Platformed antagonism: racist discourses on fake Muslim Facebook pages

This research examines how fake identities on social media create and sustain antagonistic and racist discourses. It does so by analysing 11 Danish Facebook pages, disguised as Muslim extremists living in Denmark, conspiring to kill and rape Danish citizens. It explores how anonymous content produce...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCritical discourse studies Vol. 15; no. 5; pp. 463 - 480
Main Authors Farkas, Johan, Schou, Jannick, Neumayer, Christina
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basingstoke Routledge 20.10.2018
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
anti-Muslim
Cultural identity
Denmark
discourse theory
Discourses
Discursive practices
Facebook
fake identities
Fictitious
Hostility
Islamophobia
Mass media effects
Mass media images
Platformed antagonism
Racism
Rape
Social media
Social networks
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Summary:This research examines how fake identities on social media create and sustain antagonistic and racist discourses. It does so by analysing 11 Danish Facebook pages, disguised as Muslim extremists living in Denmark, conspiring to kill and rape Danish citizens. It explores how anonymous content producers utilise Facebook's socio-technical characteristics to construct, what we propose to term as, platformed antagonism. This term refers to socio-technical and discursive practices that produce new modes of antagonistic relations on social media platforms. Through a discourse-theoretical analysis of posts, images, 'about' sections and user comments on the studied Facebook pages, the article highlights how antagonism between ethno-cultural identities is produced on social media through fictitious social media accounts, prompting thousands of user reactions. These findings enhance our current understanding of how antagonism and racism are constructed and amplified within social media environments.
ISSN:1740-5904
1740-5912
1740-5912
DOI:10.1080/17405904.2018.1450276