supposed independent news sources and even communities such as fan-sites
(Mozur, 2018).
This difference reveals a particular advantage of this comparative
method—by viewing two examples such as this, abstracting away the particular
technologies and beginning to view the similarities directly, we can begin to
preliminarily add the particularities of the technologies back into the analysis.
From this, one could plot out a line of development, analysis of which could aid
in detecting the growth of future genocidal movements. I propose that such a
line of development may run as follows: the widespread adoption of
interpersonal and inter-community communicative technologies worldwide
allows a shift from genocidal movements relying on officially 'authoritative'
government sources (e.g. government issued print and radio), and towards the
potentially even more effective and ever more easily available technique of
community infiltration. Whereas, for instance, the government of Nazi Germany
was able to directly control huge swathes of the print through its direct political
power (Herf, 2006:19), the Myanmar military and government have not needed
to. By infiltrating communities more directly, a political consensus for genocide
and ethnic cleansing can be built entirely underground, and go potentially
undetected. Yet despite the methodological differences, the actual messaging
holds strong similarities. Within Rwanda, questions remain about the amount of
killing caused directly by the media, but there is evidence that it not only affected
those particularly inclined towards violence (Strauss, 2007), but may have taken
on a role as a community activity (Li, 2007, Slides) that drove violence in turn
(Yanagizawa-Drott, 2014). This dual insight, then, could help predict genocidal
events not only by telling researchers what to look for, but also where to look —
not just towards familiar methods, but towards any burgeoning and
interpersonal methods of mass community communication and organisation.
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