Social Media

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Petro Tolochko, whose focus is on affective polarisation in climate activism visuals. Such content can be highly affective in climate activist communication, spark audience reactions, and spread online to promote the emergence of like-minded or opposing groups. The analysis here might include aspects of structural polarisation (using network analysis) and reactionary polarisation (using communication analysis).

For the next session at ECREA 2024 I am once again in a session on polarisation, and we start with a double-header presentation by Quirin Ryffel and Nayla Fawzi. They begin with an overview of polarisation patterns in German – here, as in many other European countries, there is no simplistic left/right polarisation as there is in the US, but more usually polarisation on specific issues. One of these is environmental policy.

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Ernesto de León; his focus is on hyperpartisan, alternative, and conspiracy (HAC) media. These are all united by an anti-establishment dimension: they peddle misinformation that has a potential to shape public perceptions.

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Peter van Aelst, whose interest is in how news media consumption affects conspiracy theory beliefs. Mediating factors here might include misperception and populist attitudes, and the present paper examines this in the context of conspiracy theories that believe that a small elite of actors deliberately hide the truth about what is happening in the world.

The final day at ECREA 2024 begins for me with a panel on conspiracy theories, and a paper by the great Annett Heft. Her focus is on the diffusion dynamics of conspiracy theories across platforms. She begins by noting the substantial growth in conspiracy theory diffusion, and the severe consequences these ideas can have. Cross-platform activity (involving social media, social messaging, multimedia platforms, alternative news media, and mainstream media) can further heighten this impact.

The next speakers in this ECREA 2024 session are Sabina Mihelj and Václav Štětka, presenting a new framework for the understanding of current trends towards illiberalism. This focus on illiberalism follows the dismissal of the concept of populism as ill-defined; illiberalism is instead marking a grey zone between democracy and authoritarianism, and communication is a central element in its rise – indeed, there is a need to better investigate the illiberal public sphere.

The third speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Maria Bakardjieva, whose focus is on the affordances of social media in grassroots illiberalism. Affordances here describe a relation between users and objects, and media affordances include technical and institutional aspects. Maria notes the well-established problems with the term ‘populism’, which is a poorly defined concept that applies equally to the left and the right, and to democratic and antidemocratic discourses; this generates pseudo-equivalences between very different aspects.

The next session at ECREA 2024 that I’m attending is on communication in times of illiberalism, and starts with Natalie-Anne Hall. Her focus is on political engagement around Brexit on Facebook, in the post-referendum period between 2017 and 2019. Rather than gathering Facebook content, this study focussed on Facebook users – in recognition of the fact that Facebook remains the leading mainstream social network in the UK.

We continue this second day of the ECREA 2024 conference with the second conference keynote, by Jelena Kleut. Her focus is on uncertainties in transitional media systems. She begins by noting the various present-day communicative disorders – disinformation, political dysfunction, hate speech and abuse, etc. – but also warns us not to lose track of the positive potentials of contemporary communication technologies amongst all the doom and gloom. A balanced assessment of the current situation remains critical.

This points to a considerable level of uncertainty, too – and this can be generative (of research, and of overall progress for society), but equally also produce social and societal anxieties that lead citizens to seek easy answers and solutions. Jelena’s focus here is on the countries of the western Balkans, which have been described as ‘transitional democracies’ for the past 30 years at least; here, too, uncertainties persist, and may be divided into top-down, structurally driven uncertainties and bottom-up, audience-driven uncertainties.

These are reflected for instance in mainstream media reporting approaches, and the dissemination of disinformation that surrounds or responds to this reporting. Why does such disinformation circulate? At the structural, top-down level we have been seeing the rise of a politics of uncertainty, used as a tool by autocrats and illiberal forces to shore up their systems of electoral authoritarianism. This connects with the capture of state and societal institutions by such political actors, which makes the actions of these institutions themselves uncertain and unreliable as they are no longer based on the rule of law and democratic foundations. Such electoral authoritarian governments also control access to information, therefore.

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Nuri Sadida, whose focus is on the impact of ‘fake news’ and media literacy on affective polarisation in Indonesia. Such affective polarisation has increased in Indonesia over the past ten years, especially in the context of elections; derogatory nicknames for out-groups, such as ‘tadpole’ or ‘desert lizard’, are common especially in social media conversations.