I have an entry in the Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Communication, which was published this week.
In ‘Belief Echoes’, I explore how and why people continue to believe false information. This occurs even when the information has been debunked or fact-checked. I draw on examples from my own research on Northern Ireland and the COVID-19 pandemic. These examples show that a small proportion of the population often remain within epistemic bunkers. These bunkers revolve around misinformation and half-truths.
Many thanks to the editors (Alessandro Nai, Max Grömping, and Dominique Wirz). They worked hard to bring together the 430+ entries from 570+ authors in the Encyclopedia.
The preprint version of my entry can be read here.
My article ‘The Blame Game? #Brexitriots as an affective ritualized response to civil disorder in Northern Ireland has been published in the International Journal of Communication.
This paper focuses on how the April 2021 violence in Northern Ireland were discursively framed on Twitter. I argue that #Brexitriots was an affective ritualised response to civil unrest in Northern Ireland. It demonstrated a lack of knowledge of the grievances fuelling this violence.
The abstract is below:
The protests and violence in Northern Ireland in April 2021 were nominally a manifestation of Loyalist anger at the “Irish Sea border” created as part of the deal that saw the United Kingdom leave the European Union. Social media were widely blamed for having amplified tensions surrounding the protests. This study explores how affective publics, mobilized on Twitter, responded to the “Brexit riots.” It does so by providing an overview of how online platforms are used during contentious episodes in divided societies, examining the background of the disorder, and presenting the results of a reflexive thematic analysis of #brexitriots tweets (N = 8287) posted between April 9 and April 13, 2021. Results indicate that #Brexitriots was an affective ritualized response from tweeters who appeared unaware of the manifold grievances of the protesters. They used these events as a source of partisan political expression, confirming their view that the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union was a mistake.
I would like to thank Suay Özkula and Victoria Baskett for their feedback on an earlier draft of this study. Also, a special mention to Kady and the IJOC team for their editorial help.
The paper is published Open Access and can be read in full here
Suay Özkula and I have published an article in Social Media + Society. Entitled ‘Where is the Global South? Northern Visibilities in Digital Activism Research’, this paper draws on the results of a review of 315 articles published between 1994 and 2018.
The abstract can be read below:
The seemingly global nature of English-language hashtags often obscures activism from outside the Global North (GN). This systematic review explores geographic representation in this field (N = 315 articles) through an investigation of case study location, author affiliation, methods of data collection and analysis, and researched social media platforms. The results show a preponderance of GN/Majority cases and non-region-specific social media groupings such as hashtag publics, particularly in research employing digital methods. As such, extant research in the field has disproportionately produced what we term Northern Visibilities—groups and movements based in GN countries (above all the United States) and platforms popular within them. We use the findings of the review to critically interrogate notions of the Global South in digital social research and provide recommendations for rectifying geopolitical underrepresentation and promoting more inclusive research practice.
Many thanks to the editors, reviewers, and the SM+S team for their help in getting this out. We would also like to thank Jenny Hayes for her earlier work on this project.
The article can be downloaded and read for free here.
Look out for further details on the study in the New Year!
I am delighted to share a preprint copy of my entry in the forthcoming Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Communication, to be published in 2025.
In ‘Belief Echoes’, I explore how and why people continue to believe false information even when it has been debunked or factchecked. I draw on examples from my own research on Northern Ireland and the COVID-19 pandemic to show how there is often a small proportion of the population who continue to remain within epistemic bunkers revolving around misinformation and half-truths.
Many thanks to the editors (Alessandro Nai, Max Grömping, and Dominique Wirz) for all their work bringing together the 430+ entries (from 570+ authors) in the Encyclopedia. I look forward to reading the final version when it’s out early next year.
The preprint version of my entry can be read here.
“The book enables a wide range of readers – academic scholars and researchers, but also citizens and activists – to grasp the relevance of contentious politics and how these are articulated and disputed in the digital era, especially in our increasingly datafied social world”
“This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the context of NI as a divided society, understanding the recent history of local protests and disputes (between 2012-2015) and the wider scene of the relations between NI, Ireland, and the UK”
“Overall, this book offers valuable and detailed insights into the ways that digital media shape and fuel contentious politics, social mobilisation and citizenship. It shows how online platforms can impact polarised societies negatively, by reproducing prejudice and hate speech, but also positively by managing inter-group tensions, avoiding violence and social unrest, and providing informal learning”
“This work can help academics, activists, political and media experts, as well as the general public evaluate the occurrence of disputable events, such as protests and demonstration parades, within profoundly fragmented contexts like NI particularly in the face of rising mis- and dis-information in the digital age”
I am very grateful to Penny for such a thoughtful review of the book, which can be read in full here
I have written an essay for the University of Glasgow Social Sciences Hub on the role of social media in protests and disorder in divided societies. In the piece, I reflect on something I wrote about the 2011 English riots and consider how online platforms are used by citizens to frame contentious issues. I argue that the indirect effects of online incivility seen during divisive events can be detrimental for efforts to promote peace and reconciliation in divided societies.
Thanks to Andrew MacIver for the help in publishing this. It can be read in full here and you can buy a copy of Digital Contention in a Divided Society here.
I have a new article out in Information, Communication & Society this week. Entitled ‘Random access memories or clichéd representations? Exploring historical photographs of the troubles on Instagram’, it explores 100 historical photographs of the Troubles on Instagram.
.The abstract can be read below:
Social media provide unprecedented opportunities for the distribution of photographs capturing experiences of conflict. Instagram in particular renders conflict photography searchable, whilst also aggregating the memories of traumatised communities. This paper adds to the nascent literature in this area by exploring how the photosharing app is used to share photographs of the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’, a low-intensity conflict that resulted in 3,600 fatalities and left many more bereaved, injured and traumatised. Two decades on from the Belfast Agreement, Northern Ireland remains a deeply divided society in which competing narratives over the conflict remain deeply entrenched. This study explored photographic representation of the Troubles, with a specific focus on who was represented in these images and whether they were evoke personal memories of the conflict. A content and narrative analysis of 100 historical images tagged #thetroubles was conducted in order to explore these issues. Results indicate that images showing the ‘peculiarity’ of everyday life during the conflict, such as armed British soldiers standing in close quarters to children playing in the street, were the most prominent visual representations under this hashtag. The memories evoked by such historical photographs reinforce zero-sum narratives on conflict, rather than promote new interpretations that build support for peace in ‘post-conflict’ societies.
The article is published Open Access and can be found here
Many thanks to the editors and reviewers for their help in getting this out. I would like to express my gratitude to Ekatherina Zhukova and Marguerite Borelli for their comments and input on earlier versions of this paper.
My second book Digital Contention in a Divided Society is due out in paperback on 26 March 2024. It will include a new chapter that explores the role of online platforms in contentious events between 2016 and 2023. It will be on sale for £20 (much more affordable than the hardback version).
Many thanks to Rob Byron and the Manchester University Press team for their help in bringing this to fruition. I am also told there may be a new cover- more on this soon.
I am hoping do do some in-person book talks this time (when the book was launched in 2021 this wasn’t possible due to COVID-19 regulations). I will post details of these on here when they are confirmed. If you are interested in hosting one of these talks then please do contact me (paul.reilly@glasgow.ac.uk).
The updated version of Digital Contention can be preordered here
Virpi Salojärvi (University of Helsinki/University of Vassa) and I are pleased to announce the publication of our co-edited book (De)constructing societal threats during times of deep mediatization today. A description of the book can be found below:
This book explores how both elite and non-elite actors frame societal threats such as the refugee crisis and COVID-19 using both digital and traditional media. It also explores ways in which the framing of these issues as threatening can be challenged using these platforms.
People typically experience societal threats such as war and terrorism through the media they consume, both on and offline. Much of the research in this area to date focuses on either how political and media elites present these issues to citizens, or audience responses to these frames. This book takes a different approach by focusing on how issues such as the refugee crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic are both constructed and deconstructed in an era of hybrid media. It draws on a range of traditional and innovative research methodologies to explore how these issues are framed as ‘threats’ within deeply mediatized societies, ranging from content analysis of newspaper coverage of the Macedonian name dispute in Greece to investigating conspiratorial communities on YouTube using Systemic Functional Linguistics. In doing so, this book enriches our understanding of not only how civil and uncivil actors frame these issues, but also their impact on societal resilience towards future crises.
(De)constructing Societal Threats During Times of Deep Mediatization will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Communication Studies, Media Studies, Journalism, Cultural Studies, Research Methods, Sociology and Politics.
The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of The Communication Review. Many thanks to our authors for their excellent contributions, which are listed below:
1. Framing the Macedonian name dispute in Greece: Nationalistic journalism and the existential threat Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis
2. The “ultimate empathy machine” as technocratic solutionism? Audience reception of the distant refugee crisis through virtual reality Zhe Xu and Mengrong Zhang
3. A systemic functional linguistics approach to analysing white supremacist and conspiratorial Ddscourse on YouTube Olivia Inwood and Michele Zappavigna
4. Internet regulation and crisis-related resilience: From Covid-19 to existential risks Gregory Asmolov
Ceri Ashwell and I have a chapter in the book based on our work on the Mary Beard Twitterstorm (see here for an article we previously published in Information, Communication & Society).
The title and abstract for the chapter are below:
Resisting (everyday) racism on social media: Analysing responses to the 2018 Mary Beard Twitter-storm
Big tech companies like Twitter have often been accused of not doing enough to address online hate speech. The algorithms and designs of social media have facilitated new forms of platformed racism in countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom (UK). While they undoubtedly amplify cyber hate, these online platforms also constitute important spaces in which people of colour (PoC), and their allies, can challenge colorblind racism and white privilege within contemporary societies. This chapter uses the 2018 Mary Beard Twitterstorm to explore how Twitter is used by activists to both highlight and counteract these tropes. The Cambridge scholar was heavily criticised by anti-racist activists for a tweet which appeared to condone the sexual misconduct of Oxfam aid workers in Haiti following an earthquake in January 2010. Her reference to the difficulty of ‘sustaining civilised values’ in the disaster zone was considered prima facie evidence of her whiteness and privilege. Researchers of colour, such as Beard’s Cambridge colleague Dr. Priya Gopal used the tweet to reflect on the ‘casual racism’ they experienced working in UK Higher Education institutions. These acts of resistance towards racial inequality and injustice within the academy led to Gopal herself being subject to much abuse and trolling from Beard’s supporters. This paper sets out to explore whether these acts of resistance can facilitate informal learning about issues pertaining to white privilege and frailty in countries such as the UK. It does so by reviewing the literature on social media and whiteness, providing background on the Mary Beard Twitterstorm, and presenting the results of a qualitative content analysis of 1718 unique tweets containing ‘Mary Beard’, posted between 16 and 20 February 2018. Results indicate that there were nearly twice as many tweets criticising the Cambridge scholar for perpetuating white privilege and frailty than defending her tweet. While many of these tweets were agonistic rather than antagonistic in nature, there was little sign that those talking about the controversy on the site were reflecting on their own white privilege. The burden of talking about these issues fell on the few PoC in the study, who were invariably singled out for abuse by Beard’s supporters. Nevertheless, this study demonstrates the crucial role of opinion leaders such as Gopal in leading difficult conversations about racism and whiteness online.
Many thanks to Stamatis, Anastasia and Maria for the invitation to participate and their hard work in pulling together such a great book on social movements and activism.
The book can be ordered here. If you would like a preprint copy of our chapter then please contact me (paul.reilly@glasgow.ac.uk).
Dr Paul Reilly 