Kaarina Nikunen, Paula Haara, Heidi Kosonen, Aleksi Knuutila, Reeta Pöyhtäri, Tuija Saresma- Affective meanings of hate speech: countering hate with joy.
This paper explores how the term ‘hate speech’ is interpreted, contested and circulated on digital media platforms in Finland. As argued by Sara Ahmed (2004), hateful interaction is not only about hate: It is shaped and driven by a variety of emotions from disgust to love, from fear to hope (Guerrero 2020). The paper introduces different affective political and social articulations of hate speech that often serve the purpose of questioning the actual existence of hate speech. While the empirical data largely consists of affective interactions and views that seek to dispute hate speech and ridicule attempts to diminish it: refutation over the meaning of hate speech seems to occupy the heart of the debate. Yet, there are avenues of hope in the data. In line with the theme of the conference, the paper introduces the ways in which notions of love and care emerge as counter-actions to hate speech, expressed in the data.
The paper is part of a larger research project ‘Haffect’ that combines ethnographic, interpretive and computational methods to explore the everyday affective practices connected to hate speech. The project seeks to unravel how hate speech arises through the interplay of local affective practices and technological assemblages and pays attention to the ways in which digital platforms take part in hosting and creating affective practices around hate speech. We echo Pohjonen & Udupa (2017) in their call for more situated, local and contextual understanding of the cultures of communication and online practices of hate.
Anirban Mukhopadhyay- WhatsApp mediated publics: Critiquing and resisting alternative realities in India
In this paper, I explore how the Hindu right in India uses digital technology to produce the
“other” as a threat to the majoritarian normative social order and analyze the possibilities of a counter-public sphere that hopes to subvert the ideological discourses of the right wing. The increasing digital mediatization in India across class and caste boundaries enables the right wing to use doctored images, communally charged discourse, and the elision of history to diffuse a divisive agenda to gain political capital. This weaponization of digital technology is instrumental in restricting social and political movements and surveillance of minorities in the Indian public sphere materially and discursively. The narratives of demonization in digital platforms have led to violent lynching in multiple spaces. Through the dispersion of messages on digital platforms like “WhatsApp,” the “other” is depicted as an agent of contagious disease in the nation’s body as idealized by the Hindu right wing. Messages (often visual) spread through “WhatsApp” groups by dedicated digital party workers of the Hindu right produce the spectacle of deceptive discourse (Debord, 2002), materializing in violence towards the “other” by organized mobs. I argue here that the discourses of viral media effectively shape the “other’ as a non-citizen with the tacit approval of the state machinery; the body of the “other” here belongs to the liminal space between the political citizenry and the cultural citizenry shaped by the majority. Using digital networks, the Hindu right produces and maintains a discourse of national purity and depicts the body of the other as a threat to the national fabric. Often, the logic of material violence towards minorities is constructed through the discourse of spreading contagious disease and defiling “Hindutva,” which is akin to the colonial logic of maintaining racial purity and the anxiety of losing social control.
Anumita Goswami- Emotional Atyachar (trauma): The emotional labour of fact checking in India
The article addresses the questions of corelation between identity creation and emotional labour by fact checkers in India. Fact checking has emerged as a new genre in journalism with the rise of disinformation online. The materials for the article was collected through interviewing 12 fact checkers who belonged to different fact checking organisations. The first part of the analysis focuses on how the perception of fact checker built through these interviews, previous literature on fact checking, fact checking accrediting organisations such as International Fact checking Network (IFCN) and programmes such as Facebook Third Party fact checking programme. The second part of the analysis focuses on the emotional labour of maintaining this perception by fact checkers. This builds on the existing research on emotional labour, ghost work and mitigating harassment of journalists online. The findings of the study seeks to contribute the literature on emotional labour of journalism in general and fact checking in the third world in particular.
Elizabeth Poole- Countering Islamophobic hate speech on Twitter: Activist strategies
Much has been written about the rise of xenophobic extremism online in the context of the growth of populism, post 2016 (Schradie, 2019). In particular, Twitter has become a focus for research due to its particular role in elite and journalist circles but also for practical reasons (Siapera, 2018). Our own research from 2016 to 2020 shows how hate speech towards Muslims ebbs and flows depending on trigger and viral events, as well as the context. Twitter can also be a space for solidarity amongst and with marginalized groups, this was particularly evident in a period of tighter restrictions on the platform and purge of far-right activists following the Capitol Hill riots (Poole et al, 2020). Activist strategies can be identified by analysing Twitter, but few projects have also interviewed those working to counter Islamophobia about their engagement practices. This paper draws on 15 interviews with key international activists who use Twitter regularly to participate in solidarity work with Muslims, including journalists, academics and advocacy groups. The interviewees were drawn from our Twitter sample of three trigger events: Brexit, the Christchurch terror attack and Covid. We explore their objectives in engaging on a platform that has been criticized for its ‘commercial sentimentality’,‘impatience’ (Nikunen, 2018) and ‘weak commitment’ (Chouliaraki,2006). Whilst acknowledging these limitations, the findings offer glimpses of hope given that activists often view Twitter as ‘a powerful tool of social change’ (interviewee). This paper explores the benefits of their activism, and asks whether this further contributes to debates on mediated solidarity, as well as highlighting what can be learnt from their practices. The paper speaks to the conference theme in exploring the hopeful possibilities of activist strategies online for connecting and countering Islamophobic hate speech.