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Previous studies on the alt-right, a far-right movement based online, focus on its rise in Western countries. Alt-right communities have emerged more publicly in recent years and have contributed to strengthening overt expressions of hate. Such studies, however, have rarely focused on the alt-right beyond Western countries. It is critical to delve into alt-right communities in other parts of the world in order to understand the institutionalized hate of contemporary digital mediascapes. From an online textual analysis, the current study traces the developmental process of Ilbe, a representative alt-right group of Korea: its transition from a digital storehouse for provocative jokes to an influential alt-right group, and finally, to a virtual hideout where people express their hatred toward others, putting aside its far-right ideology. In doing so, the current study investigates how this alt-right group shares significant characteristics of digital media culture and develop them in its own fashion. This research contributes to understanding Asian Internet histories, including an exploration of the alt-right community and its online culture of hate. Moreover, this study demonstrates how such a trend in digital media culture influences the larger society.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

The Brexit referendum to leave the EU and Trump’s success in the US general election in 2016 sparked new waves of discussion on nativism, nationalism, and the far right. Within these analyses, however, very little attention has been devoted towards exploring the transnational ideological circulation of Islamophobia and anti-establishment sentiment, especially amongst diaspora and migrant networks. This article thus explores the role of the Indian diaspora as mediators in populist radical right discourse in the West. During the Brexit referendum and Trump’s election and presidency, a number of Indian diaspora voices took to Twitter to express pro-Brexit and pro-Trump views. This article presents a year-long qualitative study of these users. It highlights how these diasporic Indians interact and engage on Twitter in order to signal belonging on multiple levels: as individuals, as an imaginary collective non-Muslim diaspora, and as members of (populist radical right) Twitter society. By analysing these users’ social media performativity, we obtain insight into how social media spaces may help construct ethnic and (trans)national identities according to boundaries of inclusion/exclusion. This article demonstrates how some Indian diaspora individuals are embedded into exclusivist national political agendas of the populist radical right in Western societies.

Diaspora networks are one of the key, but often invisible, drivers in reinforcing long-distance nationalism towards the ‘homeland’ but simultaneously construct nationalist myths within their countries of residence. This article examines Indian diaspora supporters of Brexit and Trump in the United Kingdom and the United States who promote exclusionary nationalist imaginaries. Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, it analyses British Indian and Indian American users that circulate radical right narratives within the Brexit and Trump Twittersphere. This article finds that these users express issues of concern pertinent to the radical right—for example, Islam and Muslims and the left-oriented political and media establishment—by employing civic nationalist discourse that promotes cultural nationalism. It sheds light on digital practices among diaspora actors who participate in the reinvigoration of exclusionary nationalist imaginaries of the Anglo-Western radical right.

„Inspire“ ist ein hochprofessionell gestaltetes Magazin, das bis zu viermal im Jahr von AlQaida im Internet publiziert wird. Das Magazin wird in englischer Sprache veröffentlicht und enthält neben Bombenbauanleitungen im Stile des Do-It-Yourself Trends auch Artikel über die Unterdrückung von Muslimen, Koraninterpretationen oder Erfahrungsberichte aus dem Leben von sogenannten Gotteskriegern. In der vorliegenden Studie wird das Magazin aus einer sozialkonstruktivistischen und wissenssoziologischen Perspektive heraus analysiert, um den Inhalt von „Inspire“ auf Deutungsrahmen hin zu untersuchen. Mit dem Methodenmix aus semantischer Netzwerkanalyse und qualitativer Bild- und Textanalyse wird das Datenmaterial deskriptiv sowie qualitativ-rekonstruktiv erschlossen. Am Ende der Arbeit steht die Rekonstruktion der im „Inspire Magazine“ abgebildeten Deutungsrahmen und ihrer Zusammensetzung zu einem extremistischen Weltbild. Die Bestandteile des Weltbildes wurden in acht Dimensionen unterteilt, sodass dezidierte Aussagen über Zielgruppe und Mobilisierungsmechanismen möglich wurden. Darüber hinaus konnte theoretisch fundiert herausgearbeitet werden, wie das Weltbild konstruiert wird, nämlich über das Freund-Feind Schema, Mechanismen der Unterdrückung, das Bilden einer kollektiven Identität und das Nutzen der Vulnerabilität von Adoleszenz. Diese vier Ansatzpunkte bilden eine mögliche Erklärung für Selbstradikalisierungsprozesse über das Internet.

Terrorism, global pandemics, climate change, wars and all the major threats of our age have been targets of online extremism. The same social media occupying the heartland of our social world leaves us vulnerable to cybercrime, electoral fraud and the ‘fake news’ fuelling the rise of far-right violence and hate speech. In the face of widespread calls for action, governments struggle to reform legal and regulatory frameworks designed for an analogue age. And what of our rights as citizens? As politicians and lawyers run to catch up to the future as it disappears over the horizon, who guarantees our right to free speech, to free and fair elections, to play video games, to surf the Net, to believe ‘fake news’?

Rethinking Social Media and Extremism offers a broad range of perspectives on violent extremism online and how to stop it. As one major crisis follows another and a global pandemic accelerates our turn to digital technologies, attending to the issues raised in this book becomes ever more urgent.