Digital Hate: The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech

The euphoria that has accompanied the birth and expansion of the internet as a "liberation technology" is increasingly eclipsed by an explosion of vitriolic language on a global scale. Digital Hate: The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech provides the first distinctly global and interdisciplinary perspective on hateful language online. Moving beyond Euro-American allegations of "fake news," contributors draw attention to local idioms and practices and explore the profound implications for how community is imagined, enacted, and brutally enforced around the world. With a cross-cultural framework nuanced by ethnography and field-based research, the volume investigates a wide range of cases—from anti-immigrant memes targeted at Bolivians in Chile to trolls serving the ruling AK Party in Turkey—to ask how the potential of extreme speech to talk back to authorities has come under attack by diverse forms of digital hate cultures. Offering a much-needed global perspective on the "dark side" of the internet, Digital Hate is a timely and critical look at the raging debates around online media's failed promises.

Table of Contents:
Hate Cultures in the Digital Age: The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech, by Sahana Udupa, Iginio Gagliardone, and Peter Hervik Part One: Extreme Speech as a Critique: Power and Agonism 1. There's no such thing as hate speech and it's a good thing, too, by David Boromisza-Habashi 2. The political trolling industry in Duterte's Philippines: Everyday work arrangements of disinformation and extreme speech, by Jonathan Corpus Ong 3. It is Incivility, not hate speech: Application of Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory to analysis of non-anthropocentric agency, by David Katiambo 4. The moral economy of extreme speech: Resentment and anger in Indian minority politics, by Max Kramer Part Two: Colloquialization of Exclusion 5. Us and (((them))): Extreme memes and anti-Semitism on 4Chan, by Marc Tuters and Sal Hagen 6. Nationalism in the digital age: Fun as a metapractice of extreme speech, by Sahana Udupa 7. A presidential archive of lies: Racism, Twitter, and a history of the present, by Carole McGranahan 8. Racialization, racism and anti-racism in Danish social media platforms, by Peter Hervik 9. Follow the memes: On the construction of far-right identities online, by Amy C. Mack 10. The politics of Muhei: Ethnic humor and Islamophobia on Chinese social media, by Gabriele de Seta 11. Writing on the walls: Discourses on Bolivian immigrants in Chilean meme humor, by Nell Haynes Part Three: Organization and Disorganization 12. Blasphemy accusations as extreme speech acts in Pakistan, by Jürgen Schaflechner 13. Localized hatred: The importance of physical spaces within the German far-right online counterpublic on Facebook, by Jonas Kaiser 14. "Motherhood" revisited: Pushing boundaries in Indonesia's online discourse, by Indah S. Pratidina 15. Networks of political trolling in Turkey after the consolidation of power under the Presidency, by Erkan Saka Contributors' Biographies Index

About the Author :
Sahana Udupa is Professor of Media Anthropology at LMU Munich where she leads two multiyear projects on digital politics and artificial intelligence funded by the European Research Council. She is author of Making News in Global India; Digital Technology and Extreme Speech: Approaches to Counter Online Hate; and coeditor (with S. McDowell) of Media as Politics in South Asia.Iginio Gagliardone is a media scholar researching the emergence of distinctive models of the information society in the Global South and Associate Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is the author of The Politics of Technology in Africa; China, Africa, and the Future of the Internet; and Countering Online Hate Speech.Peter Hervik is an anthropologist and migration scholar affiliated with the Free University of Copenhagen and the Network of Independent Scholars of Education. His publications include The Annoying Difference: The Emergence of Danish Neonationalism, Neoracism, and Populism in the Post-1989 World.

Review :
"Timely, original, and powerful, this anthology is packed with new insights about digital media and political cultures. Contributors comprise an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars grounded predominantly in anthropology and media studies. Their diverse studies in the global north and south approach extreme speech online as a cultural practice situated within wider social struggles. The collection reveals the dynamics of exclusionary politics that paradoxically thrive in the age of digital connectivity."—Victoria Bernal, author of Nation as Network: Diaspora, Cyberspace, and Citizenship, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine "This superb collection contains a number of stimulating contributions by authors from around the world. The introduction lays out the book's unique intellectual re-reading of online extreme speech, civility, and rationality. It offers insightful and innovative ways of understanding these issues from decolonial and ethnographically grounded approaches. This is the only book to connect history, colonial formations, and coloniality in the study of extreme speech in the digital age."—Sarah Chiumbu, Associate Professor, Department of Communication & Media, University of Johannesburg "How is the term 'hate speech' mobilized to further specific political ends, so deepening rather than alleviating inequalities in the public domain? This is the question that this highly sophisticated collection of essays addresses, drawing on a wide range of cases from Kenya to Chile, the Philippines to Germany. These deeply contextualized studies constitute a huge step forward in our understanding of the cultural and technological underpinnings of extreme speech on a global scale—a landmark study."—Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science