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Through secondary analysis of survey data collected by YouGov for Campaign Against Antisemitism, this research note provides a longitudinal account of changes in Judeophobic antisemitism (that is, antisemitism articulated in relation to Jews identified as Jews) in mainland Britain from 2016-2020. Because survey responses are aggregated by most recent general election vote, the dataset facilitates comparison between those who voted for each of Britain's three main parties in the 2015, 2017, and 2019 UK general elections. (Those who voted for other parties, as well as those who did not vote and those for whom voting data are missing, are aggregated as a fourth category.) Amongst those who voted for the centrist Liberal Democrat party, levels of Judeophobic antisemitism declined throughout the period. Amongst those who voted for the left-wing Labour Party, levels of Judeophobic antisemitism began at a low level, rose to a peak in 2018, and then declined, returning to something close to their 2016 level by 2020. Changes amongst other voter groups were less clear-cut, although all voter groups saw a decline in Judeophobic antisemitism from 2019 to 2020. Although it is beyond the scope of this article to analyze trends in antizionist antisemitism (that is, antisemitism articulated in relation to Israel and its supporters), comparative figures for that form of antisemitism are provided for the years 2019–2020.

Existing research suggests that, in contemporary liberal democracies, complaints of racism are routinely rejected and prejudice may be both expressed and disavowed in the same breath. Surveys and historical research have established that – both in democratic states and in those of the Soviet Bloc (while it existed) – antisemitism has long been related to or expressed in the form of statements about Israel or 'Zionist', permitting anti-Jewish attitudes to circulate under cover of political critique. This article looks at how the findings of a survey of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli attitudes were rejected by users of three Facebook pages associated with the British Left. Through thematic discourse analysis, three recurrent repertoires are identified: firstly, what David Hirsh calls the 'Livingstone Formulation' (i.e. the argument that complaints of antisemitism are made in bad faith to protect Israel and/or attack the Left), secondly, accusations of flawed methodology similar to those with which UK Labour Party supporters routinely dismiss the findings of unfavourable opinion polls, and thirdly, the argument that, because certain classically antisemitic beliefs pertain to a supposed Jewish or 'Zionist' elite and not to Jews in general, they are not antisemitic. In one case, the latter repertoire facilitates virtually unopposed apologism for Adolf Hitler. Contextual evidence suggests that the dominance of such repertoires within one very large UK Labour Party-aligned group may be the result of action on the part of certain 'admins' or moderators. It is argued that awareness of the repertoires used to express and defend antisemitic attitudes should inform the design of quantitative research into the latter, and be taken account of in the formulation of policy measures aiming to restrict or counter hate speech (in social media and elsewhere).

The file associated with this record is under embargo until 12 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above. ; Existing research suggests that, in contemporary liberal democracies, complaints of racism are routinely rejected and prejudice may be both expressed and disavowed in the same breath. Surveys and historical research have established that – both in democratic states and in those of the Soviet Bloc (while it existed) – antisemitism has long been related to or expressed in the form of statements about Israel or 'Zionist' permitting anti-Jewish attitudes to circulate under cover of political critique. This article looks at how the findings of a survey of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli attitudes were rejected by users of three Facebook pages associated with the British Left. Through thematic discourse analysis, three recurrent repertoires are identified: firstly, what David Hirsh calls the 'Livingstone Formulation' (i.e. the argument that complaints of antisemitism are made in bad faith to protect Israel and/or attack the Left), secondly, accusations of flawed methodology similar to those with which UK Labour Party supporters routinely dismiss the findings of unfavourable opinion polls, and thirdly, the argument that, because certain classically antisemitic beliefs pertain to a supposed Jewish or 'Zionist' elite and not to Jews in general, they are not antisemitic. In one case, the latter repertoire facilitates virtually unopposed apologism for Adolf Hitler. Contextual evidence suggests that the dominance of such repertoires within one very large UK Labour Party-aligned group may be the result of action on the part of certain 'admins' or moderators. It is argued that awareness of the repertoires used to express and defend antisemitic attitudes should inform the design of quantitative research into the latter, and be taken account of in the formulation of policy measures aiming to restrict or counter hate speech (in social media and elsewhere). ; Peer-reviewed ; Post-print

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (2006) was critically lauded, gaining many positive periodical reviews and winning both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. However, it has received mixed reviews from customers of the online retail giant, Amazon: an arguable expression of the challenge that digital consumerism presents to literature's longstanding claim to autonomy from the market. In order to understand the relationship between the book's professional and customer reviews, a collection comprising both was constructed. Qualitative analysis of these reviews was followed by the use of thematic coding to compare sub-collections divided by means of publication and by geographical location, with social network graphs being used to represent similarities between reviews and graph density being employed as a measure of overall similarity. No distinctions were found between reviews when grouped according to geographical location. However, the novel's professionally published reviews were found to be a more homogeneous group than its Amazon customer reviews, and to be more likely to recommend the novel and to praise it for its humour and its narrative, while customer reviews were found to be more likely to criticise it for its characters, and less likely to quote it or to discuss its political themes. It is argued that this is because the book was produced to satisfy the expectations of a 'literary' rather than a 'popular' audience, where professional book reviewers represent the former almost by definition.

This article reports on a mixed-methods study of the cultural valuing of 'interactive fiction' or 'text adventure games': a formerly commercial videogame genre sometimes associated with electronic literature but here argued to be best understood in context of the under-researched phenomenon of 'retrogaming' or 'old school gaming'. It is argued that a model for the study of retrogaming scenes is provided in Lena and Peterson's account of 'traditionalist' musical genres, and that these in turn exhibit similarities with Bourdieu's 'field of restricted production'. On the basis of qualitative analysis of interviews and documents and quantitative analysis of valuing behaviour on a website used by the interactive fiction community, it is proposed that entrance into the mutually-valuing peer group of interactive fiction developers is facilitated by possession of two intangible resources: linguistic capital (in the form of proficiency in Standard English) and development capital (in the form of expertise with programming languages specific to the production of interactive fiction), where development capital is a new concept that may be extensible to other technically-oriented digital cultures (for example, the working cultures of professional software developers and the communities that form around open source projects). Expressions of value in the form of star ratings were collected procedurally through data scraping, and represented as a directed graph. Seidman's k-core was innovatively used as an instrument for detecting mutually-valuing peer groups within that graph. It is argued that this methodology has general application for the study of cultural value and its production within social networks (both online and off), including networks associated with more established cultural fields such as art and literature.

The YouTube video-sharing platform is one of the most important sites for the dissemination of conspiracy theory, or—to give it a more accurately descriptive term—conspiracy fantasy. After surveying the historical and contemporary evidence for the role of conspiracy fantasy in right-wing violent extremism, this article turns its focus to a YouTube video excerpted from a public lecture in which professional conspiracy theorist David Icke purports to expose members of a "Rothschild Zionist" secret society. First, historical discourse analysis is used to situate Icke's fantasy within the antisemitic tradition of the extreme right. Then, the reception of Icke's fantasy is studied through quantitative content analysis of YouTube user comments (n = 1123). Comments supportive of the video and its creator are found to outnumber comments that challenge them, as are comments expressing hostility to Jews or extending the video's accusations against "Rothschild Zionists" to real-world Jewish collectivities. Moreover, the most popular comments are found to be disproportionately likely to be supportive of Icke or his video or otherwise anti-Jewish. These findings provide evidence that at least the active portion of the video's YouTube audience may have had a tendency not only towards support of Icke's ideas but also towards linkage of those ideas with an overtly antisemitic worldview. It is argued that YouTube's ranking of comments by popularity may be serving to insulate harmful fantasies such as Icke's from rational challenge by rendering genuinely critical responses invisible. This illustrates the dangers of outsourcing the evaluation of content to an online user community. But it also suggests that YouTube's user interface design may be actively contributing to the spread of misinformation and bigotry by placing those who try to oppose them at a disadvantage.

Keywords: antizionism, audience, conspiracism, conspiracy fantasy, conspiracy theory, content analysis, David Icke, discourse analysis, reception, right-wing extremism, YouTube

AbstractThis cross-sectional study follows Open Science principles in estimating relationships between antisemitism, i.e. anti-Jewish bigotry, and conspiracy belief, i.e. endorsement of conspiracy theories, through analysis of data collected from a representative sample of UK adults ($$n =$$

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1722). Antisemitism was measured using the Generalized Antisemitism scale, and conspiracy belief was measured using the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs scale. Positive relationships were found to exist between all forms of antisemitism and all types of conspiracy belief, and an average across all items of the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs scale was found to predict Generalized Antisemitism at least as well as any individual type of conspiracy belief. On a more detailed level, antisemitic attitudes relating to British Jews were found to be most strongly associated with belief in conspiracies relating to personal well-being, while antisemitic attitudes relating to the State of Israel and its supporters were found to be most strongly associated with belief in conspiracies relating to government malfeasance. Generalized Antisemitism itself was found to be most strongly associated with belief in malevolent global conspiracies. Exploratory analysis additionally examined the effect of standard demographic variables that had been introduced into the main analysis as controls. Through this means, it was found that antisemitic attitudes relating both to Jews qua Jews and to Israel and its supporters are more prevalent among less highly educated people and members of other-than-white ethnic groups, while antisemitic attitudes relating to Israel and its supporters are more common among younger people. In addition, it was found that female gender is associated with reduced antisemitic attitudes relating to Jews qua Jews and also with increased antisemitic attitudes relating to Israel and its supporters. However, the addition of demographic controls did not explain any additional variance in Generalized Antisemitism beyond that which was already explained by conspiracy belief – perhaps suggesting that demographic characteristics are more strongly associated with the inclination towards particular expressions of antisemitism than with antisemitism itself.

Abstract
This article explains the development and face validity of the Generalised Antisemitism (GeAs) scale, which provides an up-to-date measure of antisemitism consistent with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism (generally known as the IHRA Definition). The GeAs scale is comprised of two six-item subscales, each containing a balance of reverse-coded items: the Judeophobic Antisemitism (JpAs) subscale, which tests for endorsement of "classic" prejudicial attitudes towards Jews, and the Antizionist Antisemitism (AzAs) subscale, which tests for endorsement of related attitudes expressed in relation to Israel and its supporters. Both subscales reflect the current state of historical and social scholarship on antisemitism and have already been employed in large-scale survey research with funding from Campaign Against Antisemitism. Findings of a validation study presented elsewhere are summarized, and the scale's use in future scholarly and stakeholder research is recommended.