8. Activism & Extremism on the Internet (Juris--insider anthropology)

Welcome to Section 8 of this Digital Anthropology subject. Your essential reading is Juris, #Occupy Everywhere. 

Recap

In the previous section, we considered digital politics. Now we will focus on a specific area of digital politics: digital activism and extremism. To begin with, however, we consider the insider-outsider distinction in relation to anthropology.

Insider-outsider distinction: Anthropological concepts

Definition

"Insider" and "outsider" are fairly rudimentary concepts in Anthropology, but they seem to arise recurringly. 

'Outsider anthropology' occurs where the anthropologist studies other people. I am a white, middle-class, English-speaking, Australian. Where I have done fieldwork--among Indonesians, Malays and Indigenous Australians--I would be considered an outsider. So other anthropologists might consider my research to be  'outsider anthropology'.

Most 'traditional' ethnographic research was conducted by outsiders. The idea was that being an outsider, the anthropologist had a more insightful perspective. Nevertheless,  the term "outsider anthropology" does not come up very often, only 398 times in my Google search on September 12, 2019.

By contrast, searching the term "insider anthropology" on the same day gave me 8,130. "Insider anthropology" refers to cases when anthropologists study 'their own' people. If I did fieldwork among white, middle-class Australians, the study might be explicitly called "insider anthropology". 

Insider/outsider significance

Before I studied cultural anthropology, I expected that cultural anthropologists would try to become insiders. They would try to become as indistinguishable from the people they studied as possible. The good anthropologist would be like a chameleon, I thought, blending in.

Actually, the traditional idea is that anthropologists do not become one with the people they study. The traditional idea is rather that anthropological knowledge is generated out of the contrast between being insider and outsider. So being an outsider is crucial to the production of anthropological knowledge.

Native anthropologist

Another cognate term for "insider anthropology" is "native anthropologist". As a Muslim woman doing fieldwork among other Muslim women, we might say that Lila Abu-Lughod was a 'native anthropologist'. 

Anthropology at home

Another related term is "anthropology at home", which describes an anthropologist studying his/her own people in their own town/village/country/culture. However, as "home" and "field" are separate pair of concepts, we won't consider them in detail here. ANU anthropologist Katerina Taeiwa calls her research "homework" not "fieldwork". She researches Banabas, who were forced to migrate out to other Pacific Islands after their island was mined out of existence. She went back home and found aspects of Bananbas identity through their dance. 

The ideas of field and home  were most famously criticised in a Gupta & Ferguson famous chapter "Discipline and Practice" (summarized here), which deconstructed  this pair of concepts.

Problematizing insider-outsider

"How native is a native anthropologist?" Kiran Narayan famously asked. She found that, as an American-Indian doing fieldwork among Indians, she was not an insider. Anthropologists, she argued, always have an outsider's perspective because of their education and training. 

But it's not just because of our education and training as anthropologist. I'm a male, middle-class, cellist. What if I did research among other male, middle-class cellists in Indonesia. Obviously, I'm partially 'inside', but to what extent?

Insider/outsider: application

The inside-outside distinction emerges with regard to the main reading this week on the #Occupy movent. It is authored by Jeff Juris, who, as an activist, might appear to be an insider yet as an academic could also be seen as an outsider. He frames his research in terms relating to studying the other and the self of moving between spaces (18.47-19:18). 

When I spoke to Tom Boellstorff, he identified this idea as an English approach that contrasted with the American practice. He described how, being openly gay in Indonesia, his 'LGBT' friends perceived him to be an insider. For him (2:32-4:12), the difference was "more one of degree than kind" 

Boellstorf analyzes the insider-outsider distinction as emerging from a historical trend in British and French anthropology. 

For more on anthropologists as insiders, please read "Power and Positionality: Negotiating Insider/Outsider Status". As usually happens, when we closely analyze this pair of concepts, insider/outsider, we find that the distinction is nuanced. For instance, Ray Madden, an anthropologist at La Trobe University, describes expecting to be an outsider when working with Indigenous people in his hometown. He found, in practice, more common ground than he expected. 

Having covered this anthropological concept of insider/outsider, it's now time to focus on the main topic of this section; activism & extremism.

Online Activism & Extremism

Activism and Extremism are two modes of political action that have increasingly relied on the online world to further specific causes. Activist and extremist group members use multiple online platforms strategically to recruit sympathizers to their cause whether it is for political change through activities such as environmental activism, gender, and minority activism, or to spread extremist ideology, hate speech and mass violence towards certain groups such as the activities of Far-Right White Supremacists or ISIS. 

Online Activism: Introduction

First, we need to focus what we mean by activism

Activism & Social Movements

Anthropologists usually consider the concept of "activism" as emerging from social movements research. Social movements research itself comes from different angles, predominantly pol sci, sociology, and anthropology. The classic pattern of understanding is provided by Lasswell. He argued that by using Freudian theory we could analyze political agitators, administrators, and organizers! 

However, a more recent working definition of "activism" is:

Activism is action on behalf of a cause, action that goes beyond what is conventional or routine. The action might be door-to-door canvassing, alternative radio, public meetings, rallies, or fasting. The cause might be women's rights, opposition to a factory, or world peace (Martin 2007; 19).

For more, you can turn to "activism theory" and "mobilization theory", both of which fall outside the discipline of traditional anthropology. 

Slacktivism

Slacktivism

What is "Slacktivism"? It is a term used to deprecate the actions of 'social media activists' who post and Tweets but do not make the sacrifices necessary for activism. Who uses this term? It's not really an anthropological concept--it's too judgemental to be useful for Anthropologists. Journalist and best selling author called Gladwell (but not academic!) portrayed social media activism as 'slacktivism'. In his famous 2010 article, he wrote: "in the outsized enthusiasm for social media...we seem to have forgotten what activism is." For instance:

“Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice”.

Twitter & #Ferguson

Yarimar Bonilla's research takes issue with both the "digital divide" & "slacktivism" ideas. Bonilla observes that a disproportionate[ly high] number of people of color are on Twitter. among Twitter users. For Bonilla, Twitter is thus a 'black public sphere', where in other spheres--parliaments, television news, print journalism, etc.--the white male voice is privileged. So in contrast to detractors, who derided social media activism as #slacktivism, Bonilla finds Twitter to be a safe space for African Americans to engage in activism. Sure they might encounter online trolls, but that is less confronting than being beaten at a Black Lives demonstration! While a single post or a single Twitter-inspired demonstration may not make a palpable difference, they can contribute to a growing movement, as in the case of Black Lives Matter. Additionally, Twitter has provided people of color with a way to document their own experiences of violence, even brutality. Therefore, Bonilla concludes, issues of race and Twitter are inseparable. 

For more, see her co-authored article: Bonilla, Y. & Rosa, J., 2015. #Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist, 42(1), pp. 4–17.

Feminist Activism

What is 'feminism'? It seems like the most obvious question to answer but actually, it is difficult to encapsulate all we know about feminism. Brimacombe suggests that feminism is activism practiced by a group of women lobbying for their rights. So what happened to feminism when digital technology emerge? How has feminism impacted on the digital? Researchers in the field of anthropology and feminism has for some reason focus on developing countries and how women have challenged male dominance through their use of digital media.have also undertaken research with women-specific collectives or 'gender activists'. These women use online spaces to gain a political voice that was denied to them offline. This lack of political voice results from an imbalance in the local gender power structure, geographical distance e.g. in the Pacific (Tait Brimacomb, 2018) or in the diaspora (Winarnita, 2008), and other such factors. Our first example of this is Brimacombe's research in Fiji.  

Brimacombe: Feminist Activism in Fiji

How and to what extent social media provide a platform for debate and lobbying? Brimacombe argues that, because of the way the traditional media is structured in Fiji, women rarely possess a platform to express their political voice. Social media gave them a voice; they provide a platform specifically for women’s rights. Brimacombe professes a second argument; namely, that social media impact offline policy.

Strictly speaking, her methodology was not traditional ethnography but relied on focus groups. The participants were from known organizations and networks from the Fijian Women's Rights Movement. The focus group participants have represented a 'voices of dissent' in Fiji. 

Brimacombe's focus group participants also communicated a 'tension' between 'slacktivsm' and 'activism'. She notes that there are many other scholars (Kahn and Kellner 2004, Gerbaudo 2012, Tufecki and Wilson 2012) who disagree with the idea that social media is 'slactivism.' Online activism arguably has created a "vital new space of politics and culture and produced new social relations and forms of political possibility" (Kahn and Kellner 2004, p.94).

Feminist Activism in Indonesia

Feminist protester in a Western country?

Research by Kartika (2019) describes fundamentalist antifeminist digital movement is growing in influence. Comprised mostly of fundamentalist Muslim women this group seeks to counter what it perceived to be unwelcome inroads from Western feminism into Indonesia. Indeed, they perceive Western feminism to contradict religious values. This movement began with an Instagram account and one of the first expressions of its popularity was an offline protest to counter Indonesian feminists' annual Women's Day Marches. 

Indonesia Without Feminist Instagram Account 

Against this backdrop, Winarnita (2019), who is Indonesian herself (this might be seen as an instance of the insider perspective), studies how Indonesian feminist groups use the online space to advance their cause and organized a coalition of diverse groups for offline activism. Feminist politics in Indonesia is even more nuanced than in Western countries. For example, this year (2019) two Women's Marches have been held in the capital city Jakarta. The first occurred on International Women's Day on the 8th March, which involved Union Members (about 60%) who were promoting women's workplace rights, including against sexual harassment. Also present were various gender and sexuality "LGBT" groups. In spite of this diversity, protesters organized a coalition online and rally against one main point, to ratify a law against Sexual Violence. 

The second march occurred on National holiday which commemorates Indonesia's 'first feminist' Kartini about a month later. This second march occurred because the Jakarta Feminist group, a Facebook group that normally organizes the annual International Women's Day, felt it was important to march after the Indonesian general election in mid-April as they didn't want their cause to be overtly 'politicized'.  In the second march, they were directly responding to the antifeminist group with the hashtag #daretohaveavoice (#beranibersuara). (It is important to note that many Muslim women joined the feminist marches, in comparison, the antifeminist movement is an extremely influential yet minority group).  
   

Second Women's Day March with the banner #Daretohaveavoice

To hear more here's a link to the La Trobe Research in Focus Podcast 

Youth & Digital Activism in Indonesia

Here Moni presents on youth & digital activism in Indonesia: 

Digital Political Movements

Juris: #Occupy Everywhere

In "#Occupy Everywhere", Juris (2012) takes an anthropological approach to the #Occupy movement. Juris is not arguing that particular forms of protest are right or wrong. He is just studying how social media affect protest movements and vice versa.

Networking and aggregating logics

For Juris, the cultural logic of activism is a "set of embodied social and cultural dispositions". Accordingly, the use of media by activists can be characterized as networking and aggregating.

Networking logic

Networking logic is horizontal. Information flows readily. It is decentralized. So networking logic is all about creating connections and organization. Juris explains that the websites and email mailing lists (especially 'listserv') of the late 1990s and 2000s helped provide this networking logic.

Aggregating logic

Explaining aggregating logic, Juris writes:

Whereas networking logics entail a praxis of communication and coordination on the part of collective actors that are already constituted— including particular organizations, networks, and coalitions (cf. Fox 2009)—logics of aggregation involve the coming together of actors qua individuals*. These individuals may subsequently forge a collective subjectivity through the process of struggle, but it is a subjectivity that is under the constant pressure of disaggregation into its individual components— hence, the importance of interaction and community building within physical spaces. Whereas networks are also given to fragmentation, the collective actors that compose them are more lasting.

[*"actors qua individuals" = "actors as individuals"; in other words, they don't come together as organizations or groups, initially at least]

If it helps you could think of aggregating logic as providing quantity as opposed to quality! If the global justice movements operated on a logic of networking through listservs and websites, the #Occupy movement, initially at least, operated on a logic of aggregation through YouTube and Twitter (268).

For more, you could turn to Nick's summary of Juris' article. 

Algorithmic Enclaves & Flame Wars

Merlyna Lim's (2017),  Algorithmic Enclaves describes the 2017 election for the governor of Indonesia's capital city, Jakarta. In a majority Muslim nation, the election evoked deep religious and ethnic tensions. This is because a Christian Chinese (named Ahok) was pitted against a Yemeni Muslim. Ahok was deep faked in a video, allegedly insulting Islam. This deep-faked video went viral. Two sides emerged:

1. Pro-Ahok: anti-Mulsim racism
2. Anti-Ahok: Muslims can't be governed by non-Muslims

This lead to the outpouring of hatred towards both sides. Violent demonstrations ensued. 

This kind of polarisation through digital media is also a theme of Virgine Andre's "Flame Wars". Andre notes that in Thai culture there is a similar Muslim divide. In Thai culture there are three circles:

• 1.  Your family circle
• 2.      Your larger network of influence
• 3.       Strangers

With strangers, you can be as rude as you like All the language in the flame wars between Muslims and Buddhists 'inflamed' because it was between strangers. What makes this research so Digital Anthropology is that it doesn't pick sides (e.g. who's right or wrong) but rather looks to cultural and social patterns (e.g. the distinction between 3 circles) to explain the politics of digital media. 

Online Extremism

Ahmad Musa Jibril

Violent extremism has been approached from different perspectives in a number of disciplines and scholarly fields. Here we analyse 'online preachers' popular amongst ISIS fighters as social media influencers. First, we consider Ahmad Musa Jibril.  Jibril is a US-based 'online' preacher with Arab roots. Jibril has been described as a subtle, careful and nuanced preacher, eloquent, charismatic and fluent in English. The other online preacher we consider is Musa Cerantonio. Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, he is a convert who also had an Egyptian TV Show called 'Ask the Sheikh'. Cerantonio is more explicit in his support for ISIS. Both online preachers have been active on Facebook and Twitter since 2004. 

Former Victoria University student, Musa Cerantonio

Both use social media in the English language to gain support for foreign fighters joining the cause of ISIS. According to a report by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation available online (#Greenbirds) by Carter et al from Kings College London, these two online preachers' social influence and social media popularity amongst Western and European foreign fighters stood out. (Note this report only use a quantitative methodology of measuring things not anthropological methodology). Cerantonio and Jibril’s political, moral and spiritual messages are considered attractive to foreign fighters, particularly among groups like ISIS whose members provide a majority of their ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ on Twitter (60% popularity for Sheikh Ahmad Musa Jibril who is a fan of Twitter and 23% for Musa Cerantonio) and Facebook (20.9% popularity for Sheikh Ahmad Musa Jibril and 17.4% for Musa Cerantonio who is more active on Facebook) (Carter et al 2014: 18-20).  The two had significant online followers including ISIS fighters who were devoted personally to them or their individual appeal. In turn, Jibril and Cerantonio were also dependent on their followers for their recognition online. Cerantonio has 11,000 Facebook followers while Jibril’s Facebook fan page has over 145,000 likes. Both interact with their followers individually and personally through social media.

Of course, terrorism is not just related to Islam. In recent years we have seen increasing media coverage of right-wing extremism on the internet. A recent example is the 2019 Christchurch Mosque shooting who used multiple platforms such as 8chan and Twitter, posting links to his manifesto and live stream on Facebook the shooting to spread further terror online. The shooter himself is thought to be strongly influenced by 'online preachers' of this violent right-wing ideologies.

Conclusion

In this section, we have discussed how digital technologies have impacted upon activism and terrorism and vice-versa. The repercussion of this is felt online and offline. As we saw in the discussion of online preachers for violent extremism, they have an increasingly important role in diverse societies.

Main Reading:
Juris, JS 2012 'Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social media, public space, and emerging logics of aggregation', American ethnologist, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 259–279.

Secondary Readings:  
Brimacombe, T., Kant, R., Finau, G., Tarai, J., Titifanue, J. (2018.) ‘A New Frontier in Digital Activism: An Exploration of Digital Feminism in Fiji, ‘Asia Pacific Policy Study: 1–14

Picart, C. (2015) “’Jihad Cool/Jihad Chic’”: The Roles of the Internet and Imagined Relations in the Self-Radicalization of Colleen LaRose (Jihad Jane)”, Societies, 5 (2): 354-383

Jereza, R. (2021), Revisiting social media as far-right modality. Soc Anthropol, 29: 352-354. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.13059