Abstract: Antisemitism often takes implicit forms on social media, therefore making it difficult to detect. In many cases, context is essential to recognise and understand the antisemitic meaning of an utterance (Becker et al. 2021, Becker and Troschke 2023, Jikeli et al. 2022a). Previous quantitative work on antisemitism online has focused on independent comments obtained through keyword search (e.g. Jikeli et al. 2019, Jikeli et al. 2022b), ignoring the discussions in which they occurred. Moreover, on social media, discussions are rarely linear. Web users have the possibility to comment on the original post and start a conversation or to reply to earlier web user comments. This chapter proposes to consider the structure of the comment trees constructed in the online discussion, instead of single comments individually, in an attempt to include context in the study of antisemitism online. This analysis is based on a corpus of 25,412 trees, consisting of 76,075 Facebook comments. The corpus is built from web comments reacting to posts published by mainstream news outlets in three countries: France, Germany, and the UK. The posts are organised into 16 discourse events, which have a high potential for triggering antisemitic comments. The analysis of the data help verify whether (1) antisemitic comments come together (are grouped under the same trees), (2) the structure of trees (lengths, number of branches) is significant in the emergence of antisemitism, (3) variations can be found as a function of the countries and the discourse events. This study presents an original way to look at social media data, which has potential for helping identify and moderate antisemitism online. It specifically can advance research in machine learning by allowing to look at larger segments of text, which is essential for reliable results in artificial intelligence methodology. Finally, it enriches our understanding of social interactions online in general, and hate speech online in particular.
Abstract: Despite the benefits of the intersectional approach to antisemitism studies, it seems to have been given little attention so far. This chapter compares the online reactions to two UK news stories, both centred around the common theme of cultural boycott of Israel in support of the BDS movement, both with a well-known female figure at the centre of media coverage, only one of which identifies as Jewish. In the case of British television presenter Rachel Riley, a person is attacked for being female as well as Jewish, with misogyny compounding the antisemitic commentary. In the case of the Irish writer Sally Rooney, misogynistic discourse is used to strengthen the message countering antisemitism. The contrastive analysis of the two datasets, with references to similar analyses of media stories centred around well-known men, illuminates the relationships between the two forms of hate, revealing that—even where the antisemitic attitudes overlap— misogynistic insults and disempowering or undermining language are being weaponised on both sides of the debate, with additional characterisation of Riley as a “grifter” and Rooney as “naive”.
More research comparing discourses around Jewish and non-Jewish women is needed to ascertain whether this pattern is consistent; meanwhile, the many analogies in the abuse suffered by both groups can perhaps serve a useful purpose: shared struggles can foster understanding needed to then notice the particularised prejudice. By including more than one hate ideology in the research design, intersectionality offers exciting new approaches to studies of antisemitism and, more broadly, of
hate speech or discrimination.
Abstract: Cette recherche envisage la tension entre une conception englobante de la religion portée par les juifs orthodoxes et une conception privatisée et plurielle en vigueur dans la société française, une société laïque et sécularisée, des années 1980 à nos jours. Cette tension est explorée depuis ces deux points de vue. D’une part, elle interroge comment les juifs orthodoxes s’organisent pour ménager l’espace jugé nécessaire à leur pratique religieuse. Pour ce faire, elle explore leurs besoins, leurs demandes, ainsi que les stratégies qu’ils mettent en œuvre pour les porter. D’autre part, elle soulève la question de la gouvernance publique du religieux. Pour ce faire, elle étudie la manière dont l’État laïc appréhende une minorité religieuse, qui semble aller à contre-courant du mouvement de fond de la sécularisation. A partir d’un protocole de recherche mixte, et en mobilisant la sociologie électorale, la sociologie de l’action collective, l’analyse des politiques publiques, et des outils de sociologie de la religion, elle teste la consistance de l’intégralisme des juifs orthodoxes dans la société française. Elle réfléchit ainsi à la gouvernance de minorités religieuses intégralistes, à partir d’un autre cas que l’islam, et distingue ce qui relève d’une religion en particulier ou de l’orthodoxie. Elle montre une érosion de l’intégralisme religieux, du fait de réponses défavorables des institutions publiques et de la sécularisation qu’il ne parvient pas à enrayer.
Abstract: Common antisemitic visual representations are rooted in Ancient Christianity and the Middle Ages, but we have also witnessed new developments after the Holocaust and the condemnation of fascism. Stereotyping and dehumanization through zoomorphism, demonization, exaggeration of certain physical features anchored in the false presumptions of physiognomy and other visual devices have been weaponized across the centuries for racist and antisemitic agendas. This study undergoes a comparative analysis of two corpuses of antisemitic images from the Romanian press and social media at a distance of one century between them. I analyze the persistency, transformations, and new developments of antisemitic image codes popularized by the Romanian far-right from the start of the 20th century, through to the rise of fascism and the Second World War, up to the present-day social media. This visual qualitative analysis with critical historical insights is carried out on the following corpuses: a) a contemporary subset of 81 memes, digital stickers, and other visuals from 17 Romanian far-right Telegram channels and groups posted over the course of one year (August 2022 – August 2023); and b) 70 archival political cartoons published by 17 far-right ultranationalist newspapers (and one pro-Soviet communist newspaper) between 1911 and 1948. Findings show how persistent certain antisemitic stereotypes have proven across time and different cultural spaces – the hook-nose, zoomorphism, the blood-libel accusations, Judeo-Bolshevism, the satanic representations – and how the visual dimension serves to efficiently implant antisemitic narratives in the collective mind. These (visual) narratives are skillfully recontextualized to fit new (geo-)political realities – the post-Holocaust times, the COVID-19 crisis, the war in Ukraine.
Abstract: For a well-functioning and inclusive democracy, it is crucial that minority voices can participate in public debate and express their opinions through the news media. However, media participation can be demanding, especially considering the proliferation of online hate. Based on in-depth interviews with 15 self-identified Jews who have participated in Norwegian media as Jews, this article explores the strategies Jewish minority voices employ when participating in the news media, both to position themselves and achieve their aims as representatives of a small-sized and vulnerable minority, and to deal with the risk of and experiences with antisemitism. The findings show that it can be demanding and distressing, but also rewarding to participate in the media as a minority voice, and most often the motivations and gains outweigh the risks. Although it is common to experience antisemitic hate speech in the wake of media participation, this has not led the participants to withdraw from public engagement. Consequently, this article argues that hate speech does not necessarily represent a boundary for public participation. However, participating as a minority voice requires strong motivation, emotional resilience, and the ability to focus on the positive outcomes of media participation, including the possibility of social change.
Abstract: Im Herbst 2008 warnte die Anti Defamation League wiederholt vor einem neuen Aufkeimen
des Antisemitismus im Zuge der globalen Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise und belegte ihre
Sorge durch eine Vielzahl von Artikeln in US-amerikanischen, südamerikanischen und
europäischen Printmedien und Internetforen, in denen in der Auseinandersetzung mit der
Krise mehr oder weniger offene antisemitische Ressentiments artikuliert wurden. Diese
reichten von traditionellen antisemitischen Stereotypen wie dem „raffgierigen Juden“ bis hin
zu Weltverschwörungstheorien, die auch durch eine spezifische Verknüpfung von
Antisemitismus, Antiamerikanismus und Israelfeindschaft gekennzeichnet sind.
Vor diesem Hintergrund starteten wir am Institut für Konfliktforschung, in Kooperation mit
dem Institut für Zeitgeschichte, im August 2009 eine Studie zu antisemitischen
Diskurselementen in den Debatten um die Krise in österreichischen Printmedien. Wie wird
die Krise generell dargestellt und unter welchen Bedingungen und thematischen Kontexten
tauchen antisemitische Versatzstücke in der Argumentation auf? Dies ist die
forschungsleitende Kernfrage, der wir uns in dem Projekt widmeten.
Da Antisemitismus weder als einheitliches noch als statisches Phänomen verstanden wird,
sind die Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten der antisemitischen Stereotypenbildung und
deren Situierung in gesellschaftlichen, ökonomischen, politischen und historischen Kontexten
von zentralem Belang. Denn selbst wenn sich antisemitische Stereotype in ihrem Inhalt und
ihrer Struktur innerhalb des letzten Jahrhunderts nicht grundsätzlich verändert haben mögen,
ist es für eine Analyse der Funktion und Struktur des Antisemitismus notwendig,
Veränderungen in den Bedingungen zu berücksichtigen, unter denen Antisemitismus auftritt.
Nur eine solche Vorgehensweise erlaubt substantielle Konklusionen über das Verhältnis von
Antisemitismus und Politik/Gesellschaft/Ökonomie. So sind die gesellschaftspolitischen
Veränderungen der letzen drei Jahrzehnte, die sich auch in einem neoliberalen Diskurs
niederschlagen, ebenso von Bedeutung wie etwa die Transformationen des Nationalen im
Zuge der teilweisen Transnationalisierung von Politik und Verwaltung in der EU, welche
Auswirkungen auf den nationalistischen Diskurs zeitigen, der seinerseits häufig mit
Antisemitismus einhergeht.
Das Projekt verbindet eine gesellschaftstheoretische und historische Überblicksstudie über
Antisemitismus im spezifischen Zusammenhang ökonomischer Krisen, seine Artikulationsund Manifestationsformen sowie die Motivationen, die dahinter stehen, mit einer
diskursanalytischen Untersuchung eines ausgewählten Medienkorpus zur gegenwärtigen Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise. In den verschieden gelagerten Textsorten (Berichte,
Kommentare, Reportagen, LeserInnenbriefe, etc.) werden manifeste und latente
antisemitische Diskursstränge herausgestrichen und ihre Wirkungsmacht hinsichtlich der
gesamten Diskursstrategie analysiert. Da vor allem im Internet zum Teil unverhohlen
antisemitisch argumentiert wird, wurden über den Korpus an Printmedien hinaus auch
Forumsdiskussionen in Augenschein genommen und, eine davon genauer analysiert. Im
Zentrum dieses Projekts steht jedoch der Diskurs in den österreichischen Printmedien Kurier,
Die Presse, Der Standard, Neue Kronen Zeitung, profil, Format und News.
Ausgangsüberlegung für diese Herangehensweise ist, dass der in diesen Printmedien
„veröffentlichte Diskurs” eine Datensorte darstellt, die weite Teile in allen
Bevölkerungsschichten erreicht und dominante Deutungsmuster repräsentiert.
Abstract: This dissertation is concerned with present-day representations of Jews, with a focus on mainstream media. Research objectives are two-fold: first, to examine the ways Jews are constructed as Other in (1) traditional, offline mainstream media, (2) online environments, specifically in (a) comment fields under news content, and (b) SNS, and (3) offline group discussions with young people; second, to explore the relationship between the consumption of news and information through different channels and attitudes towards Jews in adolescents. This research builds on Social Identity Theory and Social Representations Theory, and insights from the literature on media representations of ethnic minorities, antisemitism, and hate speech. It employs a multi-method approach, including quantitative and qualitative content analysis, discourse analysis, text mining, and survey methods. The research questions are addressed in five studies: (1) a longitudinal (2006-2016), quantitative content analysis of the television news coverage of the Jewish minority in Belgium; (2) a semantic network analysis of the word "jew" in online reader comments under news content shared on the Facebook page of a leading Flemish news outlet; (3) a qualitative content analysis and co-occurrence network analysis of Instagram posts annotated with the hashtags #jew, #jewish, and #jews; (4) a cross-sectional survey study into the relationship between news consumption through different channels and attitudes towards Jews in adolescents; (5) a focus group study into perceptions and representations of Jews among non-Jewish youth. Findings point to substantial differences in representations of Jews between news media discourse on the one hand, and the "general public" on the other. Furthermore, attitudes towards Jews in adolescents are predicted by education and religious affiliation, rather than news consumption.
Topics: Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Left-Wing, Internet, Israel Criticism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Social Media, Language, Linguistics, Newspapers, Magazines and Periodicals
Abstract: In this paper, the question of importance of Judeo--Spanish as the means for maintaining ethnic identity among the Sephardim in the territories of former Yugoslavia is investigated through an analysis of articles dedicated to the topic published in El amigo del puevlo (a Judeo-Spanish periodical which first was published in Serbia, and then in Bulgaria), fragments from the books by Angel Pulido, Los israelitas espanoles y el idioma castellano (Madrid 1904) and Espanoles sin patria y la raza sefardi (Madrid 1905),as well as unpublished documents from the Archive of Serbia and the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade.The present analysis suggests that a specific language ideology(negative attitudes towards the minority language in question) has played a crucial role in language shift in favor of the majority languages in the region (which has not jeopardized the concept of ethnic identity and membership), thus supporting findings by other authors(e.g., Myhill 2004, Weis 2000) that the maintenance of ethnic identity among Jews over the centuries has often been strengthened bycultural (religious, traditional, literary, etc.) rather than linguistic criteria. From the theoretical standpoint, this research clearly supports the view that the construction of ethnicity and ethnic identity should be viewed as a complex process in which different factors (language being only one of them) have different values and saliency at different points in time (e.g., see Fishman 1989; 1999)
Abstract: The research studies dedicated to the memory of the Second World War have become a research priority in Europe, particularly after the fall of the communist regime and the re-establishment of the balance of power between the East and the West, in close connection with the social, cultural, and identity-based policies promoted by the European Union. The main objective of such studies is to understand the manner in which the Second World War is remembered, starting from the assumption that “the past is always practiced in the present, not because the past imposes itself, but because subjects in the present fashion the past in the practice of their social identity” (Friedman, 1994 quoted by Kapralski, 2017, 2). Research efforts have been mostly aimed at the study of war “narratives” in general and the Holocaust narrative in particular, the latter becoming the dominant narrative in Europe after the 1990s. Following this line of research, the current study seeks to outline the agenda of commemorative events dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust in Romania, as well as the actors and the narratives they promote, relying on a corpus of 116 online press contents commemorating the Holocaust, as published in the online edition of Adevărul, in the period between March 2015 and March 2020.
Abstract: Rund 75 Jahre nach dem Holocaust verzeichnet die Polizei einen An-stieg antisemitischer Straftaten in Deutschland; als bedrohte Minderheit sorgen sich jüdi-sche Menschen um das gesellschaftliche Meinungsklima, das auch die etablierten Massen-medien prägen. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht der vorliegende Beitrag mit Hilfe des normativen Konzepts der „interkulturellen medialen Integration“ die medienjournalisti-sche Berichterstattung der Wochenzeitung Jüdische Allgemeine. Die Befunde der qualitati-ven Inhaltsanalyse von 168 Beiträgen zeigen, dass die vom Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland herausgegebene Publikation in verschiedener Hinsicht heftige Kritik an etab-lierten Medien übt. So hätten einzelne Medien antisemitische Stereotype verbreitet, Perso-nen, die sich antisemitisch äußern, eine Plattform geboten und Antisemitismus als solchen nicht erkannt, relativiert oder negiert. Im Sinne einer differenzierten Medienkritik macht die Jüdische Allgemeine aber auch deutlich, welche Merkmale von Medieninhalten sie für wünschenswert hält, darunter Berichte über alltägliches jüdisches Leben in Deutschland, aber auch authentische Beiträge über Antisemitismus, in denen Betroffene zu Wort kom-men. Die Befunde können zum einen verstehen helfen, warum viele Jüd*innen in Europa Antisemitismus in den Medien als Problem sehen. Zum anderen liefern sie Produzierenden von Medienangeboten Hinweise darauf, welche Resonanz ihre Inhalte innerhalb der jüdi-schen Gemeinschaft finden.
Abstract: Antisemitism is a prototype of racially inspired hatred against minorities and a highly moral issue, particularly in Germany. Against this background, this qualitative study explored role conceptions and enactments among German journalists covering antisemitism. Interviews with 21 journalists indicated that their normally passive role conception became more interventionist when reporting on antisemitism. This more active role was enacted through a high frequency of reporting on antisemitic incidents, intensive research on the motivational backgrounds of antisemitic violence, and high levels of reflection on their word choices and the potential effects of media coverage on public opinion, the Jewish community, and potential imitators of violence. Our findings suggest conditions under which journalists may demonstrate interventionism in favor of minorities, which are as follows: (a) key events in history, (b) the national issue culture; (c) the degree to which issue characteristics make it ethically questionable for journalists to strictly follow a news media logic, (d) the concurrence of discrimination against minority members and attacks on journalists, and (e) journalists’ conviction that the issue at stake indicates a dangerous transformation of a country’s society.
Abstract: Jews and Muslims in France never formed singular communities and never solely or primarily interacted with each other as a function of ethnoreligious identity categories. Rather, their on-the-ground interactions often took place as a function of a variety of other identifications, solidarities, and experiences. Yet, media discourse commonly constructs Jews and Muslims as homogeneous, disparate, and separate communities and their relations as oppositional and troubled. This article examines how Jews and Muslims are relationally defined and constructed in media discourse, focusing on the national dailies Le Monde and Le Figaro. My analysis reveals the discursive patterns that emerge in articles on Jews and Muslims and how these representations implicitly construct ‘Jews’ and ‘Muslims’ and their ‘relations’. In doing so, I make two main arguments about newspaper reporting on Jewish–Muslim relations in France: (1) With some exceptions, Jews and Muslims are constructed as two separate, homogeneous communities and their relations presented as tense and problematic; (2) Jews tend to be presented as fully integrated and their representation is in general positive, while Muslims are more often presented as not fully integrated – or even as at odds with French society and its values – and their representation is, at best, ambiguous and, at worst, negative.
Abstract: This paper examines the discourses relating to antisemitism in the three leading UK national “quality” newspapers from 1993 to 2009. To this end, three corpora were compiled, each consisting of the complete set of instances in context in these papers where antisemitism is mentioned, the first from 1993 the others from 2005 and 2009. Considerable changes were noted between the discourses in the earlier corpus compared to the later ones. In the first, the majority of discourses were either historical and/or literary-artistic (typically discussing whether a particular writer or artist had been antisemitic) or, if they were related to contemporary society, they were discussions of potential or reported antisemitism outside the UK, especially in Eastern Europe. In the later corpora, however, there is much more discussion about a perceived resurgence of antisemitism in the UK and Western Europe. After an overview of these changing patterns, particularly controversial recent cases of alleged antisemitism in British politics are discussed. The methodology of this research combines corpus-analysis techniques with more traditional close textual analysis, characteristic of corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS: Stubbs 1996, Partington 2008).
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Circumcision / Brit Milah, Newspapers, Magazines and Periodicals, Media, National Identity, Islam, Islamophobia, Antisemitism, Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Body
Abstract: In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
A few days after arriving in New York during the spring of 1990, Anatolii S. (born in 1920, Ukraine), put on his jacket, decorated with the numerous military medals that he had earned during his service in the Soviet Army during World War II, and went into a nearby synagogue, hoping to find out about the benefits available to him as a Jewish veteran of the war that "helped to save America from fascism." He showed his documents to the local clerk, who only gestured for him to put his hat back on and to pray with the prayer book. Unable to open the book correctly, and most importantly, unwilling to pray, Anatolii realized that neither his participation in the war, nor his knowledge of Yiddish, made him a true member of this community. Being accustomed to displays of public respect and economic benefits from his status as a war veteran, Anatolii now had to embrace his new status in a society that did not regard him any differently from any other non-English speaking, elderly Jewish immigrant from Russia.
Anatolii, like the other approximately 26,000 Soviet Jewish veterans who migrated to Germany, Israel, Canada, and the United States in the 1990s, was certainly welcome to attend synagogues and Jewish community centers in his new country, but his understanding of what it meant to be a Jew differed profoundly from the majority of members in these communities. Anatolii and his peers (Soviet veterans) regarded their participation in the war as the most important part of their Jewish identity, and they were often shocked to find out how little the war meant to the Jewish identity of the local populations they encountered. Unsatisfied with the status quo, many Soviet veterans launched their own organizations, where being Jewish and proud of Soviet accomplishments did not seem contradictory. Moreover, the definitions of "Soviet" and "Jewish" shifted, merged, and eventually formed the foundation of a specific culture, with its own leaders, traditions, rituals, and language.
In this article, I look into the modes of survival of Soviet language and ideology among veterans, and analyze what these modes tell us about the patterns of immigrant adaptation. I concentrate on three centers of veterans' activities: New York, Toronto, and Berlin, and discuss similarities and differences in the adaptations of veterans in these communities. I will discuss how the culture of each city and country influenced what the veterans select from Soviet rhetoric to describe their present lives.
The second goal of this study is to challenge existing scholarship, which treats elderly migrants as passive and apathetic. Nursing Studies and Gerontology dominate research in this area (rather than the field of immigrant studies) and as a result we know much more about cases of extreme isolation, deprivation, and depression among elderly immigrants in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe than about the contribution elderly migrants make to the social and cultural systems in their new societies. While the vulnerability of this group is undeniable, I perceive studying foreign retirees solely as victims or disadvantaged entities as an "ageism" bias which denies proper recognition and acceptance of the achievements and life experiences of the elderly, as it sees them solely through the prism of their ailing bodies. Soviet Jewish veterans, as a group, serve as an ideal case study of how elderly immigrants fight such perceptions, both consciously and subconsciously, not only by creating their own organizations, but also by establishing an awareness of their legacies in their new home countries.
Data and Methodology
This study is based on 233 in-depth interviews with Soviet veterans of World War II conducted between 1999 and 2007 in Toronto, Berlin, and New York. I used a snowball sample, where the initial respondents—located through veterans' organizations and ads placed in Russian-language media—suggested other potential interviewees. The interviews consisted of open-ended questions about respondents' experiences throughout their lives. Russian-language newspaper articles published in immigrant papers also served as useful sources for public expressions of veterans' opinions about political, cultural, and social issues in their new countries.
Abstract: This thesis examines the mediation of the nation-state as a dimension of the diasporic
experience of place. It focuses on the consumption of mass-media about Israel or
originating from it by people residing outside of the country. I understand this
mediation to take place continuously throughout the day, in multiple spaces, through
different technologies. As such, it forms part of the experience of place in mediasaturated
(urban) environments, allowing for a distant nation-state to become
embedded in daily routines. In order to theorise this experience, I draw on MerleauPonty’s
phenomenology, which understands place through embodied perception and
habit, and on studies of diaspora and media, which examine the social meanings and
uses of media among specific transnational groups. This qualitative project is based
on a researcher-absent exercise and extended interviews with British Jews and Israeli
immigrants in London. Analysis reveals that orientation includes four areas of
practice: investing and withdrawing emotions as part of managing ‘care’, searching
for truth, distinguishing between ordinary and extraordinary time, and domesticating
media. Some of these practices may be particular to the case of Israel, but some are
shaped by discourses around insecurity, rather than Zionism itself. Others appear to
be related to experiences of migration and diaspora in general. I argue that these
practices are ‘orientational practices’ in which people endeavour to make sense of
spatial positioning through negotiating distance and controlling media. I theorise
media as ‘orientation devices’ in diasporic everyday life, but ones that are unstable,
contested and reflected upon, and hence never fully habituated. The resulting
experience is one of increased reflexivity about everyday place and, paradoxically,
increased dependency on media for orientation. I conclude by suggesting that
practices of orientation point to a mode of being in place in globalisation that is not
sufficiently addressed by the dominant understanding of ‘belonging’.
