Social Media: Mapping the Rise of the German an Effective Instrument for Anti-Islam Movement Pegida on an Antisocial Movement Facebook
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Social media: Mapping the rise of the German An effective instrument for anti-Islam movement Pegida on an antisocial movement Facebook Amsterdam 24th June 2016 University of Amsterdam MA New Media and Digital Culture Name of Supervisor dhr. prof. dr. R.A. Rogers Name of Second Reader mw. drs. L.C. van der Velden Abstract Digital media are often studied for the way they change the formation of protest movements since they are said to function as organizing agents and make hierarchical structures unnecessary. In combination with a strong personalization aspect, those new types of protest movements are described as connective action networks that have been so far only researched in relation to leftist or slacktivism protests. Therefore I used the German right-wing and anti- Islam movement Pegida as an example in order to evaluate to what extent a right-wing logic of connective action can be determined. To analyse the dynamics of Pegida on Facebook, a digital methods approach was chosen including a content analysis and a page-like network analysis of the main PEGIDA Facebook page. The findings suggest that memes trigger the most engagement on the Facebook page and enable a strong personalization of the content since they are easy-to- adapt personally. On the other hand Pegida also shows some hierarchical structures and organizational coordination what aligns more with the notion of traditional collective action movements. Therefore Pegida can be categorized as a hybrid version of a traditional collective action and a self-organizing connective action network or, in other words, as organizationally enabled network where loose organization is involved but the personalization of the content plays a primary role. Keywords Social Network Analysis, Facebook, Netvizz, Pegida, anti-Islam movements, echo chamber linking, right-wing populism, right-wing logic of connective action Table of Content I. Introduction ................................................................................... 1 II. Literature Review ........................................................................... 3 2.1 Notions of Extremist Movements Online ................................................................................. 3 2.1.1 Echo Chamber Linking and the Creation of a Network of Hate ........................................... 4 2.1.2 Recruitment, Mobilisation and Radicalisation 2.0 ..................................................................... 7 2.1.3 Storytelling Strategies and Anti-Something Narratives of Extremist Movements ....... 8 2.1.4 From Collective to Connective Action ............................................................................................. 9 2.2 Extremist Movements and Social Media ............................................................................... 12 2.3 Research Questions ...................................................................................................................... 16 III. Methodological Approach ........................................................... 16 3.1 Object of Study: Pegida ................................................................................................................ 17 3.2 Dataset and Research Tools ...................................................................................................... 19 3.2.1 Netvizz Search Module ........................................................................................................................ 19 3.2.2 Netvizz Page Data Module ................................................................................................................. 20 3.2.3 Network Analysis .................................................................................................................................. 21 3.2.4 Image Analysis ........................................................................................................................................ 22 IV. Results.......................................................................................... 23 4.1 The Movement Pegida ................................................................................................................. 23 4.2 The main PEGIDA Page ................................................................................................................ 26 4.3 Network Analysis .......................................................................................................................... 30 4.4 Image Analysis ................................................................................................................................ 33 V. Discussion ................................................................................... 35 VI. Conclusion ................................................................................... 44 VII. References ................................................................................... 47 VIII. Appendix ...................................................................................... 53 List of Figures: Figure 1: Elements of connective and collective action networks ............................................ 11 Figure 2: Page Like Network of Pegida - Crawl Depth 1 ............................................................... 30 Figure 3: Cluster one of the Pegida Network ..................................................................................... 31 Figure 4: Cluster two of the Pegida Network ..................................................................................... 32 Figure 5: Cluster three of the Pegida Network .................................................................................. 32 List of Tables: Table 1: Top ten Pegida pages on Facebook worldwide by most likes ................................... 24 Table 2: Top ten Pegida pages on Facebook worldwide ............................................................... 24 Table 3: Top 20 posts with the most engagement ........................................................................... 28 List of Graphs: Graph 1: Number of posts per month on PEGIDA page ................................................................. 27 Graph 2: Engagement per post type ...................................................................................................... 27 Graph 3: Development of meme-like content over time (posted by Pegida) ........................ 34 Graph 4: Growth of engagement per post type in one year ......................................................... 34 Graph 5: Content of images on PEGIDA page .................................................................................... 35 List of Images: Image 1: Symbol and lettering of Pegida ............................................................................................. 18 Image 2: Heat map of Pegida pages in Europe (by likes) .............................................................. 25 Image 3: Heat map of Pegida pages in Europe (by density) ........................................................ 26 Image 4: Most popular post on the PEGIDA Facebook page ........................................................ 29 Image 5: Tagcloud of most used Hashtags on the Pegida page .................................................. 29 Image 6: Meme-like pictures from the PEGIDA Facebook page………………………………. ..... 33 Introduction I. Introduction In 1996, the scholars Capitanchik and Whine published a paper about racism on the Internet, stating: “The Internet has revolutionized communications, bringing enormous benefits. But we cannot afford to ignore its negative aspects – the potential to spread ‘hate’ material that not only offends, but seriously threatens racial harmony and public order” (Capitanchik & Whine 1996). The Internet’s characteristics like anonymity, low cost of publishing and its ability to span geographical boundaries make it an ideal tool for extremists to promote their racial views and spread hate speech. Today, almost 20 years later, the discussion about online hate and racism is more relevant than ever, regarding the rise of new far-right populist parties and extreme right- wing movements1 in Europe (Rogers, 2015, 1). A good example of an extreme right-wing movement rising through the help of the Internet and even more important through social media is Pegida (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West). Pegida’s main political ideas and demands circle around the German refugee policy that is seen as a betrayal of the people accompanied by a very strong anti-Islam position. The followers of the original movement from Dresden meet every Monday on the main square in order to protest against the government and the imminent Islamisation of Germany. The movement was founded around one and a half years ago, in December 2014, attracted more than 100.000 follower on the original Facebook page PEGIDA2 within the first couple of weeks and spreaded its offshoots over the borders of Europe to the United States and Canada (Munzinger 2016a). Questions arising from this phenomenon are: How can a movement grow so rapidly on Facebook and especially spread so wide? To what other political and sociological actors is Pegida connected online and do they build a network of hate? What storytelling and narrative elements does PEGIDA use in order to mobilise, recruit and radicalize followers? And can this narrative be described as a new populist storytelling concept that differs from traditional far-right or neo-Nazi notions? Although various studies (Bennett &