Antisemitism in Online Communication: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Hate Speech in the Twenty-First Century - cover image

Copyright

Matthias J. Becker; Laura Ascone; Karolina Placzynta; Chloé Vincent. Copyright of individual chapters are maintained by the chapter author(s).

Published On

2024-06-21

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80511-316-4
Hardback978-1-80511-317-1
PDF978-1-80511-318-8
HTML978-1-80511-320-1
EPUB978-1-80511-319-5

Language

  • English

Print Length

260 pages (viii+252)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 19 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.75" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 23 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.91" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback500g (17.64oz)
Hardback676g (23.85oz)

Media

Illustrations24
Tables13

Funding

OCLC Number

1442805097

LCCN

2021388888

THEMA

  • UBJ
  • UDBS
  • JBFA
  • JBCT1

BISAC

  • SOC031000
  • COM060140
  • COM079000

LCC

  • PN4565.A58

Keywords

  • antisemitism
  • hate speech
  • qualitative analysis
  • quantitative analysis
  • multimodal analysis
  • internet studies
  • social media studies

Antisemitism in Online Communication

Transdisciplinary Approaches to Hate Speech in the Twenty-First Century

The normalisation of hate speech, including antisemitic rhetoric, poses a significant threat to social cohesion and democracy. While global efforts have been made to counter contemporary antisemitism, there is an urgent need to understand its online manifestations. Hate speech spreads easily across the internet, facilitated by anonymity and reinforced by algorithms that favour engaging--even if offensive--content. It often takes coded forms, making detection challenging.

Antisemitism in Online Communication addresses these issues by analysing explicit and implicit antisemitic statements in mainstream online discourse. Drawing from disciplines such as corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, semiotics, history, and philosophy, this edited collection examines over 100,000 user comments from three language communities. Contributors explore various facets of online antisemitism, including its intersectionality with misogyny and its dissemination through memes and social networks. Through case studies, they examine the reproduction, support, and rejection of antisemitic tropes, alongside quantitative assessments of comment structures in online discussions. Additionally, the volume delves into the capabilities of content moderation tools and deep-learning models for automated hate speech detection. This multidisciplinary approach provides a comprehensive understanding of contemporary antisemitism in digital spaces, recognising the importance of addressing its insidious spread from multiple angles.

Contributors

Matthias J. Becker

(editor)
Project Lead of Decoding Antisemitism, Postdoc Researcher at ZfA at Technical University of Berlin

Dr Matthias J. Becker is a linguist, with a strong focus on pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, (critical) discourse and media studies, research on prejudice and nationalism, as well as on social media studies. At Freie Universität Berlin, he read linguistics, philosophy and literature, and has worked in several research projects on the use of language in political and media campaigns. His doctoral dissertation, published with Nomos in 2018, analyses the linguistic construction of national pride, antisemitic stereotypes and demonising historical analogies in British and German discourses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An English version of the book (entitled Antisemitism in Reader Comments: Analogies for Reckoning with the Past) was published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2021. A consistent link between all his research activities is the question of how implicit hate speech―apparently accepted within various milieus of the political mainstream―is constructed and what conditions its production is subject to. Matthias is the creator and lead of the Decoding Antisemitism research project.

Laura Ascone

(editor)
French Team Lead of Decoding Antisemitism, Postdoc Researcher at ZfA at Technical University of Berlin

Dr Laura Ascone’s research focuses on computer-mediated communication, on the expression of emotions, as well as on hate speech. She defended her PhD in Linguistics at the Université Paris-Seine. Her thesis on “The Radicalisation through the Expression of Emotions on the Internet” dealt with the rhetorical strategies used in both jihadist propaganda and institutional counter-narrative. She then conducted postdoctoral research at the Université de Lorraine on online hate speech against migrants. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at the Technische Universität Berlin in the international project Decoding Antisemitism. She is also part of various research networks dealing with social issues such as Draine, a research group established as part of the Horizon 2020 European project PRACTICIES (Partnership against violent radicalisation in the cities).

Karolina Placzynta

(editor)
Expert on educational strategies, UK team of Decoding Antisemitism, Researcher at ZfA at Technical University of Berlin

Karolina Placzynta is a linguist and political scientist with a background in pragmatics, sociolinguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. Her research is centred on the mainstreaming and marginalisation of discourses in the media, normalisation of bias, and intersections of discriminatory discourses. Before joining the UK team of the Decoding Antisemitism project, she researched the patterns of discursive representations of immigration in the British press, in the process examining online media debates within the political mainstream. Apart from discourses of migration, racism and antisemitism, she is interested in the language of misogyny and gender inequality, as well as the language of social class dynamics. As an experienced educator, she is interested in translating research findings into successful strategies for teaching and training. She is a member of the DiscourseNet association.

Chloé Vincent

(editor)
Expert in quantitative analysis, French team of Decoding Antisemitism, Researcher at ZfA at Technical University of Berlin
PhD Candidate at Ghent University

Chloé Vincent is currently preparing a PhD at Ghent University on how gender neutral pronouns in French affect text quality and mental gender representations. She previously worked on the French team of the Decoding Antisemitism project as a researcher and expert in quantitative analysis. She completed her MA in Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London in September 2020 where she specialised in sociolinguistics, learning both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her master’s thesis consisted in analysing the attitudes of native French speakers towards French regional accents. In the previous years, she had completed her undergraduate degree in anthropology at Lumière University Lyon 2, and a degree in French language teaching at Grenoble Alpes University, while working as a software developer. She also holds a Master of Engineering degree from Grenoble INP Graduate School of Engineering.