Panel 3D: Telegram
Chair: Dr Kamil Yilmaz (Swansea University)
Accelerationists’ Exploitation of Digital Platforms Erica Barbarossa (Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism) Isabela Bernardo (Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism)
Abstract: On April 26, 2024, the United Kingdom highlighted the severe threat of militant accelerationism when it proscribed the terroristic online network known as the Terrorgram Collective. The militant accelerationist movement—a group of actors employing various tactics and strategies to hasten societal collapse—heavily relies on digital platforms to advance this agenda. For social media platforms, the accelerationist movement poses significant safety and reputational risks regarding recruitment, radicalization, and monetization. Accelerationist actors utilize both explicit and implicit images, hashtags, and terminology to promote their hate-based ideology and activities. Indicators of accelerationism are prevalent across nearly all social media platforms, indicating a high level of awareness among these bad-faith actors regarding platforms’ Terms of Service (ToS) and content moderation practices. Posts on mainstream platforms often use coded or implicit language to obfuscate their intent; however, many of these posts can lead to highly violative content on more permissive sites within 1-3 clicks. This aligns with one of their primary online objectives: to redirect users to Telegram, where a network of channels host explicitly hateful and terrorist content with the goal of radicalizing and mobilizing users to violence. In our presentation, we will provide an overview of how accelerationists exploit digital platforms in their objective to dismantle liberal society Trust no one: a reflexive thematic analysis of right-wing extremist Telegram content mentioning children Mackenzie Hart (Simon Fraser University) [Co-author: Dr Garth Davies (Simon Fraser University)] Abstract: Modern society has enshrined children as the ultimate symbol of all that is good and pure. Historic episodes of moral panic, like the Satanic Panic of the late 1980s, help demonstrate the potency of this symbol, amongst parents and non-parents alike. While children have commonly been recognized as particularly vulnerable to radicalization, our findings suggest that parents themselves are a vulnerable group, vis-à-vis their children. This study explores how right-wing extremists (RWE) understand children by analysing content about children produced by and shared through RWE Telegram channels. Findings reveal that RWE Telegram content does not target children, but their parents. Using reflexive thematic analysis (RTA), four themes were generated from the data – veneration of the natural, ritual & systemic harms, action & responsibility, and ‘parents know best’. These themes are united by the single overarching theme of trust. Parental distrust of anyone or anything outside of the family is fostered through and evidenced by conspiracy theories and their designation of a conspiratorial other. Crucially, research suggests that a parent’s belief in conspiracy theories and related distrust in institutions motivate action. Relatedly, the concept of altruistic fear has also been highlighted as an explanation for parents’ behaviour.
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