Ambivalent Solidarity in Counter-Narratives against Islamophobia on Twitter

The next speaker in this AoIR 2023 session is Elizabeth Poole, whose interest is in counter-narratives against Islamophobia and their potential for mediated activism. This incorporates a computational analysis of discussions on Twitter related to Brexit, the Christchurch terror attack, and COVID-19, as well as qualitative and network analysis of these datasets.

The counter-narratives against Islamophobia in these tweets might be understood as mediated solidarity, and in he Brexit dataset there was considerable evidence of such support for Muslims, yet this did not necessarily result in sustained supporting discussions in follow-up tweets; this might be understood as a form of expedient solidarity. After the Christchurch attack, there was very strong support for Muslims, yet some of this could be understood as affective solidarity only; it did not necessarily drive any further discussion either. With the COVID-19 dataset, there is more evidence of sustained solidarity, especially pushing back against heightened Islamophobic sentiment in India during this time.

This shows some diverse and very ambivalent forms of solidarity, yet genuine counter-narratives can emerge even from such ambivalent forms of solidarity.