Politics

The next speaker in this AoIR 2024 conference session is Rob Topinka, whose focus is on conspiracy theories that are promoted by reactionary ideological entrepreneurs like Russell Brand. Their rhetoric doesn’t need to make any positive propositions: all they need to do is point out things that (in their view) have ‘gone too far’, in in doing so position themselves as bold new heroes who speak for ‘the people’; this can be understood as a new and reactionary form of counter-culture.

The next speaker in this AoIR 2024 conference session is Marc Tuters. He begins by noting the conversation between then-Dutch PM Mark Rutte and historian Yuval Harari at the 2020 World Economic Forum, comparing their utopian and dystopian viscous about AI – and this kicked off a new round of conspiracy theories about the World Economic Forum as well as the future uses of AI to subjugate global populations.

Day two at the AoIR 2024 conference starts for me with a panel on conspiracy theories, which is opened by Daniël de Zeeuw. His focus is on the growth of the use of the term PsyOp, or psychological operation – these are usually military or government operations to change public opinion through unconventional means. Conspiracy theories about PsyOps have been pushed increasingly especially by far-right actors in the U.S., including Fox News, and often originate from 4chan; there is a substantial increase especially from 2016 onwards.

The final speaker in this AoIR 2024 conference session is the brilliant Jenny Stromer-Galley, whose focus is on the fundamental changes to the abortion debate in the United States since the current Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade ruling. Abortion has been a highly polarising issue in the US ever since women’s reproductive rights fell under legal jurisdiction in the 1800s, of course, and is tangled up with American nation-building mythologies.

The next speaker in this AoIR 2024 conference session is my QUT colleague Alia Azmi, whose focus is on the campaign to address sexual violence in Indonesia. For various sociocultural reasons, Indonesia did not engage much with the global #metoo movement; the defamation laws and victim blaming practices have generally deterred victim-survivors to speak out against sexual violence. Indonesia also did not have any strong laws against sexual violence.

Up next in this AoIR 2024 conference panel is my QUT colleague Daniel Whelan-Shamy, with whom I’ll present our paper on polarisation on Indigenous debates in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. In both countries there is a long and complex history of colonial oppression towards their respective Indigenous peoples. In Australia, the 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum sought to remedy this through the constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples, while in New Zealand the Treaty of Waitangi was signed as early as 1840 and gradually led to greater recognition and rights for Māori groups. Our work examines the patterns of potentially destructive polarisation in these debates, and our presentation slides are below:

The next speaker in this AoIR 2024 conference session is the excellent Laura Iannelli, whose focus is on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Italy was amongst the first countries in the world to implement a mass lockdown, and this became an arena for polarised conflict amongst political elites. The question here is whether this also fostered societal and individual polarisation, and what role mis- and disinformation played in this process.

The next session at the AoIR 2024 conference conference is a session that I co-organised which focusses on controversies, and starts with a presentation by Felipe Soares. His focus is on the 2022 Brazilian presidential election, which finally brought the reign of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro to an end.

The final speaker in this AoIR 2024 conference session is Keara Caitlyn Martina Quadros, whose interest is youth activism for climate action online. Her focus is especially on TikTok, where many pro- and anti-climate action activists and influencers are posting to hashtags like #climatechange. Such content also overlaps with what is posted on other platforms, of course.

The next speaker in this AoIR 2024 conference session is Luigi Arminio, whose interest is in the sociolinguistic patterns of polarisation on climate change on Facebook (this approach carries on from the previous presentation). Such patterns may also represent socioeconomic differences: people with lower socioeconomic status tend to be more open to climate change-denialist rhetoric, and such groups also differ from others in their overall communication styles.