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Information Flows and Radicalization Leading to Violent Extremism in Central Asia

Search for Common Ground; Internews (2019), 77 pp.

"The study is comprised of three main parts: a desk study of available and accessible material – reports, documents and media material; a qualitative study comprising over 200 interviews with ordinary people, experts, and persons with direct experience with radicalization leading to violent extrem ... ism (RVE); and a quantitative component consisting of national surveys of people’s information consumption habits. For the desk study, the effort was made to gain as broad a picture as possible, that is, to cover all five countries of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. However, predictably and unfortunately, Uzbekistan and especially Turkmenistan proved difficult cases to study in full. For both the qualitative and quantitative field research activities, for several reasons, only the first three countries were included. As a result, this study is able to report most robustly on these three countries and propose observations regarding Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan only to a limited extent. Based on the desk study, the drivers of extremist sympathies as established in existing research have been political grievances (injustice from state structures; identity-based discrimination; oppressive political regimes, etc), economic difficulties (unemployment; indebtedness; poverty; and desire for quick and greater income) and ideological motivations (resentment of false values; striving for the singularly just and true life; for reward in a perceived afterlife). To these push and pull factors are added a range of enabling factors, such as migration, young age, gender (women), and means of communication. All these drivers of RVE need to be treated with caution, as stressed by various authors and suggested by evidence gained in field research. A general observation, gained from the desk research and supported by evidence in both qualitative and quantitative field studies, was the difference among the countries in degree of control over the information space, or the degree of hegemony over public discourse. Of the three most fully studied countries, hegemonic discourse was the strongest in Tajikistan, followed by Kazakhstan, and the least in Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan, analyzed to a limited extent, would be closer to the extreme of Tajikistan, whereas Turkmenistan was too closed to make reasonably robust observations." (Page 3) more

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Digital Threats to Democracy

Marianne Elliott, Jess Berentson-Shaw, Kathleen Kuehn, Leon Salter, Ella Brownlie

The Workshop; Law Foundation; Luminate Foundation (2019), 244 pp.

"At the heart of the challenges to democracy posed by digital media are three core problems: 1. Platform monopolies: two or three corporations control not only our means of communication, but also the content which is distributed, both of which are core aspects of our democracy. Whilst the market po ... more

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Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond
Deep Insights

Allan Thompson (ed.)

Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation (2019), x, 637 pp.

"The book includes an extensive section on the echoes of Rwanda, which looks at the cases of Darfur, the Central African Republic, Myanmar, and South Sudan, while the impact of social media as a new actor is examined through chapters on social media use by the Islamic State and in Syria and in other ... more

External Link (145)

Avoiding Discrimination & Hate Speech in Media: Guidebook

Muhammad Khamaiseh

Al Jazeera Media Institute (2019), 42 pp.

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Facebook India. Towards the Tipping Point of Violence: Caste and Religious Hate Speech

Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Abishek Kumar, Priya Nair, Josh Greely

Equality Labs (2019), 65 pp.

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Satellite Sectarianisation or Plain Old Partisanship? Inciting Violence in the Arab Mainstream Media

Jessica Watkins

London: LSE Middle East Centre (2019), 23 pp.

"This report assesses widespread claims that pan-Arab satellite news channels are responsible for inciting sectarian violence during the Arab uprisings. Based on an empirical study of how the most popular channels (Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Arabiya) and a competitive newcomer (Al-Mayadeen) have frame ... more

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WorldCat (190)

Social Media in Africa: An Emerging Force for Autocrats and Activists

Geoffrey York

In: Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond

Allan Thompson (ed.)

Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation (2019), pp. 415-430

"The most extreme damage inflicted by social media can be seen in South Sudan. As documented in the chapter by Theo Dolan, social media in South Sudan has contributed to hatred and conflict among ethnic groups. Many investigators, including UN investigators, have warned that South Sudan's social med ... ia are triggering violence against ethnic groups. Since the beginning of the civil war in late 2013, social media has fuelled waves of hate speech that have provoked deadly violence and ethnic conflict in South Sudan, including massacres and other atrocities. In that sense, social media has become a new variation of the "hate radio" phenomenon that flourished in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide … Social media is also emerging as a powerful way to harass and intimidate the opponents of a regime or a political party. In this sense, it adds another weapon to the arsenal of a powerful regime that already has multiple weapons at its disposal. A regime can mobilize its supporters to use social media in a targeted way against its foes, or it can use its financial resources to create a fake army of fictional users on social media. In either case, it is tilting the playing field against its enemies. A targeted attack through social media can be more effective than the telephone threats or messages often deployed in the past. The use of social media can be more intimidating because it belittles the targeted person in front of a much bigger audience. The presence of this audience means that the attack is more damaging, more difficult to ignore and has the potential to mobilize large numbers of people against the victim … While social media is often used for anti-democratic purposes in Africa's authoritarian states, it has also been used as a force for reform, accountability and justice. It has helped to safeguard the fairness of elections. It has allowed greater scrutiny of potential threats, such as vote-rigging or violence, allowing citizens to be alerted when there is still a chance to prevent the worst abuses. It has put a spotlight on corruption and political wrongdoing, allowing activists to mobilize pressure on governments to resolve these long-neglected problems. In some cases, as it did in the Arab Spring, social media has played a role in toppling an authoritarian state. When an election was called in the small West African state of Gambia, where the dictator Yahya Jammeh had ruled for 22 years, opposition candidates had little access to state-controlled media. So the main opposition party created more than a dozen WhatsApp groups, allowing it to communicate with voters. Other forms of social media also proliferated. A leading independent group, the Gambia Youth and Women's Forum, discussed election issues on a public Facebook group with 55,000 members. The government blocked access to WhatsApp and eventually extended the shutdown to the entire internet, but Gambians used virtual private network (VPN) technology to bypass the shutdown. The opposition won the election and Jammeh was forced to flee the country." (Pages 419-423) more

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Social Media and Conflict in Yemen: A Lexicon of Hate Speech Terms

Jacqueline Lacroix

Washington, DC: PeaceTech Lab; Development Transformations; Peace Track Initiative (2019), 31 pp.

"Conflict in Yemen plays out along various fault lines—regional, sectarian, class, political, tribal, and ethnic—which are reflected in the hateful language employed on and offline to incite violence. The sectarian aspect of conflict in Yemen is relatively new, as prior to 2011, “religious coe ... xistence and intermingling was taken for granted by most Yemenis and seen as a normal feature of everyday life.” But with the outbreak of conflict after the removal of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, “sectarian discourse has become more heated, reorganizing Yemeni society along sectarian lines and rearranging people’s relationships to one another on a non-nationalist basis.” Furthermore, the social and political dynamics in Yemen have fostered a permissive environment for hate speech. According to information gathered from a community meeting held in Sana’a in 2015, “many leaders have normalized and legitimized antagonistic, exclusionary rhetoric to consolidate their power and dehumanize their enemies.” In terms of access to online networks, despite a weak telecommunications sector relative to other Middle Eastern countries, an estimated 90 percent of the Yemeni population has access to the internet through mobile phones and, as of 2015, 93 percent of internet users are on Facebook and 92 percent utilize WhatsApp. The heavy saturation of these online communications networks highlights a growing need to understand and address the hate speech being spread within Yemen’s complex context. PeaceTech Lab’s work on hateful speech aims to identify and contextualize the particular terms and phrases that have the potential to lead to violence. This project identifies relevant terms through on-the-ground information gathering and examines their origins, context, and usages in a particular country environment. To successfully monitor and counter hateful speech, we must first identify specific terms and the social and political context that makes them offensive, inflammatory, and potentially dangerous. The research also seeks to identify alternative terms that might be used to mitigate or replace this language and thereby contribute to building peace. Finally, this report is intended as a resource for individuals and organizations involved in monitoring and combatting hateful speech as well as those involved in conflict prevention and mitigation so that their work can be more effective." (Introduction) more

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Direito à comunicação no Brasil 2018

São Paulo: Intervozes (2019), 80 pp.

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Social Media and Conflict in South Sudan II: A Lexicon of Hate Speech Terms 2017-2018

Will Ferroggiaro

Washington, DC: PeaceTech Lab (2019), 36 pp.

"This report — Social Media and Conflict in South Sudan II: A Lexicon of Hate Speech Terms 2017-2018 — follows on its predecessor which was released in December 2016 after three years of civil war in South Sudan. It identifies key terms being used in the conflict, as well as new terms, context, ... more

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Social Media, Discrimination and Intolerance in South Africa: A Lexicon of Hateful Terms

Will Ferroggiaro

Washington, DC: PeaceTech Lab; Media Monitoring Africa (2019), 36 pp.

"South Africa’s upcoming general election marks 25 years of multi-racial democracy: a milestone which has us reflecting on how far the country has come - and how far it has to go. Despite real and lasting achievements, problems of massive economic inequalities, disparities in land ownership, and h ... more

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Reporting Hate Speech, Terrorism & Violence: Guidelines for Journalists and Media Workers in South East Asia

Norwich: Public Media Alliance (2019), 14 pp.

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Weaponised Information in Brazil: Digitising Hate

Diego Casaes, Yasodara Córdova

Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2019), 18 pp.

"In the last few years, the world information ecosystem has been flooded by the “fake news” phenomena, augmented by the widespread use of social media. The fragmentation and scale of the new communication tools help spread old ideologies, that uphold racism, homophobia, and oppression. This phen ... more

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The relationship between influential actors’ language and violence: A Kenyan case study using artificial intelligence

Chris Mahony, Eduardo Albrecht, Murat Sensoy

London; Oxford: Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development (2019), 79 pp.

"Scholarly work addressing the drivers of violent conflict predominantly focus on macro-level factors, often surrounding social group-specific grievances relating to access to power, justice, security, services, land, and resources. Recent work identifies these factors of risk and their heightened r ... more

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"Hate Speech: Was tun?": Online-Weiterbildungsangebot für Fachkräfte und interessierte Userinnen und User

jugendschutz.net (2019), 6 pp.

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Facebooking in Myanmar: From Hate Speech to Fake News to Partisan Political Communication

Nyi Nyi Kyaw

Singapore: ISEAS (2019), 10 pp.

"Facebook is the Internet in Myanmar, and it presents both opportunities for and challenges to the government, the opposition, and the people in a country that is in transition. Facebook has gained notoriety as a platform for hate speech and fake news in Myanmar over the past seven years. Facebook h ... more

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"Fake News," Dangerous Speech and Mass Violence: Challenges for Social Media in the Developing World

Stephanie MacLellan

In: Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond

Allan Thompson (ed.)

Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation (2019), pp. 483-500

"The cases discussed in this chapter have demonstrated how disinformation and rhetoric that is spread through social media in the developing world often meets the Benesch criteria for dangerous speech. It comes from influential sources, which can include family and friends who share it. It plays on ... more

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Google Scholar (139)

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Free Speech in the Digital Age

Susan J. Brison, Katharine Gelber (eds.)

New York: Oxford University Press (2019), xvi, 259 pp.

"This collection of thirteen new essays is the first to examine, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, how the new technologies and global reach of the internet are changing the theory and practice of free speech. The rapid expansion of online communication, as well as the changing roles of gov ... more

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Violent Extremism in Central Asia 2018: A Preliminary Survey of Groups, Digital Dimensions and State Responses

Ottawa; Bishkek: SecDev; Civil Initiative on Internet Policy (CIIP) (2018), 45 pp.

"Over the past decade, radicalisation to violent extremism (VE) has become a matter of pressing public and political concern in Central Asia. Between 2000 and 5000 Central Asians responded to calls to join jihad in Syria and Afghanistan, most of them radicalised while foreign workers in the labour c ... more

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Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics

Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts

New York, NY: Oxford University Press (2018), ix, 462 pp.

"Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage o ... more

Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond Deep Insights

Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond
Deep Insights