All the chats we cannot see
While we were on holiday, we took our children down to the beach late one night to see the stars. We live in a city and while you can see stars, there are not that many.
We stood on the beach and saw more stars than we had in years. The sky was full of them!
It was a wonderful reminder to look up.
It was also a reminder of how much is hidden from view.
There are lots of posts now where I look at the comments and think: where is that coming from? Homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, racism, anti-vax, statements that would never have been deemed acceptable less than a decade ago.
Suddenly there are derogatory statements everywhere. On posts about TV shows. On posts about events. On posts where people are sharing their own personal experiences.
Its shocking and frightening.
What’s happened?
What we can’t see is all the conversations going on behind the scenes. The ones in the dark.
People get invited into private channels, where they are surrounded by people sharing extremist views. These messages are on their phone. It’s what they see when they scroll before bed. It’s what they wake up to.
In 2021, researchers investigated US Extremism on Telegram. They found “47 of the 125 channels were connected to well-known violent extremist movements or hate groups” (Perspectives on Terrorism, Volume 15, Issue 2, p. 100). Many of the channels grew in size over the course of a week. Lots of the channels were far-right, but some were far-left. There is extremism on both sides of the political divide.
This study spoke about platforms I had never heard of: BitChute, Gab, and Parler.
The authors wrote: “Alternative social media platforms enable the building of strong and nearly impenetrable virtual communities that can produce echo chambers of hate speech and violent extremist dialogue that would otherwise be removed by mainstream platforms.” (P. 101)
The authors found some news channels shared links from genuine news sites, but others shared misinformation.
Writing about the chats they analysed, they reported: “explicit anti-minority ideas, hostility toward minorities, and racist slurs were abundantly present in our data set.” (P. 113)
What makes Telegram attractive is its focus on privacy. Chats can automatically delete all content, so there is no trace of what was said.
When you are actively involved in a chat, you feel part of a community. At a time when so many people feel lonely, having a group of people who are always there is attractive. When you are surrounded by people reinforcing a point of view, it is not surprising that you start to believe that viewpoint is socially acceptable.
And then you start sharing those views outside of your bubble.
When you get pushback, you have a community of support behind you telling you that you are right.
That study was published in 2021. That’s five years of people quietly absorbing information. Five years of conversations away from the public eye. Five years of creating a world view which looks very different to the people who have not been in one or more of these channels.
Detached from abstract ideas of truth or moral judgments
Extreme views are not just hidden on broadcast and group channels. They are shared among family and friends on platforms like WhatsApp.
Sahana Udupa, Professor of Media Anthropology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) says people forwarding hateful messages don’t necessarily agree with them. Instead, it’s pack behaviour: everyone else is sharing this, I should share it too.
She said when sharing with friends and family, people you are close to and trust, “they become detached from abstract ideas of truth or moral judgments”. We also don’t challenge those close to us. We don’t want to cause upset.
She uses the term ‘extreme speech’, rather than hate speech, because it covers a wider range of messaging. People use posts on public social media to then invite people to join channels on Telegram, and other platforms.
So that meme you looked at uncomfortably could also be seen by someone else who is then sucked in to a more extreme space.
Now we are finding extreme speech has come into the light and we are seeing a tidal wave of it online.
Sources:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36408456
