Jihadistinen verkkoviestintä

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastellaan jihadistiseen liikehdintään kytketyvän verkkoviestintää ja erityisesti sen historiallista kehitystä.Non peer reviewe

A Comparative Approach to Social Media Extreme Speech: Online Hate Speech as Media Commentary

By exploring lessons learned from Ethiopia and Finland, this article challenges two assumptions about online hate speech research. First, it challenges the assumption that the best way to understand controversial concepts such as online hate speech is to determine how closely they represent or mirror some underlying set of facts or state of affairs online or in social media. Second, it challenges the assumption that academic research should be seen as separate from the many controversies that surround online hate speech debates globally. In its place, the article proposes the theory of “commentary” as a comparative research framework aimed at explaining how the messy and complex world of online and social media practices is articulated as hate speech over other ways of imagining this growing problem in global digital media environments

Extreme Speech Online: An Anthropological Critique of Hate Speech Debates

Exploring the cases of India and Ethiopia, this article develops the concept of “extreme speech” to critically analyze the cultures of vitriolic exchange on Internet-enabled media. While online abuse is largely understood as “hate speech,” we make two interventions to problematize the presuppositions of this widely invoked concept. First, extreme speech emphasizes the need to contextualize online debate with an attention to user practices and particular histories of speech cultures. Second, related to context, is the ambiguity of online vitriol, which defies a simple antonymous conception of hate speech versus acceptable speech. The article advances this analysis using the approach of “comparative practice,” which, we suggest, complicates the discourse of Internet “risk” increasingly invoked to legitimate online speech restrictions

Narratives of Risk: Assessing the Discourse of Online Extremism and Measures Proposed to Counter It

The discourse surrounding digital technologies is rapidly changing, namely from an entity with the potential to generate positive political change to one that can be abused by extremists. In light of this, a new “dispositif” of risk has emerged whereby governments are seeking to address the imagined dangers posed by digital technology through a series of pre-emptive measures. By examining how the relationship between digital technology and violent extremism has been articulated in the EU’s counter-terrorism policy, this article argues that critical distance is now needed from both these utopian and/or dystopian conceptualisations of digital technology and conflict

Jihadistinen verkkoviestintä ja Suomi

Tutkimus käsittelee Suomeen liittyvää jihadistista verkkoviestintää vuosina 2014⎼2018. Siinä kartoitetaan erityisesti Suomen ja Suomeen liittyvien henkilöiden esiintymistä jihadistisessa viestinnässä sekä sitä, millaista aineistoa Suomessa asuneet henkilöt ovat tuottaneet ja levittäneet verkossa. Ajanjakson alkupuolella Suomeen liittyvää jihadistista verkkoviestintää oli enemmän kuin koskaan aiemmin. Suomalaisia esiintyi Isisin aineistoissa, ja Suomessa asuneet henkilöt tuottivat ja levittivät jihadistista aineistoa myös suomeksi. Tämä heijastaa Suomeen liittyvän jihadistisen liikehdinnän yleistä kehittymistä. Aineiston määrää ei tule kuitenkaan liioitella, sillä Suomeen liittyvän viestinnän määrä oli edelleen kansainvälisesti katsoen verrattain vähäinen. Viimeisen kolmen vuoden aikana jihadistinen verkkoviestintä on siirtynyt suljetuille alustoille, kun teknologiayritykset ovat aktiivisesti poistaneet avointa väkivaltaan yllyttävää aineistoa. Tämä tarkoittaa, että avoimen jihadistisen verkkoviestinnän aika on tällä erää myös Suomeen liittyvän aineiston osalta pitkälti ohi. Suomeen kytkeytyvä jihadistinen verkkoviestintä ei ole kuitenkaan todennäköisesti täysin tyrehtynyt. Tutkimuksen yhteydessä havaittiin merkkejä siitä, että sitä saattaa edelleen olla suljetuilla ja salatuilla kanavilla. Tutkimus on tehty samanaikaisesti Jihadistinen liikehdintä Suomessa -tutkimuksen kanssa

Extreme Speech and Global Digital Cultures — Introduction

In this article, we introduce the Special Section on Extreme Speech and Global Digital Cultures by developing the concept of “extreme speech.” In addressing the growing cultures of online vitriol and extremism, this concept advances a critical ethnographic sensibility to situated online speech cultures and a comparative global conversation that moves beyond the legal-normative debates that have been dominant in North America and Europe. We demonstrate this intervention by highlighting three interlinked arguments: Extreme speech inhabits a spectrum of practices rather than a binary opposition between acceptable and unacceptable speech; the sociotechnological aspects of new media embody a context in itself; and the violence of extreme speech acts is productive of identity in historically specific ways. This approach entails a methodological move that takes account of the meanings online users attach to vitriol as historical actors. It thus allows for critical frameworks to emerge from emic terms of action rather than moral concepts superimposed from the outside. Ethnographic explorations of extreme speech, we suggest, open up a new avenue to critique the contemporary global conjuncture of exclusionary politics

Demystifying the COVID-19 Infodemic : Conspiracies, Context, and the Agency of Users

This article presents new empirical insights into what people do with conspiracy theories during crises. By suppressing the impulse to distinguish between truth and falsehood, which has characterized most scholarship on the COVID-19 "infodemic," and engaging with claims surrounding two popular COVID-19 conspiracies-on 5G and on Bill Gates-in South Africa and Nigeria, we illustrate how conspiracies morph as they interact with different socio-political contexts. Drawing on a mixed-method analysis of more than 6 million tweets, we examine how, in each country, conspiracies have uniquely intersected with longer-term discourses and political projects. In Nigeria, the two conspiracies were both seized as opportunities to extend criticism to the ruling party. In South Africa, they produced distinctive responses: while the 5G conspiracy had limited buy-in, the Gates conspiracy resonated with deep-rooted resentment toward the West, corporate interests, and what is seen as a paternalistic attitude of some external actors toward Africa. These findings stress the importance of taking conspiracy theories seriously, rather than dismissing them simply as negative externalities of digital ecosystems. Situating conspiracies in specific dynamics of trust and mistrust can make an important difference when designing responses that are not limited to broadcasting truthful information, but can also enable interventions that account for deeply rooted sentiments of suspicion toward specific issues and actors, which can vary significantly across communities.Peer reviewe

An epistemic proxy war? Popular communication, epistemic contestations and violent conflict in Ethiopia

This paper highlights an understudied perspective on post-truth ideas in online popular communication through an examination of online popular communication during the Ethiopian conflict (or the Tigray War). It argues, in particular, that the epistemic contestations characteristic of the hybrid media environment needs to always be understood as double-layered: contemporary digital media functions both as a site where such contestations can be researched but, at the same time, the theories and frameworks of knowledge we use to articulate the debates need to be also critically contested theories originating from the West not necessarily valid in other parts of the world without critical examination. To specify the theoretical arguments made, the paper will use a mixed-method analysis that combines digital ethnographic research with a large-scale analysis of visual imagery shared on Twitter to understand popular communication and propaganda during the conflict/war.Peer reviewe