Free speech platforms and the impact of the U.S. insurrection: Misinformation in memes

The circulation of false information online, whether intentional or unintentional, has become one of the most pressing threats to social cohesion and security for governments around the world. The U.S. insurrection on January 6th, 2021 was a striking example of how polarising and inflammatory rhetoric posted on social media platforms can influence offline movements and connect to real-world violence. It also highlighted the negative effects of meme culture, post-truth and free speech ideology within right-wing groups in the U.S. and beyond. Looking at this event as a main case study and considering the ramifications more than two years on, this paper broadly aims to unpack the forces, influences and affordances of so-called free speech platforms that contributed to the insurrection through a thorough literature review. More specifically, I identify how and why the rise of meme sharing on the platform Gab has helped generate right-wing identity, shape attitudes towards the mainstream media and increase the proliferation of false narratives and culture wars. Through a social semiotic multimodal analysis, this thesis contributes to existing scholarship by assessing the ideological role of memes posted on Gab in the two years since the Capitol attack. The findings indicate that blatant falsehoods are reinforced and masked by appeals to humour, emotion, values and beliefs within right-wing communities. It also reveals that the concept of free speech is being instrumentalised to attack public institutions.Master's Thesis in Digital CultureDIKULT350MAHF-DIKU

QAnon Propaganda on Twitter as Information Warfare: Influencers, Networks, and Narratives

QAnon refers to a set of far-right, conspiratorial ideologies that have risen in popularity in the U.S. since their initial promotion in 2017 on the 4chan internet message board. A central narrative element of QAnon is that a powerful group of elite, liberal members of the Democratic Party engage in morally reprehensible practices, but that former U.S. President Donald J. Trump was prosecuting them. Five studies investigated the influence and network connectivity of accounts promoting QAnon on Twitter from August, 2020 through January, 2021. Selection of Twitter accounts emphasized on-line influencers and "persons of interest" known or suspected of participation in QAnon propaganda promotion activities. Evidence of large-scale coordination among accounts promoting QAnon was observed, demonstrating rigorous, quantitative evidence of "astroturfing" in QAnon propaganda promotion on Twitter, as opposed to strictly "grassroots" activities of citizens acting independently. Further, evidence was obtained supporting that networks of extreme far-right adherents engaged in organized QAnon propaganda promotion, as revealed by network overlap among accounts promoting far-right extremist (e.g., anti-Semitic) content and insurrectionist themes; New Age, occult, and "esoteric" themes; and internet puzzle games like Cicada 3301 and other "alternate reality games." Based on well-grounded theories and findings from the social sciences, it is argued that QAnon propaganda on Twitter in the months circa the 2020 U.S. Presidential election likely reflected joint participation of multiple actors, including nation-states like Russia, in innovative misuse of social media toward undermining democratic processes by promoting "magical" thinking, ostracism of Democrats and liberals, and salience of White extinction narratives common among otherwise ideologically diverse groups on the extreme far-right.Comment: 60 pages, 14 figure

Disrupting networks of hate: Characterising hateful networks and removing critical nodes

Hateful individuals and groups have increasingly been using the Internet to express their ideas, spread their beliefs, and recruit new members. Under- standing the network characteristics of these hateful groups could help understand individuals’ exposure to hate and derive intervention strategies to mitigate the dangers of such networks by disrupting communications. This article analyses two hateful followers net- works and three hateful retweet networks of Twitter users who post content subsequently classified by hu- man annotators as containing hateful content. Our analysis shows similar connectivity characteristics between the hateful followers networks and likewise between the hateful retweet networks. The study shows that the hateful networks exhibit higher connectivity characteristics when compared to other ”risky” networks, which can be seen as a risk in terms of the likelihood of expo- sure to, and propagation of, online hate. Three network performance metrics are used to quantify the hateful content exposure and contagion: giant component (GC) size, density and average shortest path. In order to efficiently identify nodes whose removal reduced the flow of hate in a network, we propose a range of structured node-removal strategies and test their effectiveness. Results show that removing users with a high degree is most effective in reducing the hateful followers network connectivity (GC, size and density), and therefore reducing the risk of exposure to cyberhate and stemming its propagation

A Sociology of Gab: A Computational Analysis of a Far-Right Social Network

This dissertation examines the racial discourse circulated on Gab, a microblogging and social networking platform, by the far right to proliferate hate speech, and how the far-right discourse has evolved on the platform. Gab was created 2016 in response to mainstream social media’s increase of content moderation and deplatforming of extremist users to curtail hate speech and harassment. The platform gained a substantial number of new users after the Charlotteville incident of 2017. In this thesis, I examine the creation of Gab, as an alternative social media platform, as a strategic site of socio-technical innovation, as well as the important part far-right discourse on Gab plays in the asymmetric polarization phenomenon of the media ecosystem. This project asks: How has Gab developed and what discourses about race circulate on Gab? To answer these questions, I draw on a large dataset of digital trace data of the entire Gab platform of approximately 10 million posts on Gab from 2016 to 2019. This constitutes an archive of the far-right activities on an important alternative social media platform. I use computational methodologies including structural topic modeling, word embeddings and qualitative analysis to examine the materials, and form conclusions about the impacts of asymmetric polarization of the far right on social media. I argue that Gab occupies an important position in the social media ecosystem in the context of mainstream social media platforms’ deplatforming post- Charlottesville, and the absence of legislation that regulates hate speech. Gab, as an opportunistic innovation, is emblematic of an alternative social media ecosystem that flourishes online, drawing in users who are rejecting, and rejected by, mainstream social media platforms and searching for platforms with looser content moderation that reflect their absolutist freedom-of-speech stance. This environment is conducive to asymmetric polarization, spreading anti-liberal, anti-mainstream media, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigration discourses. These ideological strings are not new but consistent with earlier articulations of the ideology of white supremacy ideology, just taking place on a newer platform that itself may enable new variations of the same theme

"A single white line running through a web of blackness": racism's occlusion from the Anti-Tom novel to Charlottesville

This MA thesis discusses how romance as a literary form makes the Anti-Tom novel a malleable rhetorical vehicle to carry white supremacist ideology. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework of postcolonial theory and race studies, the thesis analyzes antebellum Anti-Tom novels (Sarah J. Hale’s Liberia [1853]; Caroline Lee Hentz’s The Planter’s Northern Bride [1854]; and Charles Jacobs Peterson’s The Cabin and Parlor [1852]) and expands the genre’s definition to include Thomas Dixon’s The Leopard’s Spots (1902) and contemporary white-supremacist science fictions (William Luther Pierce’s The Turner Diaries [1978]; Ellen Williams’ Bedford: A World Vision [2000]; and Ward Kendall’s Hold Back This Day [2001]). The primary concerns of this thesis are to understand how the American slaveholding past signifies in the present political moment, to understand why the removal of the General Robert E. Lee statue catalyzed the violent riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, and to understand the affective preconditions Donald J. Trump created for this violence through racist rhetoric. The thesis argues that the pastoral romance changes in each new context. In the antebellum Anti-Tom novel it is tied to an idealized white plantocratic identity that is juxtaposed with the specter of black insurrection. In Dixon, open violence becomes a constitutive part. In the science fictions, violence becomes an intrinsic component of whiteness itself. The exploration permits inter alia an understanding of how Civil-War monuments can be detached from their historical contexts and repurposed for a current political movement. The thesis calls for opening a serious inquiry by legislators, academics, and teachers into white-supremacist literature rather than eschewing white-supremacist artefacts for fear of radicalization (or out of revulsion). It is in literature that white-supremacist ideologues communicate with a wider public by abandoning the obscurity of white-supremacist sophistry and drawing on existing literary traditions

The Rise of American Extremism: An Exploratory Analysis of American Religious and Political Extremism from Presidents Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama: 1977-2016

The purpose of this quantitative case study was to address the problem of domestic terrorism facing the United States. This concern led to a comprehensive examination of historical documents that focused on the temporal evolution of the problem beginning with the Carter administration and continuing through the Obama administration. The conceptual foundation centered on resolving the research question and validating three hypotheses directed at qualifying the escalation of domestic incidents of terrorism. This led to developing a behavioral model to assist law enforcement agencies in combating the issue of domestic terrorism. Bivariate and clustering statistical analysis validated the data while qualifying the demographics of the various typologies of U.S. domestic terrorists. The use of case study analysis, which drew on historical documents for evidence, considered the evolution of various groups, motivations, their ideologies, and goals. These variables were compared to successes and failures of relevant federal policies. The lack of understanding and oversight that led to an escalation of the number of incidents was also evaluated. Using ethical and scientific guidelines and protocols, the study’s findings promote the need for future research and highlight the dangers of repeating the past. By developing a behavioral model, this study gives law enforcement a valuable tool for resolving domestic terrorism. Additional considerations relate to future policy implications and the course of future research

(Main)streaming Hate: Analyzing White Supremacist Content and Framing Devices on YouTube

The emboldening of white supremacist groups, as well as their increased mainstream presence in online circles, necessitates the creation of studies that dissect their tactics and rhetoric, while offering platform-specific insights. This study seeks to address these needs by analyzing white supremacist content and framing devices on the video hosting website, YouTube. Data were collected through a multi-stage sampling technique, designed to capture a \u27snapshot\u27 of white supremacist content on the platform during a 45-day period in 2019. After line-by-line coding and qualitative thematic analysis, results showed that sampled channels varied between different levels of color-blindness and overt racialization in their framing. Furthermore, channels containing more color-blind approaches yielded higher subscriber counts than their counterparts. What this indicates is that sampled channels use framing to both activate racial threat and minimize race, attempting to reproduce racism while avoiding coming off as racist in the color-blind, mainstream political climate. Secondary findings also show how sampled channels (a) rhetorically bridge the gap between fascism, nationalism, hegemonic gender roles, and mainstream conservative thought; (b) reconcile the idea of political action within a perilous and conspiratorial worldview; (c) leverage interactive, visual media to engage, manage, and collect funding from their audiences. This study is unique because it unpacks the discursive intricacies of white supremacist messaging, while showing the processes by which a racist society is reproduced in the cosmopolitan, digital hub that is YouTube. It sets precedent and opens doors for future inquiry into how social media platforms are used as tools to mainstream white supremacist ideas