Critical Approaches to Arts and Humanities: Researching White Supremacism and Antisemitism on Social Media

COLL-C 103 — Fall 2022 — Themester

Days and Times
MW 9:10 AM–10:00 AM (lecture); discussions at various times
Course Description

Online hate speech, including white supremacism and antisemitism, is a growing problem for communication on social media. This course covers online conversations in English from across the globe to ask what are prominent forms of such online hate? Who are frequent disseminators and how does hate speech travel across the globe? What are current discussions of dealing with hate speech between censorship, free speech, and counter-speech? What are the historical roots of white supremacism and antisemitism?

We will examine the most significant myths in their historical and social contexts, including conspiracy theories. We will see how some older myths from the European Middle Ages are still relevant today and how they are reformulated and disseminated on social media. In order to do so, we will need to learn about the history of antisemitism, white nationalism, and race theory.

A strong emphasis will be put on your own original research on social media. You will work individually and in teams to answer some aspects of the above questions. Some of the material you will be reviewing will be deeply offensive in texts and images. We will use a large database of live tweets and analytical tools that we have developed in an ongoing international research project on this topic.

Multiple course titles or topics are listed under this course number. Choose section 5846
with G. Jikeli

Instructor:  Dr. Günther Jikeli