Matti Pohjonen | University of Helsinki (original) (raw)
Books by Matti Pohjonen
Karavaanin sotapolku on Antti Parosen ja Juha Saarisen toimittama suomenkielinen, globaalia jihad... more Karavaanin sotapolku on Antti Parosen ja Juha Saarisen toimittama suomenkielinen, globaalia jihadistista liikehdintää ja kansainvälistä terrorismia käsittelevä teos. Se pyrkii pureutumaan päivittäisiä uutisotsikoita syvemmälle ja laajemmin tarjoamaan yleistajuisen, mutta silti tarkan analyysin aiheeseen, esittäen samalla ilmiön ja sen torjunnan parissa työskenteleville viranomaisille ja poliittisille päättäjille tietoa laajasti huomiota herättäneen ilmiön ja sen luoman turvallisuusuhkan ymmärtämiseksi.
Kaikkiaan 13:sta artikkelista koostuvan kokonaisuuden ohjaavana periaatteena on ollut koota eri alojen asiantuntijoiden näkemyksiä ja muodostaa kattava kokonaiskuva monimuotoisesta ja moniulotteisesta ilmiöstä useissa eri konteksteissa. Kirjan artikkeleissa tarkastellaan suomalaista jihadismia, kansainvälistä terrorismia ja ei-valtiollista sodankäyntiä innovatiivisella tutkimusotteella.
Kirjoittajat käsittelevät aihepiiriä laajasti nostaen esiin myös varsinaista väkivallan käyttöä ja sodankäyntiä tukevia rakenteita, kuten varainkeruuta, rekrytointia ja viestintää. Teoksessa käsitellään myös jihadistisen liikehdinnän kannalta keskeisiä maantieteellisiä alueita, joissa Suomi osallistuu kansainväliseen rauhanturvaamiseen ja kriisinhallintaan.
Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change, 2011
Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change
Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change, 2011
India has been the focus of international attention in the past few years. Rhetoric concerning it... more India has been the focus of international attention in the past few years. Rhetoric concerning its rapid economic growth and the burgeoning middle classes suggests that something new and significant is taking place. Something has changed, we are told: India is shining, the elephant is rising, and the 21st century will be Indian. What unites these powerful re-imaginings of the Indian nation is the notion of change and its many ramifications. Election campaigns, media commentators, scholars, activists and drawing room debates all cut their teeth around this complex notion. Who is it that benefits from this change? Do such re-imaginings of nationhood really reflect the complex social reality of large parts of the Indian population?
The book starts with the premise that it is within the mass media where we can best understand how this change is imagined. From a kaleidoscope of perspectives the book interrogates this articulation and the myriad forms it takes – across India's newsrooms, television sets, cinema halls, mobile phones and computer screens.
Papers by Matti Pohjonen
Media and power in times of hegemonic crisis: exploring contentious climate politics on Twitter
Journal of political power, May 15, 2024
Clones and zombies: rethinking conspiracy theories and the digital public sphere through a (post)-colonial perspective
Information, Communication & Society
This article investigates what is at stake in decolonising the study of conspiracy theories onlin... more This article investigates what is at stake in decolonising the study of conspiracy theories online. It challenges the confidence with which conspiracy theories are often dismissed as aberrations and negative externalities of digital ecosystems. Without reifying conspiracy theories, we identify as problematic how alternative forms of knowledge production are dismissed and colonial tropes reproduced. Contributing to conversations around 'decolonising the internet', we offer additional and sharper tools to understand the role and implications of conspiracy theorising for communicative and political practices in different societies globally. Empirically, we analyse a conspiracy theory circulating in Nigeria between 2018 and 2019 purporting that Nigerian President Buhari had died and the man in office was his 'clone'. Conceptually, our analysis intersects with Achille Mbembe's work on power in the postcolony, to illustrate how it is possible to adopt alternative forms of normativity that eschew the stigmatisation and exclusion that has prevailed, but still offer evaluative frameworks to locate conspiracy theories in contemporary digital environments. We engage with Mbembe's ideas about how humorous and grotesque forms of communication can result in the zombification of both the 'dominant' and those 'apparently dominated'. We argue that zombification as a theoretical intervention provides a useful addition to the conceptual and normative repertoire of those studying conspiracy theories, between the poles of dismissal/ condemnation and pure curiosity/acceptance of what is said.
Digitaalisten media-alustojen valta ja vastuu
Politiikasta.fi, Mar 11, 2021
Special Journal Section: Extreme Speech and Global Digital Cultures
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 2019
How to Analyze Online Hate Speech and Toxic Communication
SAGE Publications Ltd eBooks, 2022
Synthetic ethnography: Field devices for the qualitative study of generative models
The development of generative artificial intelligence sustains a proliferation of machine learnin... more The development of generative artificial intelligence sustains a proliferation of machine learning models capable of synthesizing text, images, sounds, and other kinds of content. While the increasing realism of synthetic content stokes fears about misinformation and triggers debates around intellectual property, generative models are adopted across creative industries, and synthetic media is already becoming an integral component of cultural products. Qualitative research in the social and human sciences has dedicated comparatively little attention to this category of machine learning, particularly in terms of what types of novel research methodology they both demand and facilitate. In this article, we propose a methodological approach for the qualitative study of generative models grounded on the experimentation with field devices which we call synthetic ethnography. Synthetic ethnography is not simply a qualitative research methodology applied to the study of the social and cultu...
Popular Communication, 2022
This paper highlights an understudied perspective on post-truth ideas in online popular communica... more 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.
Exploring the cases of India and Ethiopia, this article develops the concept of “extreme speech” ... more 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.
This study investigates Jihadist online communication related to Finland in 2014–2018. In particu... more This study investigates Jihadist online communication related to Finland in 2014–2018. In particular, it examines the visibility of Finland and persons connected to Finland in Jihadist communication and investigates what kinds of content persons living in Finland have produced and disseminated online. During the investigated period, Jihadist online communication related to Finland was more prevalent than ever before. Finns were mentioned in ISIS materials, and persons living in Finland produced and disseminated Jihadist content in the Finnish language. This reflects the broader development of the Jihadist activities connected to Finland. The amount of content must not be exaggerated, however, as the amount of content and online activities connected to Finland were still relatively minimal when compared internationally. Over the past three years, Jihadist online communication has migrated to closed platforms, as technology companies actively removed public content inciting people to ...
Social Media + Society , 2021
This article presents new empirical insights into what people do with conspiracy theories during ... more 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 mixedmethod 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 buyin, 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.
Communicative Figurations - Working Paper | No. 31 , 2020
Publications of the Ministry of the Interior, 2019
Jihadist online communication and Finland
International Journal of Communication , 2019
By exploring lessons learned from Ethiopia and Finland, this article challenges two assumptions a... more 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.
International Journal of Communication, 2019
In this article, we introduce the Special Section on Extreme Speech and Global Digital Cultures b... more 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.
The discourse surrounding digital technologies is rapidly changing, namely from an entity with th... more 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 preemptive measures. By examining how the relationship between digital technology and violent extremism has been articulated in the EU’s counterterrorism policy, this article argues that critical distance is now needed from both these utopian and/or dystopian conceptualisations of digital technology and conflict.
Exploring the cases of India and Ethiopia, this article develops the concept of " extreme speech ... more 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.
Karavaanin sotapolku on Antti Parosen ja Juha Saarisen toimittama suomenkielinen, globaalia jihad... more Karavaanin sotapolku on Antti Parosen ja Juha Saarisen toimittama suomenkielinen, globaalia jihadistista liikehdintää ja kansainvälistä terrorismia käsittelevä teos. Se pyrkii pureutumaan päivittäisiä uutisotsikoita syvemmälle ja laajemmin tarjoamaan yleistajuisen, mutta silti tarkan analyysin aiheeseen, esittäen samalla ilmiön ja sen torjunnan parissa työskenteleville viranomaisille ja poliittisille päättäjille tietoa laajasti huomiota herättäneen ilmiön ja sen luoman turvallisuusuhkan ymmärtämiseksi.
Kaikkiaan 13:sta artikkelista koostuvan kokonaisuuden ohjaavana periaatteena on ollut koota eri alojen asiantuntijoiden näkemyksiä ja muodostaa kattava kokonaiskuva monimuotoisesta ja moniulotteisesta ilmiöstä useissa eri konteksteissa. Kirjan artikkeleissa tarkastellaan suomalaista jihadismia, kansainvälistä terrorismia ja ei-valtiollista sodankäyntiä innovatiivisella tutkimusotteella.
Kirjoittajat käsittelevät aihepiiriä laajasti nostaen esiin myös varsinaista väkivallan käyttöä ja sodankäyntiä tukevia rakenteita, kuten varainkeruuta, rekrytointia ja viestintää. Teoksessa käsitellään myös jihadistisen liikehdinnän kannalta keskeisiä maantieteellisiä alueita, joissa Suomi osallistuu kansainväliseen rauhanturvaamiseen ja kriisinhallintaan.
Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change, 2011
Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change
Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change, 2011
India has been the focus of international attention in the past few years. Rhetoric concerning it... more India has been the focus of international attention in the past few years. Rhetoric concerning its rapid economic growth and the burgeoning middle classes suggests that something new and significant is taking place. Something has changed, we are told: India is shining, the elephant is rising, and the 21st century will be Indian. What unites these powerful re-imaginings of the Indian nation is the notion of change and its many ramifications. Election campaigns, media commentators, scholars, activists and drawing room debates all cut their teeth around this complex notion. Who is it that benefits from this change? Do such re-imaginings of nationhood really reflect the complex social reality of large parts of the Indian population?
The book starts with the premise that it is within the mass media where we can best understand how this change is imagined. From a kaleidoscope of perspectives the book interrogates this articulation and the myriad forms it takes – across India's newsrooms, television sets, cinema halls, mobile phones and computer screens.
Media and power in times of hegemonic crisis: exploring contentious climate politics on Twitter
Journal of political power, May 15, 2024
Clones and zombies: rethinking conspiracy theories and the digital public sphere through a (post)-colonial perspective
Information, Communication & Society
This article investigates what is at stake in decolonising the study of conspiracy theories onlin... more This article investigates what is at stake in decolonising the study of conspiracy theories online. It challenges the confidence with which conspiracy theories are often dismissed as aberrations and negative externalities of digital ecosystems. Without reifying conspiracy theories, we identify as problematic how alternative forms of knowledge production are dismissed and colonial tropes reproduced. Contributing to conversations around 'decolonising the internet', we offer additional and sharper tools to understand the role and implications of conspiracy theorising for communicative and political practices in different societies globally. Empirically, we analyse a conspiracy theory circulating in Nigeria between 2018 and 2019 purporting that Nigerian President Buhari had died and the man in office was his 'clone'. Conceptually, our analysis intersects with Achille Mbembe's work on power in the postcolony, to illustrate how it is possible to adopt alternative forms of normativity that eschew the stigmatisation and exclusion that has prevailed, but still offer evaluative frameworks to locate conspiracy theories in contemporary digital environments. We engage with Mbembe's ideas about how humorous and grotesque forms of communication can result in the zombification of both the 'dominant' and those 'apparently dominated'. We argue that zombification as a theoretical intervention provides a useful addition to the conceptual and normative repertoire of those studying conspiracy theories, between the poles of dismissal/ condemnation and pure curiosity/acceptance of what is said.
Digitaalisten media-alustojen valta ja vastuu
Politiikasta.fi, Mar 11, 2021
Special Journal Section: Extreme Speech and Global Digital Cultures
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 2019
How to Analyze Online Hate Speech and Toxic Communication
SAGE Publications Ltd eBooks, 2022
Synthetic ethnography: Field devices for the qualitative study of generative models
The development of generative artificial intelligence sustains a proliferation of machine learnin... more The development of generative artificial intelligence sustains a proliferation of machine learning models capable of synthesizing text, images, sounds, and other kinds of content. While the increasing realism of synthetic content stokes fears about misinformation and triggers debates around intellectual property, generative models are adopted across creative industries, and synthetic media is already becoming an integral component of cultural products. Qualitative research in the social and human sciences has dedicated comparatively little attention to this category of machine learning, particularly in terms of what types of novel research methodology they both demand and facilitate. In this article, we propose a methodological approach for the qualitative study of generative models grounded on the experimentation with field devices which we call synthetic ethnography. Synthetic ethnography is not simply a qualitative research methodology applied to the study of the social and cultu...
Popular Communication, 2022
This paper highlights an understudied perspective on post-truth ideas in online popular communica... more 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.
Exploring the cases of India and Ethiopia, this article develops the concept of “extreme speech” ... more 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.
This study investigates Jihadist online communication related to Finland in 2014–2018. In particu... more This study investigates Jihadist online communication related to Finland in 2014–2018. In particular, it examines the visibility of Finland and persons connected to Finland in Jihadist communication and investigates what kinds of content persons living in Finland have produced and disseminated online. During the investigated period, Jihadist online communication related to Finland was more prevalent than ever before. Finns were mentioned in ISIS materials, and persons living in Finland produced and disseminated Jihadist content in the Finnish language. This reflects the broader development of the Jihadist activities connected to Finland. The amount of content must not be exaggerated, however, as the amount of content and online activities connected to Finland were still relatively minimal when compared internationally. Over the past three years, Jihadist online communication has migrated to closed platforms, as technology companies actively removed public content inciting people to ...
Social Media + Society , 2021
This article presents new empirical insights into what people do with conspiracy theories during ... more 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 mixedmethod 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 buyin, 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.
Communicative Figurations - Working Paper | No. 31 , 2020
Publications of the Ministry of the Interior, 2019
Jihadist online communication and Finland
International Journal of Communication , 2019
By exploring lessons learned from Ethiopia and Finland, this article challenges two assumptions a... more 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.
International Journal of Communication, 2019
In this article, we introduce the Special Section on Extreme Speech and Global Digital Cultures b... more 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.
The discourse surrounding digital technologies is rapidly changing, namely from an entity with th... more 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 preemptive measures. By examining how the relationship between digital technology and violent extremism has been articulated in the EU’s counterterrorism policy, this article argues that critical distance is now needed from both these utopian and/or dystopian conceptualisations of digital technology and conflict.
Exploring the cases of India and Ethiopia, this article develops the concept of " extreme speech ... more 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.
Focusing on two online campaigns – one initiated by the Ethiopian blogging collective known as Zo... more Focusing on two online campaigns – one initiated by the Ethiopian blogging collective known as Zone9 and demanding the Ethiopian government to #RespectTheConstitution, and the other asking to #FreeZone9Bloggers, once some of the bloggers were arrested and accused of terrorism – this chapter examines opportunities and contradictions of digital activism in closed regimes. After having analysed the content of the two campaigns, their local and global ramifications, and the reactions they provoked among national and international actors, we explain how 1) the framing of digital media as powerful and potentially revolutionary political agents may act as a ‘self-impairing prophecy’, reducing the chances they may actually serve to produce lasting political change. At the same time, the comparative analysis of the two campaigns also indicates how 2) the recurrent accusations moved by the government to political opponents to act on behalf of ‘external agents’ and use digital media to threaten national stability, may act as ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’, creating a network of global solidarity around digital activists who, despite having begun their journey to promote change locally, are progressively brought into the ambit of a more global (and often Western) discourse of ‘digital activism’.
Anecdotal evidence suggests social media are used by individuals and groups wanting to incite hat... more Anecdotal evidence suggests social media are used by individuals and groups wanting to incite hatred and violence, yet the empirical evidence we present in this report suggests the these extreme forms of speech are actually marginal. Building on a collaboration between the University of Oxford and Addis Ababa University we examined thousands of comments made by Ethiopians on Facebook during four months around the time of the country’s general election. Hate speech’ –defined as statements to incite others to discriminate or act against individuals or groups on grounds of their ethnicity, nationality, religion or gender – was found in just 0.7% of overall statements in the representative sample. These findings may have wide implications for the many countries trying to address growing concerns about the role played by social media in promoting radicalisation or violence. Ethiopia represented an exceptional case study because of its distinct languages, which allowed gaining a realistic sample of the overall online debates focused on one country. We analysed Facebook statements made by Ethiopians, both in their homeland and abroad, in the run-up to and just after the general election on 24 May 2015. We found that fans or followers rather than people with any real influence online are mainly responsible for the violent or aggressive speech that appeared on Facebook pages in the sample. These individuals appear to use Facebook to vent their anger against more powerful sections of society. Around 18% of total comments in the sample were written by fans or followers compared with 11% of comments made by highly influential speakers (the owners of web pages). One fifth (21.8%) of hostile comments were grounded in political differences, only slightly higher than the overall average of 21.4% of all conversations containing hostile comments. Religion and ethnicity provoked fewer hostile comments (10% and 14% of overall comments in sample respectively). The findings are based on the analysis of more than 13,000 statements posted on 1,055 Facebook pages between February and June 2015. They mapped Facebook profiles, pages, and groups that had 100 or more followers or likes or members, respectively. All content in the sample studied had to include an Ethiopian language and raise discussion topics about Ethiopia. We focused on popular spaces on Facebook, analysing such pages daily to map ongoing trends, but also included comments on some online random pages or pages capturing particular events, such as a protest or publicised speeches. Posts, status updates and comments were tracked over time.