MeCCSA and ECREA conference presentations

Posted on September 7, 2026 by Paul Reilly

Last week I presented at the annual Media, Communication and Cultural Studies (MeCCSA) conference at the University of Leicester. I thoroughly enjoyed the panels I attended, catching up with folk (including several from when I worked at Leicester over ten years ago!), and participated in my first MeCCSA pub quiz (‘The Team With No Name’ held their own ;). Many congratulations to Julian Matthews and the team for organising a great conference.

The Sir Bob Burgess building is primed and ready for delegates. MeCCSA 2026 begins tomorrow at the University of Leicester … #meccsa2026@meccsa.bsky.social @deptmedialeic.bsky.social
— Julian Matthews (@julianmatthews1.bsky.social) 2026-09-01T18:50:39.326Z

The abstract for my paper is below:

Social media, entangled conflict memories, and peacebuilding in post-violence societies

Social media are increasingly integral to how we both remember and forget conflict. These highly personalised newsfeeds present a challenge to peacebuilding initiatives in ‘post-violence’ societies. While online platforms provide the architecture for a more inclusive and pluralistic conflict memory politics, they also algorithmically amplify hate speech and mis-and disinformation, that undermines community relations. The durability of collective conflict memories, previously synonymous with physical archives and legacy media coverage, is undermined by the sheer number of agents and platforms involved in its production today. In this paper, I focus on how these entanglements between mnemonic agents and platforms produce conflict memories in post-violence societies like Cyprus and Northern Ireland. I argue that the role of legacy media in providing materials for the public remembrance of conflict has been usurped by digital technologies, which enable users to bear witness to atrocities by searching for and sharing survivor testimonies. What was once a shared reality experienced through ‘mainstream’ media has been replaced by personalized war feeds accessible via apps like TikTok, where the legitimacy of conflicts is contested and their legacies debated. This undoubtedly raises questions about the role of online platforms in curating conflict memory materials, especially when many appear to hide behind ‘free speech’ whilst refusing to remove online hate and misinformation. However, it is expedient for political elites to blame platforms for the persistence of antagonistic modes of remembering conflict rather than address the structural factors and conflict legacy issues that divide communities in post-violence societies.

The slides from my presentation are here

ECREA

This week I am attending the 11th European Communication Conference (ECC2026) in Brno, Czechia. My paper, co-authored with Suay Özkula, draws on our previous systematic review of empirical Digital Activism research. This paper explores how ethics is narrated in DA research to date. We will present some preliminary insights from our systematic review of the literature.

The abstract can be read below:

Non-maleficence without institutional gatekeeping? How ethical issues are addressed in empirical digital activism research

While early studies played down ethical concerns about online research, there has been a shift towards more formal systems governing social media research over the past decade. Institutional regulatory structures like Research Ethics Boards have increasingly scrutinised these projects, with ethics forms becoming ‘gatekeepers’ for how universities organise research culture. There has been a concurrent growth in ethical guidelines for online research from organisations like the Association of Internet Researchers. Yet, there remain doubts as to how seriously ethics is treated in research, above all in studies employing data mining techniques. This is particularly salient for Digital Activism (DA) studies, where activists might be exposed to harm through their identification in publications. In response to this issue, our paper provides a critical discussion of how ethical issues are addressed in empirical DA research. We draw on data gathered from a systematic review of journal articles published between 2009 and 2024. In the first instance, mentions of research ethics were searched in protest literature more broadly (N= 264) and then in DA articles specifically (N=59). Coding categories included how ethics were narrated (e.g., popular approaches or the mention of formal procedures) as well as what attributes characterised articles discussing research ethics, for example the platform(s) studied, method(s) of data collection and analysis, authors’ institutional affiliations and their respective disciplines. We tested specifically whether empirical DA research included ethics statements i.e. outlining whether ethics approval had been obtained prior to the study beginning and what measures were taken to protect participants, and whether articles were more likely to address ethical issues if they drew on traditional rather than digital data sources. Results indicate that very few DA articles published during this period included ethics statements. Nevertheless, there was much evidence of non-maleficence in the corpus, including those studies using digital methods. These are often rendered opaque by the submission requirements of journals and the norms of certain disciplines.

Our paper is scheduled for Thursday 10th (11:15), in room K2:200.

If you are at the conference this week please do say hi – looks like a great programme!

New chapter out in De Gruyter handbook of Digital Political Communication

Posted on July 22, 2026 by Paul Reilly

De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Political Communication, published July 2026

I have a chapter in the recently published De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Political Communication. Many thanks to the fantastic editors, Mark Wheeler and & Petros Iosifidis for the invitation, and for pulling together such an excellent volume.

My chapter is entitled ‘Ethical Dilemmas in Researching Sousveillance on YouTube Revisited’.

The abstract can be read below:

The socio-technical affordances of online platforms like YouTube enable citizens to distribute sousveillance (or inverse surveillance) footage, focusing attention on police brutality, to a potential global audience. This undoubtedly creates new opportunities for qualitative researchers exploring the role of social media in contemporary protest and social movements, but it also presents a series of ethical dilemmas to be addressed. Most notably, scholars must consider the feasibility and desirability of seeking informed consent from those uploading and commenting on these videos. This requires some engagement with the merits of the so-called ‘fair game’ defence, namely that publicly available social media data can be used without ethical considerations due to the fact that users should be aware of such data collection courtesy of the terms of service of each platform. In this paper, I consider what measures, if any, should be taken to protect those who comment on social media sousveillance. I do so by revisiting the ethical approach taken during a previous study of how YouTube was used to share sousveillance footage, namely the 2011 ‘Battle of Stokes Croft’ in Bristol, England. I reflect on whether a different stance might be taken if this research was to be conducted in the contemporary era. I argue that sousveillance researchers should focus on what is said online rather than who says it.

The book can be purchased online and you can read a preprint of my chapter here.

Social Media and the Belfast Riots: Articles in Sunday Post, Yle (Finland) and Times of Malta

Posted on June 15, 2026 by Paul Reilly

I have three new articles out on the role of social media in the violent disorder seen in Northern Ireland last week.

On Friday I was interviewed by Derek Healey for an article in The Sunday Post. We discussed whether further racist violence was likely over the summer, and the role of social media in fuelling this violence. I suggested that there was a playbook where far-right agitators like Tommy Robinson use their online presence to whip up tensions around immigration. A quote from the interview is below:

“The trouble is that if there’s a summer where we have several incidents where violent crimes or attacks are linked to people of colour, or there is a suggestion by someone like Musk or Robinson that this is about immigrants, you could well see it play out again.”

The article can be read online here and is below:

I also have an op-ed published in the Times of Malta. This focused on the role of online agitators in the protests and related violence seen in Belfast last year.

Finally, I was interviewed by Vilma Romsi for an YLE (Finland) segment on the riots.

I argued that online platforms were being used to manufacture and manipulate anti-immigrant sentiments in the UK. I pointed out that right-wing agitators and certain media outlets talk a lot about the negative aspects of immigration. This has fuelled a perception within some working-class communities that they are to blame for the social and economic problems they face, irrespective of the evidence. A quote from the article (translated into English) is below:

“Social media influencers and traditional media are drumming up and clinging to immigration in a way that makes it seem like a big deal to ordinary people. In reality, the number of immigrants in Northern Ireland is relatively small,” Reilly says.

Thanks to Vilma for the interview, it can be read (in Finnish) here.

Social Media and the Belfast Riots: Articles in The Conversation, New Statesman and The Times

Posted on June 12, 2026 by Paul Reilly

I have three new articles out on the role of social media in the violent disorder seen in Northern Ireland this week.

On Wednesday I wrote for the Conversation UK on how social media had been used by far-right agitators like Tommy Robinson to incite violence in Belfast and other towns. I argued that while more could be done to prevent online hate and misinformation, the toxic discourse around immigration was a bigger problem. It can be read in full here.

Yesterday I had an op-ed published in The Times. I posited how facts don’t matter to those seeking to leverage traumatic incidents, such as Monday’s knife attack in North Belfast, to further anti-immigrant agendas. I was also interviewed by David Leask for a report on the protests and related violence in Glasgow.

Finally, I had an article published in The New Statesman yesterday. In this one I reflected on the similarities between this week’s events and the racist violence seen in Ballymena last summer. I discussed the reasons why far-right agitators have been able to mobilise support from working-class loyalist communities, and the role of online platforms in whipping up anti-immigrant sentiments. The piece can be read here (you may need to subscribe to access it).

Many thanks to Charlotte Morris for helping arranging these , and to Nick Harris, David Leask, Dale Miller and Sarah Reid for publishing them.