The digital routes of human smuggling?:Evidence from the UK

There are justified concerns but little empirical evidence about the implications of the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the business of human smuggling. The knowledge base on the use of ICT in human smuggling has rarely gone beyond the rather generic observation that the Internet and mobile technologies are available to and are used by both smugglers and migrants, and there is a concrete knowledge gap regarding the extent and the mode in which the use of ICT is integrated in the process of smuggling. In this paper, which is part of a wider research effort concerned with the role of the Internet in human smuggling in the European Union, we interrogate the outlook and implications of the use of contemporary mobile technology and of social media in the organisation and conduct of human smuggling to the UK

“You sick, twisted messes”: The use of argument and reasoning in Islamophobic and anti-Semitic discussions on Facebook

This research used critical discursive psychology to analyse anti-Semitic and Islamophobic discourse on the English Defence League’s (EDL) Facebook page. The discussion by Facebook users began about ‘reopening’ concentration camps, in which to incarcerate Muslims. Facebook users also expressed anti-Semitic discourse such as Holocaust denial, and the idea that Jews ‘could have done more’. The analysis focuses on the reasoning used when expressing this extreme idea, and how this was contested by other Facebook users, through the use of three strategies: (1) the construction of ‘sickness’, (2) Muslims as ‘the new Nazis’, (3) devictimising Jews as victims. This research shows how the EDL used positive aligning with Jews as means to present Muslims as problematic, and how such alignment resulted in the marginalisation of both Jews and Muslims. Findings are considered in terms of how critical discursive psychology can uncover the function of extreme discourse on social media, and the potential implications of hate speech online