Suchergebnisse

The alt-right is a growing radical right-wing network that is particularly effective at mobilizing emotion through digital communications. Introducing 'white thymos' as a framework to theorize the role of rage, anger, and indignation in alt-right communications, this study argues that emotive communication connects alt-right users and mobilizes white thymos to the benefit of populist radical right politics. By combining linguistic, computational, and interpretive techniques on data collected from Twitter, this study demonstrates that the alt-right weaponizes white thymos in three ways: visual documentation of white victimization, processes of legitimization of racialized pride, and reinforcement of the rectitude of rage and indignation. The weaponization of white thymos is then shown to be central to the culture of the alt-right and its connectivity with populist radical right politics.

Extremist exploitation of social media platforms is an important regulatory question for civil society, government, and the private sector. Extremists exploit social media for a range of reasons—from spreading hateful narratives and propaganda to financing, recruitment, and sharing operational information. Policy responses to this question fit under two headings, strategic communication and content moderation. At the center of both of these policy responses is a calculation about how best to limit audience exposure to extremist narratives and maintain the marginality of extremist views, while being conscious of rights to free expression and the appropriateness of restrictions on speech. This special issue on "Countering Extremists on Social Media: Challenges for Strategic Communication and Content Moderation" focuses on one form of strategic communication, countering violent extremism. In this editorial we discuss the background and effectiveness of this approach, and introduce five articles which develop multiple strands of research into responses and solutions to extremist exploitation of social media. We conclude by suggesting an agenda for future research on how multistakeholder initiatives to challenge extremist exploitation of social media are conceived, designed, and implemented, and the challenges these initiatives need to surmount.

Contestation over European integration has been widely studied in the rhetoric of parties, leaders, and movements on the far right in a variety of media. Focusing on Twitter use by far right actors in Western Europe, we apply corpus-aided discourse analysis to explore how imaginative geographies are used to politicize Europe among their digital publics. We find that the idea of a crisis of cultural identity pervades imaginaries of Europe amongst far right digital publics. While Europe is presented as facing a crisis of cultural identity, we find that the far right articulates an aspirational imaginary of Europe, the 'Europe des Nations' that rejects liberal-democratic pluralism in the EU and the 'establishment'. We find that the contestation of Europe in far right digital publics relies on a crisis of cultural identity, representing a translation of Nouvelle Droite imaginaries of Europe into the social media space.

Extremist exploitation of social media platforms is an important regulatory question for civil society, government, and the private sector. Extremists exploit social media for a range of reasons-from spreading hateful narratives and propaganda to financing, recruitment, and sharing operational information. Policy responses to this question fit under two headings, strategic communication and content moderation. At the center of both of these policy responses is a calculation about how best to limit audience exposure to extremist narratives and maintain the marginality of extremist views, while being conscious of rights to free expression and the appropriateness of restrictions on speech. This special issue on "Countering Extremists on Social Media: Challenges for Strategic Communication and Content Moderation" focuses on one form of strategic communication, countering violent extremism. In this editorial we discuss the background and effectiveness of this approach, and introduce five articles which develop multiple strands of research into responses and solutions to extremist exploitation of social media. We conclude by suggesting an agenda for future research on how multistakeholder initiatives to challenge extremist exploitation of social media are conceived, designed, and implemented, and the challenges these initiatives need to surmount.

AbstractDiaspora 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.

In recent years, local authorities in the UK have begun to adopt a variety of 'smart' technological changes to enhance service delivery. These changes are producing profound impacts on the structure of public administration. Focusing on the particular case of artificial intelligence, specifically autonomous agents and predictive analytics, a combination of desk research, a survey questionnaire, and interviews were used to better understand the extent and nature of these changes in local government. Findings suggest that local authorities are beginning to adopt smart technologies and that these technologies are having an unanticipated impact on how public administrators and computational algorithms become imbricated in the delivery of public services. This imbrication is described as algorithmic bureaucracy and it provides a framework within which to explore how these technologies transform both the socio‐technical relationship between workers and their tools, as well as the ways that work is organized in the public sector.

AbstractIn recent years, local authorities in the UK have begun to adopt a variety of "smart" technological changes to enhance service delivery. These changes are having profound impacts on the structure of public administration. Focusing on the particular case of artificial intelligence, specifically autonomous agents and predictive analytics, a combination of desk research, a survey questionnaire, and interviews were used to better understand the extent and nature of these changes in local government. Findings suggest that local authorities are beginning to adopt smart technologies and that these technologies are having an unanticipated impact on how public administrators and computational algorithms become imbricated in the delivery of public services. This imbrication is described as algorithmic bureaucracy, and it provides a framework within which to explore how these technologies transform both the socio‐technical relationship between workers and their tools, as well as the ways that work is organized in the public sector.

Political campaigning on social media is a core feature of contemporary democracy. However, evidence of the effectiveness of this type of campaigning is thin. This study tests three theories linking social media to vote outcomes, using a novel 6,000 observation panel data set from two British elections. We find that Twitter-based campaigning does seem to help win votes. The impact of Twitter use is small, though comparable with campaign spending. Our data suggest that social media campaign effects are achieved through using Twitter as a broadcast mechanism. Despite much literature encouraging politicians to engage with social platforms in an interactive fashion, we find no evidence that this style of communication improves electoral outcomes. In light of our results, theories of how social media are changing processes of campaigns and elections are discussed and enhanced.