Antisemitism in Reader Comments

Introduction

“…Among others, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) monitor and analyse antisemitism in the United Qualitative approach to the study of antisemitic web comments has received little attention so far. The goal of these analyses is to examine the way antisemitism is expressed explicitly and/or implicitly, as well as to identify linguistic patterns that might have gone unnoticed when adopting a quantitative approach only (see Schwarz-Friesel 2019, Becker 2021. Furthermore, some of these qualitative studies have been conducted to develop and improve algorithms that would better detect antisemitic content online.…”

“…Antisemitism is not only a threat to Jewish communities but is also one of the greatest challenges to social cohesion and the future of democracy, as hatred of Jews often correlates with a resentful attitude and a simplistic binary worldview pitting a supposedly homogenous 'us' against a destructive and malign 'them' in the arena of politics, the media, as well as in academia and science. 4 Moreover, and in stark contrast to other forms of hate, the continuing impact of contemporary antisemitism seems to be dismissed and misunderstood-as shown, for example, by the long gestating but broadly unnoticed antisemitism within the UK left, which finally emerged onto the public domain during Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party (see the various studies on Labour antisemitism and Jeremy Corbyn; for David Miller, the academic in Bristol accused of spreading conspiracy theories regarding Israel, see Becker et al 2021). This culture of debate is all too attached to the political positioning or educational background of the person, group or party in question, and loses sight of antisemitism in the process.…”

5. Countering Antisemitism Online

“…These are long-standing representations of Jews, but new antisemitic concepts have emerged in the last decades. For instance, the nazi analogy-used to target Israel by comparing it to Nazi Germany-has become one of the most prevalent allegations (Becker 2021).…”

“…This study aims to determine to what extent counter speech is content-dependent, as well as to identify the specificities of the comments countering antisemitism online. The analysis will focus on the argumentative strategies (Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca 1988) that are adopted by users in order to both deconstruct the different concepts mobilised in antisemitic comments (Becker 2021) and make their point of view incontestable by creating an authoritative ethos (Amossy 2010).…”