‘ Cyber hate ’ vs . ‘ cyber deliberation ’ The case of an Austrian newspaper ’ s discussion board from a critical online-discourse analytical perspective (original) (raw)
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‘Cyber hate’ vs. ‘cyber deliberation’
Journal of Language and Politics, 2017
Our contribution deals with an Austrian case study on racist discourse strategies in the forums of the Austrian online newspaper derStandard.at. First, we will consider forums as a communicative form characterised by specific linguistic features as well as its technical and functional design. Furthermore, we will present an analysis of the reader’s postings from a critical-discursive perspective following the discourse-historical approach, where the readers’ comments on articles on migration and language are investigated against the background of online-specific communication. Another subject of discussion will be areas of conflict between freedom of expression, deliberation and the ‘censorship’ of the forums by the editorial staff with the help of semi-automated tools for filtering out explicit racist postings. Finally, we discuss chances and risks of the investigated forums regarding discursive and social practices within democratically constituted societies and address the questi...
Disguising online racism in Italy: symbols, words and statements of “new” racist discourse
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Abstract In the last decades racism has been growing rapidly in Italy. Racial slurs, physical aggressions, threats and political manifestations against Africans, Roma, Jews and other minorities have become more and more frequent, fuelled by favourable conditions as the financial crisis, the increase of social conflict and the rise of populist issues in politics. As it was argued, even though the concept of race seems to be disappearing from the political discourse, it still remains concealed behind the scenes of official speeches (Gingrich, 2004). In 2012 UNAR , a government anti discrimination body, revealing the rise of web and social media in spreading discriminatory messages, reported that complaints for online racism weighed for 30,9% of the overall cases involving the media. It may be considered just as the tip of an iceberg: since formal complaints mainly deal with blatant racism, an amount of disguised discriminatory contents is currently published on the Internet, fostering racist attitudes and supporting normalization. Some scholars defined it as “common sense racism” or “rational racism”, an attempt to draw immigration and minorities as undesirable avoiding to be labelled as “racist” (see Capdevila and Callaghan, 2008; Meddaugh and Kay, 2009). According to Van Dijk first approaches' in critical discourse analysis (CDA), the study of texts and talks should examine dominant topics, text schemata as storytelling and argumentation, as well as local semantic strategies, style, rhetoric and specific properties of conversational interaction, in order to foster the reproduction of inequality and dominance (see Van Dijk, 1992 and 1993). The analysis on speeches and symbols carried out on behalf of LIGHT ON project, make us possible to individuate and emphasize some emerging trends in online racism, to propose a classification of some fundamental discourses which are used to disguise and to legitimate discrimination and racism their selves. Given these premises, it is possible to depict and discuss five major discursive strategies emerging from the analyzed data: 1) Essentialist racism; 2) Populist racism; 3) Securitarian racism 4) Identitarian racism; 5) Far – Right Racism.
Racist discourse on social networks: A discourse analysis of Facebook posts in Italy
Rhesis - International Journal of Linguistics, Philology and Literature 5.1
The paper addresses the way people elaborate and share resentment against immigrants on social networks. Since its beginning in 2008, the financial crisis established itself as the main topic in Italian media discourse, monopolizing almost the whole public debate. Although anti-immigrant discourse is not a novelty in the European public sphere, the long recession in Italy has strengthened this kind of feeling. At the same time social networks, especially Facebook, grew in popularity and importance, establishing itself as a powerful means of sharing information, objectives and opinions. The corpus of our analysis is composed by status updates and images posted on four Facebook public pages related to anti-establishment or generic protest topics. Moreover, this kind of material easily circulates on other more general groups and pages and is frequently shared by ordinary users on their personal profiles. The analysis explores some of the main issues in racist discourse (illegal arrivals, crime, social struggle and denial of racism). In our study we take into account lexical items, rhetorical forms (metaphors, hyperbole) and arguments employed to set immigrants as antagonists of ordinary Italian people. Our aim, therefore, is to understand how new media help to strengthen racist discourse in everyday interaction Key words – Racist discourse, social networks, Facebook, discourse analysis, web discourse
Paolo Orrù, Racist Discourse on social networks: a discourse analysis of Facebook posts in Italy
The paper addresses the way people elaborate and share resentment against immigrants on social networks. Since its beginning in 2008, the financial crisis established itself as the main topic in Italian media discourse, monopolizing almost the whole public debate. Although anti-immigrant discourse is not a novelty in the European public sphere, the long recession in Italy has strengthened this kind of feeling. At the same time social networks, especially Facebook, grew in popularity and importance, establishing itself as a powerful means of sharing information, objectives and opinions. The corpus of our analysis is composed by status updates and images posted on four Facebook public pages related to anti-establishment or generic protest topics. Moreover, this kind of material easily circulates on other more general groups and pages and is frequently shared by ordinary users on their personal profiles. The analysis explores some of the main issues in racist discourse (illegal arrivals, crime, social struggle and denial of racism). In our study we take into account lexical items, rhetorical forms (metaphors, hyperbole) and arguments employed to set immigrants as antagonists of ordinary Italian people. Our aim, therefore, is to understand how new media help to strengthen racist discourse in everyday interaction.
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In 2004, awash with the hope for a public sphere reinvigorated by the popular internet, the online arms of many U.S. newspapers opened their websites for comments. Now, nine years into this experiment, many newspapers have abandoned the practice of allowing comments. Online news sites have adopted a variety of strategies to deal with offensive comments, including turning “comments off,” not archiving comments, and adopting aggressive comment moderation policies. These strategies present researchers who wish to understand how racism operates in the new public sphere of mainstream news sites with a set of methodological dilemmas. In this article we (1) lay out the methodological pitfalls for the systematic investigation of the prevalent pattern of racism in online comments in the public sphere and (2) suggest steps by which scholars may deal with these methodological intricacies. We conclude by pointing to the broader implications of online content moderation.
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