Social Media

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Peter van Aelst, whose interest is in how news media consumption affects conspiracy theory beliefs. Mediating factors here might include misperception and populist attitudes, and the present paper examines this in the context of conspiracy theories that believe that a small elite of actors deliberately hide the truth about what is happening in the world.

These beliefs might be heightened if people hold existing misperceptions already – e.g. about the efficacy of vaccines, or the impacts of migration –, as well as by populist attitudes that predispose people to be sceptical …

The final day at ECREA 2024 begins for me with a panel on conspiracy theories, and a paper by the great Annett Heft. Her focus is on the diffusion dynamics of conspiracy theories across platforms. She begins by noting the substantial growth in conspiracy theory diffusion, and the severe consequences these ideas can have. Cross-platform activity (involving social media, social messaging, multimedia platforms, alternative news media, and mainstream media) can further heighten this impact.

This project focusses on the two far-right conspiracy theories of the New World Order, with a strong anti-Semitic component, and the Great Replacement / White Genocide …

The next speakers in this ECREA 2024 session are Sabina Mihelj and Václav Štětka, presenting a new framework for the understanding of current trends towards illiberalism. This focus on illiberalism follows the dismissal of the concept of populism as ill-defined; illiberalism is instead marking a grey zone between democracy and authoritarianism, and communication is a central element in its rise – indeed, there is a need to better investigate the illiberal public sphere.

There are three constitutive features here: the paradoxical emergence of and dependence of illiberalism on liberal democratic institutions and values, and their championing of liberal values such …

The third speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Maria Bakardjieva, whose focus is on the affordances of social media in grassroots illiberalism. Affordances here describe a relation between users and objects, and media affordances include technical and institutional aspects. Maria notes the well-established problems with the term ‘populism’, which is a poorly defined concept that applies equally to the left and the right, and to democratic and antidemocratic discourses; this generates pseudo-equivalences between very different aspects.

Illiberalism is more useful in describing a specific regime type, founded in an ideology and culture that is conjured up by supportive intellectuals …

The next session at ECREA 2024 that I’m attending is on communication in times of illiberalism, and starts with Natalie-Anne Hall. Her focus is on political engagement around Brexit on Facebook, in the post-referendum period between 2017 and 2019. Rather than gathering Facebook content, this study focussed on Facebook users – in recognition of the fact that Facebook remains the leading mainstream social network in the UK.

The post-Brexit context was ripe for populist discursive appeals, which claimed that political elites were attempting to undermine the Brexit referendum results; this was actively fanned by illiberal and often also racist groups …

We continue this second day of the ECREA 2024 conference with the second conference keynote, by Jelena Kleut. Her focus is on uncertainties in transitional media systems. She begins by noting the various present-day communicative disorders – disinformation, political dysfunction, hate speech and abuse, etc. – but also warns us not to lose track of the positive potentials of contemporary communication technologies amongst all the doom and gloom. A balanced assessment of the current situation remains critical.

This points to a considerable level of uncertainty, too – and this can be generative (of research, and of overall progress for society) …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Nuri Sadida, whose focus is on the impact of ‘fake news’ and media literacy on affective polarisation in Indonesia. Such affective polarisation has increased in Indonesia over the past ten years, especially in the context of elections; derogatory nicknames for out-groups, such as ‘tadpole’ or ‘desert lizard’, are common especially in social media conversations.

This may be seen as merely playful, but could also point to a residue of hate speech in Indonesian public discourse. Indeed, there are signs of increasing divorce rates in Indonesia due to poltical differences between spouses …

The second day at ECREA 2024 starts with yet another panel on polarisation, with begins with a paper by Diógenes Lycarião. His interest is in testing the hypothesis that digitalisation and platformisation are fragmenting the public sphere. This is critical since much of the scholarly discussion on this public sphere fragmentation hypothesis to date builds on unverified assumptions. This has two elements: the idea that the expansion of the mediasphere fragments the public sphere, and the suggestion that this then causes phenomena such as ‘echo chambers’ or polarisation.

First, then, is an expansion in media choice actually fragmenting the public …

The final speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Mikkel Bækby Johansen, whose interest is in hybridisation of extremism on social media. Hybridisation is a term which has emerged from terrorism studies, pointing to the increasingly complex nature of terrorist threats; however, the role of social media in such hybridisation remains poorly understood. Hybridisation connects ideological and religious views with conspiracist beliefs and concepts of who the enemy is; QAnon is a useful example of this more complex and potentially contradictory form of extremism.

Extremism is now especially closely linked to conspiracy theories, and conspiracy beliefs often end up being …

Up next in this ECREA 2024 session is the excellent Giovanni Boccia Artieri, whose interest is in networking between fringe Telegram channels in Italy. These are connected to disinformation ecosystems, the spread of conspiracy theories, and the normalisation of populism and political extremism. Fringe online spaces can especially serve as laboratories for extremist narratives here – even though they can also provide a safe space for marginalised and disadvantaged communities.

The present study examines the fringe Telegramsphere in Italy, but eventually also aims to study its interconnections with mainstream media. Telegram is already know for fostering affective polarisation, spreading alternative …