The Soundtrack of the Extreme: Nasheeds and Right-Wing Extremist Music as a “Gateway Drug” into the Radical Scene?

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-334
Author(s):  
Veronika Möller ◽  
Antonia Mischler
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
New Members ◽  
Perceived Need ◽  
Analysis Methods ◽  
Violent Content ◽  
Everyday Experiences ◽  
Extremist Groups ◽  
The Right

AbstractMusic plays an important role in both the right-wing extremist and the Salafi jihadist scenes as a unifying and radicalizing factor. It is used to share propaganda and highlight specific ideologies. Music is disseminated by various means, e.g. via social media, and used strategically to attract potential new members. The aims of right-wing extremist music and the Salafi jihadist nasheeds are, among other things, to inspire the youth, reach out to a worldwide audience of potential sympathizers, and disseminate their absolutist worldview. To achieve these goals, seemingly objective depictions of negative everyday experiences, of oppression, and the need for resistance are utilized. The songs are usually associated with violent content, and in conjunction with videos, they illustrate the perceived need to defend oneself. In this article, we will take a closer look at the content of four selected extremist songs. Our analysis of the content is based on a triangulation of sequential text analysis methods and identifies the differences and comparable elements of the ideologies in a final step. In addition to the content, the research aims to examine the possible effects of extremist groups’ music.

Affect, Animality, and Islamophobia

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Matthew Hotham
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Muslim Americans ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Dietary Restrictions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Affective Relations

American internet Islamophobia is fascinated with Muslim attitudes towards animals – especially pigs. Through an examination of internet memes found on right-wing and white supremacist websites and social media groups, this essay argues that affective relations to certain animals are part of what mark the Muslim as other and worthy of hate in American Islamophobic rhetoric. More importantly, this Islamophobic pig imagery, which often mischaracterizes or willfully misrepresents Muslim dietary restrictions, reveals that Islamophobic internet memes are not primarily aimed at Muslims nor are they first and foremost an expression of fear of Islam. Instead this Islamophobic rhetoric takes the form of an inside joke, affectively linking those who are “in” on the joke, uniting them in a jovial transgression of “politically correct" norms. This form of Islamophobia might be better termed “Islamophobophilia,” since it marks some Americans as insiders and others as outsiders. It is a method for non-Muslim Americans to signal to other other non-Muslim Americans that they are the right kind of American.

scholarly journals Social Media and the Emergence, Establishment and Transformation of the Right-Wing Populist Finns Party

Populism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-139
Author(s):  
Tuukka Ylä-Anttila
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Attention Economy ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
The Right ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Inside Out

Abstract This paper assesses the significance of social media for the Finns Party and the related anti-immigration movement from 2007 to the present day, in light of theories on the relationship of populism and social media. These include people-centrism, disenfranchisement, homophily, the attention economy, media elitism, and (lack of) communicative resources. Tracing the historical trajectory of the Finnish anti-immigration movement and the Finns Party, I argue that the Finnish case is an example of a movement being born online and using social media to build a political identity and strategically gain influence through a party, eventually transforming it from the inside out—rather than the party strategically using social media for its purposes, as is sometimes assumed in party-centric literature. While acknowledging the continued importance of parties, research on contemporary populist movements must take into account the political engagement of citizens facilitated by online media.

scholarly journals A review of the fake news ecosystem in India and the need for the News Literacy project

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-29
Author(s):  
Kanchan Kaur
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Corporate Ownership ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Standing Up ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
News Literacy ◽  
The Right

In India, in the last year alone, over 30 people have died due to child kidnapping rumors spread on social media, specifically WhatsApp. India’s access to the internet shot up in the recent years with the entry of Reliance Jio which made data plans affordable and therefore accessible. WhatsApp has been the most frequently downloaded application. As the country gears up for an important election, the spread of disinformation has accelerated. The right-wing ruling party has claimed that it has over 3 million people in its WhatsApp groups. A recent study by BBC has shown that in the country, most of the disinformation has been spread by the right wing. Call it propaganda, disinformation or plain fake news, false or wrong information has become a part of the political process in India. Moreover, the Indian media no longer seem to be standing up to the government; in the last few years, it has generally toed the government line. The reasons are many, including corporate ownership, regressive laws, and a complete bypass of the media by the powers. The Prime Minister has spoken only to a few selected media houses and has never been asked any tough questions in his five-year tenure. Furthermore, the media has been completely sidelined by this government by it going to the public, directly through social media. All of this has produced a very turgid and messy information situation. With the government also interfering in education, it has become all the more difficult for most educators to introduce critical thinking courses in the country, even though various efforts have been made by Google News Initiative, Facebook and BBC Schools to introduce tools to debunk false information.

What Is Urgent Publishing?

APRIA Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-43
Author(s):  
Florian Cramer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
New Form ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

Publishing is increasingly being challenged through instantaneous social media publish- ing, even in the fields of scholarship and cultural, philosophical and political debate. Memetic self-publishers, such as the right-wing 'YouTube intellectual' Jordan Peterson and his left-wing counterpart Natalie Wynn, seem to tap into urgent needs that traditional publishing fails to identify and address. Does their practice amount to a new form of urgent publishing? How is it different from non-urgent publishing on the one hand and from propaganda on the other? Which urgencies can be addressed by urgent publishing? What is the role of artists and designers in it?

scholarly journals Automated Classification of Evidence of Respect in the Communication through Twitter

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 1294
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Fiok ◽  
Waldemar Karwowski ◽  
Edgar Gutierrez ◽  
Tameika Liciaga ◽  
Alessandro Belmonte ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Automatic Detection ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Automated Classification ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Analysis Methods ◽  
Textual Data

Volcanoes of hate and disrespect erupt in societies often not without fatal consequences. To address this negative phenomenon scientists struggled to understand and analyze its roots and language expressions described as hate speech. As a result, it is now possible to automatically detect and counter hate speech in textual data spreading rapidly, for example, in social media. However, recently another approach to tackling the roots of disrespect was proposed, it is based on the concept of promoting positive behavior instead of only penalizing hate and disrespect. In our study, we followed this approach and discovered that it is hard to find any textual data sets or studies discussing automatic detection regarding respectful behaviors and their textual expressions. Therefore, we decided to contribute probably one of the first human-annotated data sets which allows for supervised training of text analysis methods for automatic detection of respectful messages. By choosing a data set of tweets which already possessed sentiment annotations we were also able to discuss the correlation of sentiment and respect. Finally, we provide a comparison of recent machine and deep learning text analysis methods and their performance which allowed us to demonstrate that automatic detection of respectful messages in social media is feasible.

scholarly journals Ranking Right-Wing Extremist Social Media Profiles by Similarity to Democratic and Extremist Groups

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Hartung ◽  
Roman Klinger ◽  
Franziska Schmidtke ◽  
Lars Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Extremist Groups

Mobilizing Meanings: Translocal Identities of the Far Right Web

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 34-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Anne Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Angela Merkel ◽  
The Right ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers

Europe has witnessed the rise of a multigenerational, populist shift to the right, characterized by the unapologetic deployment of extremist symbols, ideologies, and politics, but also by repudiations of right-wing labels associated with racism, xenophobia, and nativist entitlements. The political lexicon of far-right rhetoric derives its considerable persuasive force from mobilizing and normalizing extremist views. This article examines the intricately and translocally woven connections among representative movements, organizations, and media personalities who popularize and disseminate far-right views through social media and their own internet websites. With diatribes about the threat against Russia, the uncontainable and intolerable influx of refugees and asylum seekers, whom they blame for terrorist attacks, deteriorating family values, the loss of national German identity, and the antidemocratic politics of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the cadre of self-credentializing experts and politicians, some in alignment with Pegida, mobilize historical moments and meanings to make connections with a broad spectrum of supporters.

scholarly journals Flashback as a Rhetorical Online Battleground: Debating the (Dis)guise of the Nordic Resistance Movement

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511882333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Blomberg ◽  
Jonas Stier
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Discursive Psychology ◽  
Online Forum ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
The Right ◽  
Resistance Movement ◽  
Empirical Material

The right-wing Swedish Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) is increasingly active on social media. Using discursive psychology, this text explores the rhetorical organization of text and rhetorical resources used on the Swedish online forum Flashback. The aim is to reveal and problematize truth claims about NRM made by antagonists and protagonists. Questions are (1) how and what do NRM antagonists and protagonists convey in Flashback posts about NRM, and its ideology and members? (2) how do NRM antagonists and protagonists make truth claims about NRM in Flashback posts? The empirical material consisting of 1546 Flashback posts analyzed to identify typical discussions on “NMR’s true nature”; accomplished social actions stemming from the posts. Findings show that the Flashback thread can be understood as being a rhetorical battle that concerns the “truth” about NRM, where a variety of rhetorical resources are used to render statements credibility and those involved legitimacy.

scholarly journals Hating in plain sight: The hatejacking of brands by extremist groups

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-26
Author(s):  
Bond Benton ◽  
Daniela Peterka-Benton
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
Hate Groups ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Social ◽  
Extremist Groups ◽  
The Right ◽  
Extremist Group

The adoption of brands as an identity marker for hate groups has been extensively noted for decades. The use of specific brands, often covertly, allows hate groups to have identity markers without the social stigma ascribed to historical hate symbols. With high-profile events such as the ‘Unite the Right’ march in Charlottesville, hate groups have utilized media coverage to increase their visibility and, by extension, the brands that they have co-opted. Such unwanted associations for organizations are defined by this research as a hatejack, whereby an extremist group publicly presents linkage to a brand, typically to claim legitimacy by the association. The covert, hide-and-seek nature of the hatejack also allows extremist groups to identify with each other without public or legal scrutiny. The dangers of a hatejack have been exacerbated by two-way symmetrical models of public relations that focus on online and social media. Popular press books such as Brand Hijack seem to suggest that organizations would do well to cede ownership of their identity and allow the construction of brands by external publics. This emphasis, however, has allowed for hate groups to more readily adopt brands and publicly proclaim a connection to the organization that does not exist. This research examines cases of hatejacks in which brands become unwitting instruments of extremist groups and seeks to identify emerging and consistent themes across cases that merit further investigation by researchers and actions by practitioners.

scholarly journals An Approach for Movie Review Classification in Turkish

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Migena Ceyhan ◽  
Zeynep Orhan ◽  
Dimitrios Karras
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Pure Gold ◽  
Huge Number ◽  
Linear Approach ◽  
The Right ◽  
Critical Words ◽  
Negative Sense ◽  
Significant Class

Web 2.0 has given to all people the right to become a representative of a huge cast of informal media. The importance of this power is getting more evident everyday. Every social media actor can influence the rest of the world by one’s own opinions, feelings, and thoughts generously shared on multiple media. This information belonging to various fields of life can be very handy and be used to one’s advantage, gaining precious experience. One of the greatest problems that this poses is the huge number of data spread everywhere, which are difficult to process as row data per se. Social media and general sentiment text analysis is of much valuable use, accomplishing the task extracting pure gold out of raw mineral. The key point of this investigation is to characterize new reviews automatically. To start with, features selected out of all the word roots appearing in the comments were used to train the system according to known machine learning algorithms. Next, critical words determining positive or negative sense were extracted. Another strategy was attempted eliminating common terms and dealing only with the significant class-determining words to build vocabulary with them. Aparts from linear approach, vector based feature sets were prepared out all or some of the features. The outcomes acquired were analyzed and compared leading to important conclusions, emphasizing the importance of feature selection in text classification.

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