Refugees and Network Publics on Twitter: Networked Framing, Affect, and Capture

Abstract

This article constitutes a big data study of Twitter during the peak of the so-called refugee crisis in the period between October 2015 and May 2016. The article analyzed almost 7.5 million tweets collected through hashtags such as #refugee, #refugeecrisis, # flüchtling, and others. Theoretically, the article draws on concepts such as hybrid media, affective publics, networked framing, and voice. In the context of any increasingly hybrid media, we ask what are the frames on refugees that emerge on Twitter, who are the emerging elites, and to what extent do these frames represent alternative voices. Overall, the findings indicate that overall, the dominant frames remain the same, revolving around security and safety on one hand and humanitarianism on the other. The study also identified some explicitly racist hashtags linked to some of the security and safety frames. Elite politicians, media, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) represent the most prominent actors. In general, the refugee issue on Twitter was found to be subsumed and instrumentalized by political interests. Affect and networked frames are captured by and within a specific political position that we found revolving around the personage of Donald Trump and the increasingly strident anti-immigration voices in Europe. In these terms, the results indicate that Twitter’s contribution to the refugee debate is profoundly equivocal.

Contesting #StopIslam: The Dynamics of a Counter-narrative Against Right-wing Populism

“…After the initial counter-narrative there has been little evidence of contestation of the ongoing use of #StopIslam in relation to more recent attacks in Manchester and London. The dynamics of the #StopIslam hashtag, along with others (Evolvi, 2017;Siapera et al, 2018 and the other papers in this special edition), demonstrates the strategic and instrumental use of social media by right-wing activists, where Twitter is just one component of a more complex media ecology that is working to push mainstream political discussion to the right. In this context, it is particularly important to understand the dynamics of critical counter-narratives and the political possibilities they can (or indeed cannot) offer.…”

“…3 In line with these questions of voice, the distinctive role of social media is often articulated as its relationship with the mainstream media. For instance, there is a strong tradition of work that has offered informative applications of late-Habermasian accounts of the public sphere to explore the -often complex and contradictory ways -that digital media can facilitate counter-publicity and the formation of counter-publics who can contest hegemonic media framings (Downey and Fenton,3 For a fuller discussion of 'voice' within networked digital platforms see Siapera et al, 2018 and for a specific elaboration on the concerns raised by Couldry, see Feshami (2018), this edition. 2003; de Jong, Shaw and Stammers, 2005).…”

5 Reflections on migrants’ contributions in an era of increasing disruption and disinformation

“…d Immigration policy has regrettably become the centrepiece of this transnational struggle for political power. e a Siapera et al, 2018. b Mounk and Foa, 2018.…”

Cyberpragmatic Analysis of Indonesian Opposition Politicians’ Tweets

“…The analysis used in this paper is shaped by previous studies on Twitters and its roles in the political world, particularly on the analysis of how the constructed messages on Twitter can assist the political mission of politicians in both real and digital world [9][10][11][12][13]. The previous studies indicated that building active digital followership through social media platform can serve as a crucial part of a successful political career.…”