Last week, in a sleepy Welsh city by the sea, a group of social media and terrorism researchers came together to discuss the latest challenges in the field.
I learned a lot, met people doing admirable work and came away inspired with ideas to shape my own research in the future. This post is a short synopsis of topics from the conference that struck me as important, interesting and/or particularly thought-provoking.
The visual web
Maura Conway’s opening keynote was peppered with mentions of the visual web – and it’s importance in the study of terrorist and extremist activity. All extremist groups have a visual profile, and many use images as a central feature of their propaganda and recruiting efforts.
One look at the ISIS propaganda magazine, Dabiq, proves this point. And it’s not only about images, but also video, which terrorist groups have used for decades, from the grainy, muffled bin Laden recordings all the way through to the glossy ISIS productions. Far-right groups use images too – from the notorious Pepe the Frog to a range of logos featuring swords, swastikas and national flags.
The ‘post-truth’, digital era has ushered in a trend for using images as part of disinformation efforts; driving so-called ‘fake news’. A recent example springs to mind from the March 2017 Westminster attack. In the swirling social media aftermath of Khalid Mahmood’s actions there emerged a photo of a Muslim woman wearing a hijab, walking past victims across Westminster bridge, engrossed in her phone as she walked.
The image was quickly hijacked, attached to numerous false claims attacking the unknown woman for her apparent ‘disdain’ for the injured victims. These claims spawned thousands of comments where people released their Islamophobic feelings to the full, feeding into the milieu of anti-Muslim sentiment that presently hangs over society.
Of course, the truth was very different. The woman had been messaging friends and family to let them know she was safe after the attack. Despite the truth being outed, the damage had already been done. Social perceptions of Muslims as ‘bad’ had been further reinforced.
Back to Prof Conway’s speech; in which she highlighted the ‘strong signalling function’ of images, making them critical subjects for further analysis. Yet most terrorism analysts still focus primarily on text, because the analysis of images is more challenging. Visual analytics tools and techniques do exist, both qual and quant, with big data research on images being especially popular in communication science at the moment.
In short: we need to pay more attention to the visual nature of the internet – and focus more on these ‘low-hanging fruit’ of visual analytics in the study of extremism.
The far-right
TASM didn’t focus only on the Islam-related side of extremism, but showcased a balanced view across the spectrum, with plenty of emphasis on research into the far-right. I attended several interesting panel talks on this subject, and came away with a number of key points.
One piece of research compared Britain First with Reclaim Australia, aiming to draw out the nuances within the umbrella term ‘far-right’. Methodology involved corpus assisted discourse analysis (CADS) on a static dataset, showing text that Britain First and Reclaim Australia supporters had posted on social media over a three-month period.
The researchers used a social media insights tool, Blurrt, to gather raw data, then used Python scripts to sort it into a workable format before finally analysing using CADS. In particular, they focused on collocations to reveal telling patterns in ideas and sentiments across the two groups.
Findings included a strong pattern of ‘othering’ – the core ‘us versus them’ narrative (which is a common theme not just among far-right discourse but also in some mainstream media and foreign policy: e.g. the Iraq war – ‘Axis of Evil’).
It was unsurprising therefore to find that Muslims and immigrants were particularly targeted. In what appears to be an extension of the ‘us versus them’ theme, ‘metaphors of invasion’ were often found in the discourse of both groups.
Other common themes included mentions of ‘our women’, ‘our religion’ and ‘our culture’ as being under threat from the ‘invaders’. All these themes feel very masculine. It could be interesting to reflect on the proportion of these sentiments that come from male authors; and could also be worth analysing what far-right discourse looks like from a female perspective.
In general, researchers concluded that far-right propaganda is less ‘overtly’ violent than that of ISIS, and is mainly rooted in nationalistic tendencies. This raises many questions. Is this how the far-right have managed to fly ‘under the radar’ for so long? Are they seen as being defensive rather than offensive? (And hence the ‘good guys’ on some level).
Could that be a factor in the much-discussed media under-reporting of far-right crimes, while focusing almost hysterically on those perpetrated by jihadists? Or, are ISIS and similar viewed as ‘worse’ simply because they are more ‘other’ (i.e. racism)?
Resonant narratives
Just as in commercial marketing, narratives work best when they intersect with individual agency and contexts. In his panel talk, Dr Akil Awan pointed out that CVE campaigns must not neglect the real-world issues that allow extremist narratives to resonate in the first place.
So how do ISIS narratives achieve success? They play on themes of belonging and identity; important for people experiencing ‘dual culture alterity’, i.e. feeling alienated from both their parents’ culture and the culture of their country of upbringing. In these cases, a return to fundamentalism becomes an ‘anchor’; a default setting of identity in a sea of alienation.
Awan highlighted the disparity between perceptions and reality around the true numbers of Muslims living in European countries. The media drives much of this misperception; making people feel ‘under siege’, creating fear, driving societies apart and destroying any sense of cohesion. In such a milieu, it is easy for ISIS to ‘eliminate the grey zone’ by means of terrorist acts. The media has already primed society for ISIS to succeed.
Understanding perceptions is as important as understanding reality; because how people perceive something will guide their course of action in response to it. Current CVE campaigns (based around tools such as counter-narrative videos) are cheap to implement and make it look like governments are taking action.
But recognising the ‘lived experience’ of minority groups is one of the keys to successful CVE efforts; neglecting to do so is hypocritical and unlikely to be effective.
Conclusion
In closing, we heard from the arbiter of all this – Facebook. Dr Erin Saltman explained the tools Facebook uses to tackle the online side of extremism and terrorism. These tools include a database of extremist propaganda images that relies on machine learning to match images as they surface, and automatically remove them.
But machine learning has its limitations, and humans are still required to take into account context and nuance. At present, the two work in tandem to surface the content (machine learning) and then interpret it as needed (humans).
Other tools include Facebook Insights, commonly used in commercial marketing, but can also be leveraged to guide counter-speech initiatives and enable precise reading of audiences.
The age of social media, although still in its infancy, has already had profound impact on politics and society – as well as the individual psychology of internet users. The long-term effects are unknown, with many changes no doubt still on the way.
By Samantha North
PhD Candidate
University of Bath
