Exploring lesser-known facets of digital extreme-right mobilization: Search engines, data voids and extreme-right politics of exclusion

Activity: Talk or presentationInvited talk

Description

Dr. Norocel will shift focus from social media platforms as loci of digital extreme-right mobilization and explore instead the role played by search engines in this context. As such, Dr. Norocel will explain the critical approach to big data analytics developed to gauge the tentative contours of data voids in Google searches that reflect extreme-right dynamics of exclusion in the aftermath of the 2015 humanitarian crisis in Europe. The value added of the topic is that it makes several contributions to the field. First, it adds complexity to the analysis of data voids, expanding the framework of investigation outside the USA context by concentrating on Germany and Sweden. Second, the study proposes a catalogue of queries concerning the issue of migration in both Germany and Sweden on a continuum from mainstream to extreme-right vocabularies, which enables a big data analysis concerning the politics of exclusion. Third, the results indicate that a search engine's reliance on source popularity may lead to extreme-right sources appearing in top positions. Furthermore, using social media platforms for user-generated content provides a way for localized queries to gain top positions. The presentation will be concluded by sketching a line of investigation building on these results and evidencing a few issues of importance in the study of extreme-right mobilization more widely.
Period2023 Mar 16
Event titleResearch Talks at the Institute of Global Studies
Event typeSeminar
LocationBudapest, HungaryShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

UKÄ subject classification

  • Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)
  • Information Systems, Social aspects
  • International Migration and Ethnic Relations
  • Gender Studies

Free keywords

  • search engine research
  • xenophobia
  • far-right
  • data void
  • Sweden
  • Germany