TRACING MEDIA SOLIDARITIES WITH MUSLIMS: CONTESTING ISLAMOPHOBIA ON TWITTER

Abstract

Solidarity has been cited as a necessary prerequisite for transformational structural change and therefore contains revolutionary potential (Featherstone, 2012). This paper examines the role and evolution of mediated solidarities, which have become increasingly central to an analysis of social movements with the advent of participatory technologies, by drawing on data from a project on anti-Islamophobic counter-narratives. Online platforms have the affordances to contest Islamophobic hate speech as demonstrated by the dynamics of #stopIslam following the Brussels terror attack, 2016. In this instance, the hashtag gained its prominence through the contestations of users who sought to question, critique and undermine its original message (reference redacted). However, research has also shown the limitations of social media for online activism, in particular for creating meaningful debates or change (Schradie, 2019). This paper examines data from a large-scale study that used methods of computational, quantitative, and qualitative analysis to examine the dynamics of discourse about Muslims on Twitter in the case of Brexit, the Christchurch terror attack and Covid. We will examine whether the high incidence of solidarity discourses in this dataset are limited to acts of counter-speech (and other acts of weak solidarity) or if they contribute to sustainable counter-narratives that have implications for wider discursive formations related to Islam. Rather than reinforce existing binary arguments regarding the potentials and limitations of Twitter as a platform for solidarity, we wish to demonstrate the contradictory dynamics of the solidarities that arise from the logics of Twitter which relies on and produces these entanglements.