Copyright

Laura Ascone

Published On

2024-06-21

Page Range

pp. 137–158

Language

  • English

Print Length

158 pages

5. Countering Antisemitism Online

A Discursive Analysis of Facebook and Twitter/X Comments

Chapter of: Antisemitism in Online Communication: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Hate Speech in the Twenty-First Century(pp. 137–158)
Since their emergence on the web, social networks have elicited diverging reactions and opinions. If they are appreciated for helping create new forms of social relations, they are also criticised for facilitating both the emergence and circulation of hate speech. On a macro-level, different European countries have been taking a step forward to counter hate speech, but on a micro-level online comment sections show that some users try to counter it as well,namely by taking part in a discussion and/or reporting hate content. This chapter investigates the way users of French media counter antisemitic discourse in both Facebook and Twitter (now X) comment sections. The analysis was conducted on 4,230 comments posted on the official Facebook and Twitter pages of French mainstream media such as Le Monde and Le Figaro. The comments were divided in three sub-corpora according to the event they refer to. This way, it was possible to examine the specificities of the comments countering antisemitism in these three different contexts. The annotation and the analyses performed with the software MAXQDA shed light on the connections between the comments conveying antisemitism and those countering them, as well as on how counter speech can sometimes fuel antisemitism and other forms of hate speech

Contributors

Laura Ascone

(author)
French Team Lead of Decoding Antisemitism, Postdoc Researcher at ZfA at Technische Universität Berlin
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7595-1156

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).