, is an important information source that shapes political behaviour along with other effects on societal layers. The new technologies provide a platform for the voices of minorities and disadvantaged communities, therefore urging a pluralist agenda. They are also blamed for the recent rise of populism and polarisation by creating echo-chambers, filter-bubbles, and the “fake news.” In this study, the authors analyse the possible effects of internet usage on political polarisation and ideological extremism by utilising World Values Survey Wave 7 Data for 40 countries. The findings show that internet usage and education level decrease extremism, while safety, work anxiety, and religiosity drive people to the extreme.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.