This month the paperback version of Digital Contention in a Divided Society (featuring a new afterword) is published. It can be preordered on the Manchester University Press website here.
I will be having a book launch event in Glasgow on 24 April. Hosted by Dave Scott (Nil by Mouth), there will be a Q&A session followed by a drinks reception.
Date & Time: Wednesday 24th April 18:00 -19:30
Venue:237 Advanced Research Centre (ARC), University of Glasgow, 11 Chapel Lane, Glasgow, United Kingdom.
Join Paul Reilly (University of Glasgow) and host, Dave Scott (Nil by Mouth), to celebrate the paperback launch of Paul’s book, Digital contention in a divided society: Social media, parades and protests in Northern Ireland.
They will discuss the role of social media in protests and civil unrest in Northern Ireland, followed by a Q&A session. There will be a drinks reception afterwards.
How are platforms such as Facebook and Twitter used by citizens to frame contentious parades and protests in ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland? What do these contentious episodes tell us about the potential of information and communication technologies to promote positive intergroup contact in the deeply divided society? These issues are addressed in what is the first in-depth qualitative exploration of how social media were used during the union flag protests (December 2012-March 2013), the Ardoyne parade disputes (July 2014 and 2015), and the ‘Brexit riots’ in April 2021. The book focuses on the extent to which affective publics, mobilised and connected via expressions of solidarity on social media, appear to escalate or de-escalate sectarian tensions caused by these hybrid media events. It also explores whether citizen activity on these online platforms has the potential to contribute to peacebuilding in Northern Ireland.
What role do photographs and other visual media play in shaping perceptions of conflict? Do news media have a responsibility to ensure future generations ‘never forget’? How have digital platforms helped shape collective memories of traumatic events?
These were among the many issues discussed at ‘Media and Conflict Memory’, an IAMCR sponsored workshop held at the University of Glasgow in November 2023. This event brought together a diverse group of researchers to discuss the role of media in remembering conflict.
Day 1 saw the majority of papers presented remotely. Panels covered topics such as the use of X (formerly Twitter) for memory activism in Zimbabwe, how young Nigerians used Facebook to document police brutality, and Gazan citizens’ use of smartphones to share experiences of military occupation. A session dedicated to the Russian invasion of Ukraine then provided new insight into how memes and digital technologies represented a virtual battleground in the ongoing conflict.
The first in-person panel focused on media representations of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. A recurring theme here was how photographs of atrocities such as Bloody Sunday had become used to support different narratives on the conflict. Context was provided on how a BBC Radio series had been developed to help bridge the competing narratives on Irish history and the origins of the Troubles. There was also evidence presented showing how popular memes were used both constructively and divisively to discuss the region’s troubled past.
Memes focussing on legacy of Troubles
We finished the day with a Q&A session about the documentary Freedom to Run featuring filmmaker Cairsti Russell and hosted by John Coster. The film focuses on two running groups, one based in Palestine and the other from Glasgow, as they participate in marathons in their respective countries. Several clips were shown illustrating the restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank, including several unsettling scenes showing settler communities harassing and recording the running groups as they toured Hebron. The conversations afterwards focused on the experiences of the filmmakers, the challenges of documenting their experiences when faced with such repression, and the feedback received during recent screenings.
Freedom to Run
Day 2 saw the focus switch more to innovative methods of exploring conflict memory. This included how researchers used Telegram to examine Russian-Ukrainian battles over contested heritage sites, YouTube videos and collective memories of the Greek civil war, and two papers exploring colonialism and migration memory activism in Portugal. A multisensory presentation showcased how horseshoe cartography could be used to map conflict sites through film, text and collages. It was striking how many of the examples discussed in these panels were under-researched. For example, the Dersim massacre in Turkey has lived on through personal photographic archives while images of Nepti the Tiger, a British military mascot during the Malayan insurgency in the 1950s, remain long forgotten in museum archives.
Participants at Media and Conflict Memory workshop, Glasgow, November 2023
There were a few common themes from the workshop I wish to end on. First, many of the presenters reflected on their proximity to the conflicts they studied. Many felt a moral duty to provide evidence about how these were memorialised and passed down to future generations. Second, there was the lack of a fixed understanding of conflict represented in both traditional and digital media platforms. There will always be a section of the audience who choose not to agree with dominant readings of these conflict memory materials. Finally, while the digitization of conflict memory was viewed as generally positive in terms of accessibility, there were concerns that traumatic incidents were constantly relitigated and weaponised by those with no direct lived experience of them. In this respect, both traditional and digital media often highlight the lack of shared narratives on war and conflicts of the past.
Scotland’s distinctive public sphere: a media policy roundtable
This roundtable will explore Scotland’s distinctive media and public sphere, with a particular focus on questions of sustainability in respect of funding, trust and the changing regulatory landscape. It contextualises these questions in a turbulent political environment, in which the constitutional question continues to dominate, and the radical changes brought by digital technologies.
Devolution in 1999 significantly shifted Scotland’s political landscape, and 2014’s referendum illuminated the way in which Scotland’s public sphere has developed in parallel as an often uncomfortable hybrid of UK-rooted institutions and emerging Scottish players. Analysis of media structures in the devolved state have however often been subsumed under UK-wide research which can fail to fully illuminate Scotland’s distinct challenges and nature.
This roundtable draws on a recent stakeholder report produced by academics at Glasgow University. Speakers will share insights on a set of key themes including sustainable funding and support for Scotland’s media and how it works in other small countries, digital regulation and competition, holding power to account in Scotland, and the impacts of global digital media on engagement with local issues. It will then invite contributions from the panel speakers and audiences about the future trajectory of Scotland’s media in the next decade.
Participants will include:
Dr Paul Reilly, Senior Lecturer, Politics Dr Catherine Happer, Director of Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG), Sociology Professor Philip Schlesinger, Professor in Cultural Theory, and Dr Dominic Hinde, Lecturer, Sociology.
Tomorrow (5 September), I will be presenting a paper based on a project that explored social media, sectarianism and football in Scotland. The panel, entitled Scottish Media and Culture, place at 9am in Room W010B (Annie Lennox Building). The abstract can be read below.
#ScotlandsShame: Twitter, affective publics and football-related sectarianism in Scotland
Social media have frequently been identified as a significant contributing factor to sectarianism in contemporary Scotland. What is typically absent from these debates is empirical evidence showing the prevalence of sectarianism on online platforms in relation to football, and specifically how the rivalry between Celtic and Rangers fans is contested online. This paper sets out to address this gap through a qualitative study of tweets (N=84,028) posted during the disorder that followed the Rangers ‘title celebrations’ in Glasgow city centre on 15 May 2021. Results indicate that there was much evidence of dehumanising and sectarian language being used to ‘other’ Rangers supporters. Hashtags like #ScotlandsShame were used by citizens to document their experiences of what they perceived as the ‘anti-Catholic bigotry’ on display in the city centre that evening. The Scottish establishment was criticised for not doing enough to eliminate this bigotry, whether it be in the form of banning contentious Orange Order marches or abolishing segregation within schools. In response, Rangers supporters accused the Scottish Government of having an agenda against their club, as demonstrated by its failure to condemn the anti-deportation protests at Kenmure Street a few days earlier. In this way, social media afforded these affective publics opportunities to contest the dominant media narratives on both the Celtic-Rangers rivalry and football-related sectarianism in Scotland. The paper concludes by considering whether the sectarianism visible on online platforms during such contentious events is reflective of broader societal trends.
Dr Paul Reilly 