‘Refugees are not welcome’: Digital racism, online place-making and the evolving categorization of Syrians in Turkey

Abstract

This article argues that digital publics unleash and bolster everyday racism, creating an unregulated space where anonymity and ubiquity enable the dissemination of racist message. By creating broader visibility and wider reach of racist texts and facilitating more participation for racists, social media platforms such as Twitter normalize gendered and place-based racialization of refugees. Recently, hostility and hate became the norm in derogating the refugee identity on social media platforms. To investigate the complexity of digital racism, this article presents a unique case study on Twitter, capturing the widespread user reactions in the aftermath of the mass resettlement of Syrians in Turkey. It examines varying racialization of Syrians on the Turkish Twittersphere, using sentiment and qualitative content analyses of hashtags and mentions on Syrians, when they hit Twitter trends for Turkey for a year, first, for mundane events and, second, during the Turkish state’s occupation in Northern Syria.

International Students' Experiences During Covid-19 Pandemic

“…The economy is the most affected sector from restrictions and isolation due to COVID-19 in Turkey, like many other countries. Many international students hold part-time jobs inside and outside the campus when they are studying in Turkey (Ozduzen et. al., 2020).…”

“…Some Syrian friends said to me that local people think that refugees pose a health risk to Turks. (April 5, 2020) Syrians are discriminated against in Turkey due to racialized discourses about Syrians and the Middle East because they are considered a threat to Turkey's values, safety, health, and economy (Koca, 2016;Ozduzen et. al., 2020).…”

“…al., 2020). Middle Eastern people in Turkey are racialized in similar practices but the implications for these racialization practices differ based on their other intersecting identities, such as gender, branch of Islam that they belong to, language, and nationality in Turkey (Koca, 2016;Ozduzen et. al., 2020).…”

Digital placemaking and the datafication of forced migrants

“…The tropes of victimhood and threat are repeated on social media. Ozduzen et al (2020) depicted the overtly negative portrayal of Syrian refugees in Turkey through an analysis of Turkish Twitter. During everyday events, 85% of tweets expressed overt racist attitudes toward Syrians, which increased to 95% during the invasion of Northern Syria by the Turkish state; hence, the victim-threat narrative emerged again.…”

Three clusters of content-audience associations in expression of racial prejudice while consuming online television news

“…Despite social norms that restrain the racial bias, there are many examples of online racism against various racial/ethnic minorities, such as African Americans [4,6,39], Hispanics [6], Korean residents in Japan (Zainichi Koreans) [7,36], Indigenous Australians [40], Roma [41], and Syrian refugees [42]. Some researchers have focused on the role of high anonymity in online communities that enable users to post racial toxic comments, which would otherwise not be posted publicly by the people in modern societies [4,5,8,[42][43][44][45][46][47]. Other researchers have stressed that the lack of social physical cues in online communication tempts users to accord to stereotypes and group norms, including about race [46].…”