Transnational Othering Global Diversities
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TRANSNATIONAL OTHERING GLOBAL DIVERSITIES MEDIA, EXTREMISM AND FREE EXPRESSION NORDICOM Elisabeth Eide, Kristin Skare Orgeret &Kristin Nil Solberg Mutluer is a xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx- (eds.) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1 Based at the University of Gothenburg, Nordicom is a Nordic non-profit knowledge centre that collects and communicates facts and research in the field of media and communication. The purpose of our work is to develop the knowledge of media’s role in society. We do this through: • Following and documenting media development in terms of media structure, media ownership, media economy and media use. • Conducting the annual survey The Media Barometer, which measures the reach of various media forms in Sweden. • Publishing research literature, including the international research journals Nordicom Review and Nordic Journal of Media Studies. • Publishing newsletters on media trends in the Nordic region and policy issues in Europe. • Continuously compiling information on how media research in the Nordic countries is developing. • The international research conference NordMedia, which is arranged in cooperation with the national media and communication associations in the Nordic countries. Nordicom is financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Swedish Ministry of Culture and the University of Gothenburg. Visit our website for more information about Nordicom’s work and about our academic book publishing. www.nordicom.gu.se TRANSNATIONAL OTHERING • GLOBAL DIVERSITIES TRANSNATIONAL OTHERING GLOBAL DIVERSITIES MEDIA, EXTREMISM AND FREE EXPRESSION Elisabeth Eide, Kristin Skare Orgeret & Nil Mutluer (eds.) NORDICOM Transnational Othering – Global Diversities Media, Extremism and Free Expression Elisabeth Eide, Kristin Skare Orgeret & Nil Mutluer (eds.) © 2019 The Author(s) and Nordicom. This is an open-access book distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). ISBN 978-91-88855-18-3 (print) ISBN 978-91-88855-19-0 (pdf) The publication is also available as open access at www.nordicom.gu.se Published by: Nordicom University of Gothenburg Box 713 SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG Sweden Images reprinted with permission from copyrightholder Cover photo: Afshin Ismaeli Cover by: Per Nilsson Printed by: Exakta Print, Malmö, Sweden, 2019 Content Preface 7 1. Global connections Elisabeth Eide, Kristin Skare Orgeret & Nil Mutluer 9 PART ONE: Extremism and the media: Shifting sand 2. A man I knew became a suicide bomber for IS Kristin Solberg 23 3. The battle over discourses. Dancing with “ISIS wolves” Abeer Saady Soliman 31 4. Transnational extremist recruitment through social media Afshin Ismaeli 51 5. Indonesia: When civil society, government and islamists collide Ade Armando 69 6. Tunisia: Reporting terrorism Mohamed Balti 93 7. Bangladesh: Social media, extremism and freedom of expression Syeda Gulshan Ferdous Jana 103 8. Countering violent extremism in Bangladesh Julfikar Ali Manik 121 PART TWO: Freedom of expression and new challenges 9. Pakistan’s war on free speech. Challenges and probable solutions Altaf Ullah Khan 137 10. Who suppresses free speech in Bangladesh? A typology of actors Mubashar Hasan 155 11. Turkey: How to deal with threats to journalism? Bora Ataman & Barış Çoban 171 12. Media in Turkey. A reporter’s tale Ayla Albayrak 191 13. Afghanistan: Navigating between enemies and restrictive forces Abdul Mujeeb Khalvatgar 201 14. Transnational Dialogues. Cartoons, Daesh and the white terrorist Atta Ansari 213 15. Tunisia: The long path towards freedom of speech Rym Benarous 229 16. Literature and limits. Stories from Indonesia Andina Dwifatma 239 PART THREE: The changing shades of global diversities 17. Gendered, sexualized and ethnicized clashes in Turkey’s media Nil Mutluer 253 18. Indonesia: Diversities and media discrimination Lestari Nurhajati 273 19. Passenger on the globalisation train Olga Stokke 289 20. From journalist to refugee – and the long road back Kristin Skare Orgeret 295 21. Seeing the other, reflections on the we. Globalization and citizenship Elisabeth Eide 311 Preface This anthology is a result of a great teamwork. As editors we would like to express our warm gratitude to all those who have participated in the process. Thank you to all contributors for sharing your diverse and important knowledge and experiences. Thank you, Richard Daly for proofreading the academic articles, and thank you, Quatrina Hos- sain for proofreading the journalistic ones, and to the Faculty of Social Sciences for funding part of this work. Many thanks to Ulla Carlsson for important input and support at an early stage of the project. Thank you, Kaarina Nikunen for your valuable comments and advice. Thank you, Jonas Ohlsson and Josefine Bové at Nordicom for taking care of the details in relation to the book production process. The anthology is supported financially by the Journalism and Media International Centre (JMIC) at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet), helped by funds from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), section on Democracy, Human Rights and Gender Equality. We particularly want to thank Elisabeth Salvesen at the MFA for wonderful cooperation and encouragement throughout the years. Oslo and Berlin, June 2019 Elisabeth Eide, Kristin Skare Orgeret & Nil Mutluer 7 1. Global connections Elisabeth Eide, Kristin Skare Orgeret & Nil Mutluer We live in an overheated world (Eriksen, 2016), where global processes, such as climate change, financial flows, human flight and migration influence our lives and our prospects for the future. Simultaneously, there is an increasing understanding among many people that the largest challenges of our world must be solved through transnational cooperation. The traditional divide between the “developed” and “de- veloping” world, with the Global North allegedly representing the best conditions for media development and freedom of expression, is also challenged. According to the Reporters without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index (RSF, 2018), Ghana gets a better score than France, Elisabeth Eide (Dr. Art.) is professor of Costa Rica better than Austria and Burkina Faso better than the USA. journalism studies at Oslo Metropo- Furthermore, the huge expansion of alternatives to mainstream litan University, and has worked at Oslo and Bergen Universities, as well media (MSM) in terms of both new social media platforms, fabricated as Punjab University and Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris, and have news and disinformation represents an additional challenge to journal- published extensively within the field ism. At the core of journalism globally is the freedom to report, which of journalism. Kristin Skare Orgeret (Dr. Art.) is is threatened in many parts of the world (Carlsson & Pöyhtari, 2017), professor of journalism and media stu- including countries represented in this book. Today, Turkey is at the dies at Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. She has published extensively top of the list when it comes to the number of imprisoned journalists; within the field of journalism in conflict situations, safety of journalists, global in fact, most independent news media have been shut down. journalism and media and gender. Anybody from the Turkish media, the academic world, or civil soci- Nil Mutluer (PhD) is the Einstein Foun- dation Senior Scholar at Humboldt ety who oppose the president, risks being labeled as “terrorist”. Beyond University of Berlin, Germany. From this, in a country such as Afghanistan, which in 2018 was declared the 2016 to 2018 she was awarded the Philipp Schwartz Research Fellowship state with the largest number of killed journalists (RSF, 2018), report- of Humboldt Foundation. 9 Elisabeth Eide, Kristin Skare Orgeret & Nil Mutluer ers have had to walk a tightrope between deadly extremist attacks and threats on one hand, and sanctions and threats from the government on the other. A universal feature of today’s situation is more anti-intel- lectualism, polarized societies where extremists thrive on social media. The very name “social media” triggers discussions about freedom of expression, since internet communications, or social media, are used, on one hand, as a means for recruiting violent extremists, and on the other, as a way of attempting the silencing of other points of view. The various shades of extremism A recent example is how the terrorist, who attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and killed 50 people in February 2019, filmed the attack himself and transmitted it to social media platforms. In the aftermath, some people were charged with sharing the video on social media. New Zealand has a law banning dissemination or possession of material depicting extreme violence and terrorism. A human rights law forbidding incitement of racial disharmony works in the same direction. These “parameters are more restrictive than the First Amendment guarantees in the United States.” (Graham-McLay, 2019). Thus, the New Zealand terror and its aftermath may perhaps be seen as a first example of a “western” country, which has taken strict measures to curb the activities of extremists, including those who target religious minorities. Facebook eventually took down the terrorist’s page and Twitter de- leted his profile, However, before that happened, the video had spread virally across social media (Marsh & Mulholland, 2019). On March 31, 2019, Mark Zuckerberg suggested more regulation and intervention in such cases: “I believe we need a more active role for governments and