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by Elizabeth Poole (Author), Eva Haifa Giraud (Author), Ed de Quincey (Author)
Contesting hate draws on a unique five-year dataset, which includes social media data, interviews with digital activists and mainstream media analysis, generated by the project '#ContestingIslamophobia: Representation and Appropriation in Mediated Activism'.
This book provides an in-depth analysis of how social media have been used to contest the circulation of racialised Islamophobia, in relation to a range of events wherein Islamophobic narratives have been yoked to white supremacism, Hindu nationalism and polarising 'culture wars' debates. Focusing on archetypal 'trigger events' that have resulted in the intensification of Islamophobic discourse -- the Christchurch white supremacist terrorist attacks, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic -- we identify key actors and networks involved in these narratives, and foreground successful (and less successful) counter-narrative tactics for contesting hate. In the process, we set out a new theoretical and methodological framework for conceptualising and researching digital discrimination and activism.
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Contesting hate focuses on digital attempts to contest Islamophobic narratives during a historical period where racialised Islamophobia has shifted beyond the domain of the extreme right and been legitimised in a range of national contexts. The capacity of social media to contest hate speech is heavily debated. However, in increasingly polarised democracies, it is important to ask which conditions enable counter-narratives against hate to emerge, as well as to identify the conditions that undermine them. To answer these questions, the book draws on a unique five-year dataset, which includes a corpus of almost 4 million tweets related to three 'trigger events' the Christchurch terrorist attacks, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, alongside interviews with digital activists.
The analysis reveals the contrasting ways Islamophobia is articulated and mobilised in the context of white supremacism, Hindu nationalism and 'culture wars' debates. It identifies the limits and potentials in varied attempts to contest Islamophobia: ranging from hashtag and counter-narrative campaigns led by NGOs, to (sometimes counter-productive) attempts by would-be allies to call out racism and political hypocrisy. It demonstrates the specific event-user-platform dynamics that enable or limit the circulation of online hate speech, and the ambivalences associated with attempts to contest it in a context where the moderation of Twitter was stricter and users who propagated hate were removed. In the process, the book develops an interdisciplinary approach across media studies, computer science, sociology and cultural theory, to set out a new theoretical and methodological framework for understanding digital hate and mediated activism.Author Biography
Elizabeth Poole is Professor of Media and Communications at Keele University
Eva Haifa Giraud is Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Society at the University of Sheffield
Ed de Quincey is Professor of Computer Science at Keele University
John E. Richardson is a Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool
