“Hashjacking” the Debate: Polarisation Strategies of Germany’s Political Far-Right on Twitter

Darius, Philipp; Stephany, Fabian

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-34971-4_21

Cited by 16 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Forms of 'online misogyny' (Ging & Siapera, 2018), 'hashjacking' (Darius & Stephany, 2019;Knüpfer, Hoffmann, & Voskresenskii, 2020) and racist propaganda in the name of human rights (Richards, 2019;Schneiker, 2019) are becoming more widespread strategies to directly enlist social media followers for reactionary politics and forge anti-elitist, nationalistic and radicalised discourses. In the case of #120decibel, a discourse on women's safety in public spaces is constructed as a threat to the cultural norms of the German nation (and its population) and the apparent failure of its political system to ensure basic human rights.…”

Section: Populist Absorption Of Emancipatory Strategies Through Affecmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pitching Gender in a Racist Tune: The Affective Publics of the #120decibel Campaign

Adlung

Lünenborg

Raetzsch

2021

MaC

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This article analyses the changed structures, actors and modes of communication that characterise ‘dissonant public spheres.’ With the #120decibel campaign by the German Identitarian Movement in 2018, gender and migration were pitched in a racist tune, absorbing feminist concerns and positions into neo-nationalistic, misogynist and xenophobic propaganda. The article examines the case of #120decibel as an instance of ‘affective publics’ (Lünenborg, 2019a) where forms of feminist protest and emancipatory hashtag activism are absorbed by anti-migration campaigners. Employing the infrastructure and network logics of social media platforms, the campaign gained public exposure and sought political legitimacy through strategies of dissonance, in which a racial solidarity against the liberal state order was formed. Parallel structures of networking and echo-chamber amplification were established, where right-wing media articulate fringe positions in an attempt to protect the rights of white women to be safe in public spaces. #120decibel is analysed and discussed here as characteristic of the ambivalent role and dynamics of affective publics in societies challenged by an increasing number of actors forming an alliance on anti-migration issues based on questionable feminist positions.

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Section: Populist Absorption Of Emancipatory Strategies Through Affecmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pitching Gender in a Racist Tune: The Affective Publics of the #120decibel Campaign

Adlung

Lünenborg

Raetzsch

2021

MaC

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“…En sus años de existencia, Vox ha sabido explotar su presencia en las redes sociales, siguiendo los ejemplos de otros partidos o líderes populistas o de extrema derecha, como es el caso de Salvini y la Liga Norte en Italia (Padovani, 2018;Berti, 2020), Alianza por Alemania (Darius;Stephnay, 2019;Ahmed;Pisoiu, 2020) o la extrema derecha sueca (Åkerlund, 2020), entre otros (Froio & Ganesh, 2019). Coincidiendo con su entrada en el parlamento autonómico de Andalucía (diciembre de 2018), el partido se conjulio-diciembre de 2021…”

Section: Redes Sociales Y Voxunclassified

La crisis de la Covid-19 como oportunidad política. El uso de Twitter por Santiago Abascal durante el estado de alarma en España (14 de marzo-20 de junio de 2020)

Antón

2021

Doxa Comunicación

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Los grupos políticos de extrema derecha se caracterizan por tratar de aprovechar los momentos de crisis para hacer llegar sus mensajes a la sociedad. Este tipo de partidos utiliza las redes sociales como altavoces de sus propuestas y lugar donde reclutar simpatizantes, evitando a los medios de comunicación tradicionales. En España el primer estado de alarma (entre 14 de marzo y 20 de junio de 2020), provocado por la covid-19, supuso una oportunidad para que Vox y Santiago Abascal multiplicaran sus críticas al gobierno y se presentaran como alternativa política. A través de una metodología cuantitativa y cualitativa, la presente investigación evalúa la forma en la que la actividad en Twitter del perfil oficial de Santiago Abascal ha logrado hacer llegar su mensaje y conseguir más adeptos. Para ello se ha analizado el efecto producido por los mensajes publicados en el perfil de Santiago Abascal durante el estado de alarma en España, comparándolo con el del resto de líderes políticos españoles. Los resultados muestran que los seguidores de Santiago Abascal son los que se manifiestan más activos a la hora de interactuar con los mensajes publicados en su perfil, de un modo muy superior al del resto de líderes políticos.

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“…When mapping these debates it is possible to identify different groups that arise due to ideologically aligned messaging behaviour [7,8]. One strategy used by more or less organised political groups that is especially relevant for Twitter is the hijacking or 'hashjacking' of hashtags [9][10][11][12][13]. This notion refers to the function of a hashtag to represent an issue, movement or organisation and the general expectation that the stream of information and messages pertaining to these hashtags resembles in some way the public opinion on that matter [14][15][16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This notion refers to the function of a hashtag to represent an issue, movement or organisation and the general expectation that the stream of information and messages pertaining to these hashtags resembles in some way the public opinion on that matter [14][15][16]. Consequently, the action of 'hashjacking' as using hashtags that were established by politically opposed groups or a general civil society discourse, is executed with the goal of quantitatively dominating the content referring to this specific hashtag [12]. With regards to public hashtag debates, this strategy forms an adverse group or counter-public that is separated from the wider discourse and forms a separated cluster [17,18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How the Far-Right Polarises Twitter: 'Highjacking' Hashtags in Times of COVID-19

Darius¹,

Stephany²

2020

Preprint

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Twitter influences political debates. Phenomena like fake news and hate speech show that political discourse on micro-blogging can become strongly polarised by algorithmic enforcement of selective perception. Some political actors actively employ strategies to facilitate polarisation on Twitter, as past contributions show, via strategies of 'hashjacking'. For the example of COVID-19 related hashtags and their retweet networks, we examine the case of partisan accounts of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and their potential use of 'hashjacking' in May 2020. Our findings indicate that polarisation of political party hashtags has not changed significantly in the last two years. We see that right-wing partisans are actively and effectively polarising the discourse by 'hashjacking' COVID-19 related hashtags, like #CoronaVirusDE or #FlattenTheCurve. This polarisation strategy is dominated by the activity of a limited set of heavy users. The results underline the necessity to understand the dynamics of discourse polarisation, as an active political communication strategy of the far-right, by only a handful of very active accounts.

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“Hashjacking” the Debate: Polarisation Strategies of Germany’s Political Far-Right on Twitter

Cited by 16 publications

References 13 publications

Pitching Gender in a Racist Tune: The Affective Publics of the #120decibel Campaign

Pitching Gender in a Racist Tune: The Affective Publics of the #120decibel Campaign

La crisis de la Covid-19 como oportunidad política. El uso de Twitter por Santiago Abascal durante el estado de alarma en España (14 de marzo-20 de junio de 2020)

How the Far-Right Polarises Twitter: 'Highjacking' Hashtags in Times of COVID-19

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