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Poole, EA, Giraud, E and de Quincey, E (2019) Contesting #StopIslam: The Dynamics of a Counter-narrative Against Right-wing Populism. Open Library of Humanities, 5 (1). ISSN 2056-6700
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Abstract
This paper sets out quantitative findings from a research project examining the dynamics of online counter-narratives against hate speech, focusing on #StopIslam, a hashtag that spread racialized hate speech and disinformation directed towards Islam and Muslims and which trended on Twitter after the March 2016 terror attacks in Brussels. We elucidate the dynamics of the counter-narrative through contrasting it with the affordances of the original anti-Islamic narrative it was trying to contest. We then explore the extent to which each narrative was taken up by the mainstream media. Our findings show that actors who disseminated the original hashtag with the most frequency were tightly-knit clusters of self-defined conservative actors based in the US. The hashtag was also routinely used in relation to other pro-Trump, anti-Clinton hashtags in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, forming part of a broader, racialized, anti-immigration narrative. In contrast, the most widely shared and disseminated messages were attempts to challenge the original narrative that were produced by a geographically dispersed network of self-identified Muslims and allies. The counter-narrative was significant in gaining purchase in the wider media ecology associated with this event, due to being reported by mainstream media outlets. We ultimately argue for the need for further research that combines ‘big data’ approaches with a conceptual focus on the broader media ecologies in which counter-narratives emerge and circulate, in order to better understand how opposition to hate speech can be sustained in the face of the tight-knit right-wing networks that often outlast dissenting voices.
Item Type: | Article |
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Additional Information: | This is the final published version of the article (version of record). It first appeared online via Open Library of the Humanities at http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.406 - please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Islamophobia, counter-narratives, hate-speech, Twitter, social media, populism |
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General) |
Divisions: | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Humanities |
Depositing User: | Symplectic |
Date Deposited: | 13 Feb 2019 15:03 |
Last Modified: | 13 Feb 2019 15:10 |
URI: | https://eprints.keele.ac.uk/id/eprint/5836 |