Tactical interventions in online hate speech : the case of #stopIslam

This article sets out findings from a project focused on #stopIslam, a hashtag that gained prominence following the Brussels terror attack of 2016. We initially outline a big data analysis which shows how counter-narratives – criticizing #stopIslam – momentarily subverted negative news reporting of Muslims. The rest of the article details qualitative findings that complicate this initial positive picture. We set out key tactics engaged in by right-wing actors, self-identified Muslim users, would-be allies and celebrities and elucidate how these tactics were instrumental in the direction, dynamics and legacies of the hashtag. We argue that the tactical interventions of tightly bound networks of right-wing actors, as well as the structural constraints of the platform, not only undermined the longevity and coherence of the counter-narratives but subtly modulated the affordances of Twitter in ways that enabled these users to extend their voice outwards, reinforcing long-standing representational inequalities in the process

Fear filter: Visualising the UK terror threat level

Fear Filter is a digital artwork comprising of a mobile phone photo filters application for Android / iOS platforms and a digital photo stream. The photo filters are created by gathering current and historical information about the UK Threat Level from a live feed from MI5, the UK security service. Photographs taken with the mobile application are transformed by the photo filters, each of which correspond to a different moment in time and the related Threat Level from that period. The filters cover the period 1 August 2006 until the present moment. Photos shared from the mobile application are automatically posted to a public photo stream.Fear Filter exploits the confluence of mobile digital photography, platforms, networks and the online security theatre of the UK Threat Level to reformulate the relationship between photography and terrorism

Amazonian Struggles for Recognition

Since the 1988 Constitution, forest peoples of Brazilian Amazonia have been struggling for territorial recognition. Yet studies of recognition in post-colonial contexts, based on cases with clear settler/indigenous distinctions, are highly critical of recognition, seeing it as a form of ‘neoliberal multiculturalism,’ a co-option of subaltern identities with limited emancipatory potential. I question these critiques by examining struggles for legal and intersubjective recognition of subaltern identity categories ‘Índio’ and ‘Agroextractivista’ and corresponding territories of the ‘Terra Indigena’ and ‘Reserva Extractivista’ on the Madeira and Tapajós Rivers in Brazilian Amazonia, where heterogeneous origins of forest peoples belie simple settler/indigenous distinctions. I engage a key question–the relationships of subaltern peoples with state institutions, and highlight a finding – the relevance of the state’s ‘proximity’ - often underestimated in the literature. I build a theory of decolonial recognition combining Axel Honneth’s idea of recognition as love, rights and solidarity with David Scott’s late-Foucauldian reworking of Frantz Fanon. Herein, the Fanonian colonized subjectivity is shaped by the negation of love, rights and solidarity, that is to say, misrecognition. The subject requires legal and intersubjective recognition in order to positively incorporate love, rights and solidarity into their ‘practices of techniques of the self.’ On the Tapajos, territorial struggles are more successful owing to a stronger sphere of legal recognition - the presence of state institutions - and a history of Church and union grassroots organisation, both supporting greater intersubjective recognition among forest peoples. On the Madeira, a much weaker sphere of legal recognition has resulted in a situation of intractable conflict around territorial struggles which have correspondingly less intersubjective recognition. I conclude that a theory of decolonial recognition is of considerable utility in elucidating the dynamics of subaltern emancipatory struggles for territory

Carolin Emcke – für den Zweifel : Gespräche mit Thomas Strässle

Carolin Emcke, geboren 1967, studierte Philosophie in London, Frankfurt/Main und Harvard und wurde 1998 über den Begriff »kollektiver Identitäten« promoviert. Von 1998 bis 2013 bereiste sie weltweit Krisenregionen und berichtete darüber. 2003/2004 war sie Visiting Lecturer für Politische Theorie an der Yale University. Seit 2004 organisiert und moderiert sie die Diskussionsreihe »Streitraum« an der Schaubühne Berlin