{"id":5648,"date":"2020-10-09T13:07:29","date_gmt":"2020-10-09T13:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.antropologia2-0.com\/?p=5648"},"modified":"2020-11-02T11:45:20","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T11:45:20","slug":"hate-in-cyberspace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.antropologia2-0.com\/en\/hate-in-cyberspace\/","title":{"rendered":"Hate in cyberspace"},"content":{"rendered":"

A case study on how hate messages circulate in cyberspace (Twitter) around a Colombian politician.<\/strong><\/span>
<\/strong><\/span>By Marcela Navia<\/a>, Martha Botero<\/a> and Andrea Forero<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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<\/strong><\/span>\u201cHate speeches are discursive articulations aiming to inhibit rights to freedom and equality in the other\u201d (Taricco y Torres, 2019 in D\u00edaz Hern\u00e1ndez, 2020).<\/em><\/p>\n

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<\/em>Ethnography is transformed when it comes into contact with the digital space. We know that digital space translates and simplifies our world, but: What does it translate and how does it?<\/p>\n

These and other questions emerged as we conducted a case analysis on how hate messages about a Colombian politician circulate on Twitter. We wanted to understand, from spaces and communities built in the digital world, and social networks logics: What about hate? How it behaves? How is it transformed and into what? How does it circulate and for what? The outcome of the process were some findings and other questions that make valuable this research.<\/p>\n

Social networks transform the interactions we make as a society, contact with the other changes its meaning. It is reduced to a like, a repost, a comment. Expression and interaction are limited. Social networks are a \u2018there\u2019, a parallel world, a bound-transgressing world.<\/p>\n

The origin<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The work team was attended by two social science professionals and a visual artist. As digital ethnographers, we decided to approach without being seen, without influencing the object of study. Social networks display a sea of information; when using a qualitative approach, you have to choose where to start. As in offline approach, we let ourselves be guided by curiosity, those aspects that intrigued us.<\/p>\n

We wanted to find out how hate messages circulate on Twitter<\/strong>. We decided to observe Daniel Quintero Calle, the mayor of Medell\u00edn (second largest city in Colombia, located in the department of Antioquia, whose citizens call themselves paisas<\/em>). Resignation of most the members in the board of directors of EPM (Empresas P\u00fablicas de Medell\u00edn), after he accused them of corruption, placed him in the eye of the storm.<\/p>\n

EPM, an emblematic institution for Medell\u00edn and the whole country, it is a city owned utility supplier. Apparently, some of its former board members were closely related to Grupo Empresarial Antioque\u00f1o (GEA), a private emporium. Their resignation caused several worries to the people. Twitter became the ideal virtual setting to disseminate them and, of course, to spread their insults and degrading words, too.<\/p>\n

Scrutinizing this public role of the mayor, we also found concerns related to his personal facet: Daniel Quintero has been accused of sexual assault. He used words that could be also considered aggressive to respond these messages against him. Unintentionally, or not, fanning the flame. Virtuality is a space where private and public lives seem to intermingle; their boundaries, although fuzzy offline, become more blurred online. Public behavior becomes personal and personal life, public<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Political partisans, ordinary citizens, journalists, feminists and many more take part\u2026 It seems that discussions taking place and being reproduced on Twitter will never end. To unravel this tangle<\/strong>, we investigated theory on the subject, we analyzed chains of tweets, we followed cases and people, we posed open questions by email to city residents, we collected images from Twitter and other social networks, we watched videos of sessions of the city council, and we consulted newspapers. Bearing always in mind that our research focused on studying the logic of Twitter and its ways of spreading these explosive feelings.<\/p>\n

Findings<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Valiente Mart\u00ednez (2018) refers to hate speech as an amalgam of expressions that try to characterize people as non-normal, it is difficult to live with them. They exceed freedom of expression because they intend to harm. He quotes Waldron (2012) to indicate that hate speech seeks to undermine dignity, even dehumanize.<\/em><\/p>\n

We found that the major was defined by many as \u201cindecipherable\u201d, so much so that the country\u2019s main political magazine, Semana, called him that on its August 15, 2020 cover. The magazine used the term to indicate that the politician represented a confusion, a mystery, since those on the right saw him as a leftist and those on the left as a rightist. Therefore, we decided to call our ethnography work that.<\/p>\n

Findings<\/strong> show us that hateful messages may be associated with the fear of change<\/strong> by the citizens of Medell\u00edn, unease of departing from the status quo<\/em>, and denote a power confrontation with the national capital: Bogot\u00e1. Twitter, as a digital platform, amplifies and distorts this fear, it is used to attack before they “attack me” and to write without premeditation, as if we were in an eternal state of shock, reaction, and offense<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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One of the difficulties of the project was defining who the participants were. It was something that we wanted to establish from the beginning. An advantage of ethnography is that adjustments can be made along the way<\/strong>, so it was decided that solving the question about who are the subjects involved in the circulation of hateful messages was part of the findings. The following image shows the actors who tend to emit hateful messages caused by disagreeing with the mayor’s decisions on public companies and by his vision of the region.<\/p>\n

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Results presentation<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Resulting information was presented in two products: a Web page and a podcast<\/strong>. The previous images are part of the former. These products made the presentation and socialization of the results dynamic and multi-sensory. The home page was as follows:<\/p>\n

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The construction of the Web page (developed in Wix) we used graphic, hearing and textual elements that were meaningful. For example, we use Twitter’s blue color and the red color (normally associated with aggressiveness). We developed a tab titled “survey”, where we present to the visitor the appearance of a poll inspired by a tweet towards Daniel Quintero.<\/p>\n

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You enter the podcast<\/strong> from the Wep Page \u2018home\u2019. It begins with the reading of some tweets, such as one that describes the mayor as inept and invites to revoke him. It continues with the opinion of some citizens of Medell\u00edn. For example, a 50-year-old business consultant said that \u201cthe mayor only creates an atmosphere of mistrust.” At the end, there is a dialog between the three researchers. Some important conclusions are:<\/p>\n