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This article is concerned with the distinction between acceptable race talk in social media and organised, extreme or ‘frozen’ racism which is considered hate speech and removed. While in the literature this distinction is used to point to different variants, styles and mutations of racism, in social media platforms and in European regulatory frameworks it becomes policy. The empirical part of the article considers this distinction drawing upon a series of posts following a stabbing incident in a small Irish town, which organised Twitter accounts sought to connect to terrorism. The empirical analysis examines the tweets of those accounts and the comments left on the Facebook page and website of one of the main Irish online news outlets. The analysis shows few if any differences between the two, concluding that there is a blending of supremacist and everyday, ambient racist discourses. This blending indicates the operation of a transnational contagion, given the shared vocabularies and discourses. It further problematises the distinction between ‘illegal hate speech’ and ‘acceptable race talk’, and throws into question the principle underlying both the policies of social media as well as the European efforts to de-toxify the digital public sphere.

The article explores Bitchute, a video-hosting platform associated with the Far/Alt Right, with the aim of understanding how it reconfigures political communication and the digital public sphere. Methodologically, the article employs the walkthrough method and non-participant observation to identify the main features and functionalities offered to users. These include a set of values that prioritise creators, an algorithmic organisation that keeps users engaged with a single creator channel rather than with the same topic across channels; and embedded buttons for tips and pledges for creators enabling them to directly monetise their content. The content posted on Bitchute tends to coalesce around politicised cultural issues. It is noteworthy that although Bitchute hosts some advertising, it does not use data for microtargeting and in general makes limited use of user data. We interpret these findings as suggesting that Bitchute constitutes a media infrastructure that encourages, incentivises and sustains microcelebrities of the Far/Alt Right, who act as ideology entrepreneurs. Bitchute can therefore be seen as an infrastructure for the multiplication/sustenance of ideological entrepreneurs/political influencers who vie for the attention and money of far-right publics. If we can speak of a structural transformation of the public sphere associated with Alt Tech, our discussion of Bitchute suggests that this takes the form of a political media infrastructure that enables the continued existence and consolidation of a new type of political actor, the ideology entrepreneur.

This article is concerned with identifying the ideological and techno-material parameters that inform Facebook’s approach to racism and racist contents. The analysis aims to contribute to studies of digital racism by showing Facebook’s ideological position on racism and identifying its implications. To understand Facebook’s approach to racism, the article deconstructs its governance structures, locating racism as a sub-category of hate speech. The key findings show that Facebook adopts a post-racial, race-blind approach that does not consider history and material differences, while its main focus is on enforcement, data, and efficiency. In making sense of these findings, we argue that Facebook’s content governance turns hate speech from a question of ethics, politics, and justice into a technical and logistical problem. Secondly, it socializes users into developing behaviors/contents that adapt to race-blindness, leading to the circulation of a kind of flexible racism. Finally, it spreads this approach from Silicon Valley to the rest of the world.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

This paper investigates one sub-topic within a right-wing extremist (RWE) movement in India – love jihad, a conspiracy created by Hindutva nationalists alleging that Muslims forcefully convert Hindu women to Islam with allurements of love. Love jihad narratives and digital dissemination tactics serve a nation-building, patriarchal and vote-seeking function for the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP and allied nationalist and media organisations have led many anti-love jihad campaigns. However, this study investigates how ­non-elite – ordinary – social media users construct love jihad discourse through a discourse analysis of 188 sub-sampled tweets from February to October 2023. The analysis finds relative congruence in how non-elites, elites, media and nationalist organisations frame love jihad. The invoked themes – Muslim exclusionism, patriarchy, nationalism and post-truth politics – are cross-cutting and mutually reinforcing but can also be categorised based on which appears at the forefront. I use this organisation to highlight novel frames within each theme and their implicit and explicit cross-cutting dimensions. Finally, these findings can be situated in broader discussions around the connection between populism and post-truth politics, and call for reconceptualising online social movements.

Amid mounting death tolls in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, sectarian discourse is
on the rise across the Arab world—particularly in the online sphere, where
extremist voices are amplified and violent imagery and rhetoric spreads rapidly.
Despite this, social media also provides a space for cross-sectarian discourse
and activism. Analysis of over 7 million Arabic tweets from February to August
2015 suggests that violent events and social network structures play key roles
in the transmission of this sectarian and countersectarian rhetoric on Twitter.