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Many current counter-disinformation initiatives focus on addressing the production or “supply side” of digital disinformation. Less attention tends to be paid to the consumption or the intended audiences of disinformation campaigns._x000B__x000B_A central concept in understanding people‘s consumption of and vulnerability to digital disinformation is its imaginative dimension as a communication act. Key to the power of disinformation campaigns is their ability to connect to people‘s shared imaginaries. Consequently, counter-disinformation initiatives also need to attend to these imaginaries._x000B__x000B_This report examines why the precarious middle class in the Philippines has been particularly susceptible to digital disinformation. It focuses on two key imaginaries that disinformation producers weaponized in the year leading up to the 2022 national elections. The first was a long-simmering anti-Chinese resentment, which racist social media campaigns about Philippines-China relations targeted. The other was a yearning for a “strong leader”, which history-distorting campaigns about the country‘s Martial Law era amplified. Ironically, some practices adopted by members of the public to protect themselves from the toxicity and vitriol of online spaces increased their vulnerability to digital disinformation. The cumulative impact of these was for people to dig deeper into their existing imaginaries, something that disinformation producers targeted and exploited._x000B__x000B_We offer two suggestions for future counter-disinformation initiatives. The first has to do with addressing people‘s vulnerability to the weaponization of their shared imaginaries. Counter-disinformation initiatives can move past divisive imaginaries by infusing creativity in imparting information. Collaborating with well-intentioned professionals in the media and creative industries would be key to these kinds of initiatives. The second has to do with addressing people‘s media consumption practices. These practices tend to open them up to sustained and long-term digital disinformation campaigns, which provide them with problematic imaginaries to dig into. To establish a similarly robust common ground of reality, counter-disinformation initiatives should themselves be programmatic, not ad hoc.

Speaking about racism in the western political climate of the first decade of the twenty-first century is more difficult than ever before. There is a feeling in post-colonial and post-immigration societies that the blatant overt racism of the past is no longer as pressing. Admitting racism elicits discomfort because common wisdom tells us that racism opposes everything that we believe in as citizens of democratic, “civilised” modern states. Yet state racism appears to be here to stay and, in.

A new generation of Afro-Brazilian media producers have emerged to challenge a mainstream that frequently excludes them. Reighan Gillam delves into the dynamic alternative media landscape developed by Afro-Brazilians in the twenty-first century. With works that confront racism and focus on Black characters, these artists and the visual media they create identify, challenge, or break with entrenched racist practices, ideologies, and structures. Gillam looks at a cross-section of media to show the ways Afro-Brazilians assert control over various means of representation in order to present a complex Black humanity. These images--so at odds with the mainstream--contribute to an anti-racist visual politics fighting to change how Brazilian media depicts Black people while highlighting the importance of media in the movement for Black inclusion. An eye-opening union of analysis and fieldwork, Visualizing Black Lives examines the alternative and activist Black media and the people creating it in today's Brazil.

Portuguese Roma/Ciganos face different forms of negative reactions; they are marginalized, live in precarious socio-economic conditions, and are the poorest in Portugal and in the European Union (EU), as shown by the reports of the European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). Despite national and European strategies, these situations continue, with the proliferation of racist demonstrations and hate crimes, and the growth of extreme right-wing parties. In 2022, the publication of a report by the FRA, regarding the situation of Roma in 10 EU countries (including Portugal), revealed the impact of antigypsyism in the areas of employment, education, health, and housing; these data triggered hate speech on social networks, which happens whenever something about Ciganos is published. A content analysis of the news disseminated by the main Portuguese media (press, TV, Radio) and of the comments on this news was conducted, through qualitative methodology. The results reveal racist hegemonic perspectives towards Ciganos: they depend upon the minimum income, do not contribute economically to the state accounts, and boast luxury goods.

A revealing look at how negative biases against women of color are embedded in search engine results and algorithms Run a Google search for \"black girls\"—what will you find? \"Big Booty\" and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in \"white girls,\" the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about \"why black women are so sassy\" or \"why black women are so angry\" presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society. In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities. Data discrimination is a real social problem; Noble argues that the combination of private interests in promoting certain sites, along with the monopoly status of a relatively small number of Internet search engines, leads to a biased set of search algorithms that privilege whiteness and discriminate against people of color, specifically women of color. Through an analysis of textual and media searches as well as extensive research on paid online advertising, Noble exposes a culture of racism and sexism in the way discoverability is created online. As search engines and their related companies grow in importance—operating as a source for email, a major vehicle for primary and secondary school learning, and beyond—understanding and reversing these disquieting trends and discriminatory practices is of utmost importance. An original, surprising and, at times, disturbing account of bias on the internet, Algorithms of Oppression contributes to our understanding of how racism is created, maintained, and disseminated in the 21st century.

The Media play a diverse and significant role in the practical expression of racism and in the everyday politics of ethnicity. Written by two veterans of research on media and ‘race’, this book offers a fresh comparative analyses of the issues and sets out the key agendas for future study.

What happens when an innocent character created in an artist's early adulthood morphs into a widely recognizable symbol of hatred only a decade later? This is the issue that underground comic book artist Matt Furie must grapple with as he seeks to reclaim his character, Pepe the Frog, from the grip of the Alt-Right. In the early 2000s, San Francisco based artist Matt Furie shared his comic Boy's Club on the internet via MySpace. The series followed a group of anthropomorphic post-college friends and their misadventures. Among them was Pepe the Frog, a peaceful, laid-back character. Managing to catch on as a popular meme, Furie initially found Pepe's status funny and scoffed at the idea of enforcing his legal copyright. That opinion drastically changed as the tenor of Pepe's use online took a sinister turn. After a bizarre series of events, the factions of the internet that heavily imprinted on Pepe went to the extreme lengths of \"ironic\" bigotry to keep him under their control. In doing so, Pepe became widely recognized as a hate symbol, even gaining official recognition from the Anti-Defamation League as such. Now thoroughly wrenched from his original context, Pepe helped indoctrinate wide swaths of internet denizens to the philosophies of the then-burgeoning Alt-Right movement, helping to set the stage for the contentious 2016 election and its ultimate outcome. The film takes viewers on a wild journey through various corners of the internet to show how far one's creation can get away from their original intention and explores the power of symbols and iconography.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Hollywood created its depictions of African Americans. Many of the images, which first appeared in Hollywood films and then on television, were derived from “Dixie,” a term used to reference the antebellum American South, during a time when African Americans were enslaved. This article examines the account, given by the African American Press, of the ongoing dispute over black imagery between Hollywood and the NAACP. The heightened voice of the African American Press ultimately helped to push for the infusing of black presence in popular culture with the goal of depicting the possibilities of an integrated American society. The NAACP and the African American Press emerged as the leading voices in challenging Hollywood’s black caricature culture, after recognizing that harmful black representation was injurious to the burgeoning civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.

This article examines Orientalism in the 1960s American sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. I argue that Orientalism, as defined by Edward Said, is at the core of this show. I Dream of Jeannie is unique in that it transferred existing Orientalist representations from cinema to television. I argue that Orientalism performs two functions in I Dream of Jeannie: (1) imagining Jeannie as an “Other” and (2) being a vehicle for comedy. I note that the show is seldom analyzed for its overt Orientalism, reflecting a problematic “tone-deafness” to anti-Muslim racism that continues in today's television.

According to many pundits and cultural commentators, the U.S. is enjoying a post-racial age, thanks in part to Barack Obama's rise to the presidency. This high gloss of optimism fails, however, to recognize that racism remains ever present and alive, spread by channels of media and circulated even in colloquial speech in ways that can be difficult to analyze. In this groundbreaking collection edited by Michael G. Lacy and Kent A. Ono, scholars seek to examine this complicated and contradictory terrain while moving the field of communication in a more intellectually productive direction. An outstanding group of contributors from a range of academic backgrounds challenges traditional definitions and applications of rhetoric. From the troubling media representations of black looters after Hurricane Katrina and rhetoric in news coverage about the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres to cinematic representations of race in Crash, Blood Diamond, and Quentin Tarantino's films, these essays reveal complex intersections and constructions of racialized bodies and discourses, critiquing race in innovative and exciting ways. Critical Rhetorics of Race seeks not only to understand and navigate a world fraught with racism, but to change it, one word at a time.