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Purpose – This chapter demonstrates the power that Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft (or the “GAFAM”) exercise over platforms within society, highlights the alt-right’s use of GAFAM sites and services as a platform for hate, and examines GAFAM’s establishment and use of hate content moderation apparatuses to de-platform alt-right users and delete hate content. Approach – Drawing upon a political economy of communications approach, this chapter demonstrates GAFAM’s power in society. It also undertakes a reading of GAFAM “terms of service agreements” and “community guidelines” documents to identify GAFAM hate content moderation apparatuses. Findings – GAFAM are among the most powerful platforms in the world, and their content moderation apparatuses are empowered by the US government’s cyber-libertarian approach to Internet law and regulation. GAFAM are defining hate speech, deciding what’s to be done about it, and censoring it. Value – This chapter probes GAFAM’s hate content moderation apparatuses for Internet platforms, and shows how GAFAM enable and constrain the alt-right’s hate speech on their platforms. It also reflexively assesses the politics of empowering GAFAM to de-platform the alt-right.

The current study has three main purposes: (1) replicate results from prior framing effects studies on social media. To do so, the study examines the influence of news frames (free speech vs. public order) on participants' attitudes toward an alt-right rally (2) expand prior research by examining the emotional reaction of participants to these frames and (3) probe the moderating effects of face-to-face heterogenous talk and heterogenous social media feeds.

Drawing from theoretical concepts such as competitive framing, emotions and heterogeneity, the study uses a randomized online experiment. The study examines a conversation in a Twitter thread that includes both free speech and public order frames in the comments to the thread. The total number of participants was 275.

The results show that free speech versus public order frame did not impact attitudes of the participants toward the alt-right rally. Findings also show the significant main effects of free speech and public order frames and the interaction of exposure to heterogeneity on emotional reactions of outrage and anger toward the alt-right rally. These findings suggest that framing research needs to take social media features into consideration for a complete picture of framing effects on social media.

Using a classic framing effects experiment, the study includes variables relevant to social media discussions on Twitter and examined the moderating effects of heterogeneity on emotional reactions. In addition, one of the important methodological contributions of the current study are the framing manipulations for an externally valid experimental design.

Nietzsche’s texts contain diverse and sometimes contradictory themes that defy singular summations and are open to divergent interpretations. He also often deployed puzzling and contradictory statements to provoke readers’ thoughts. Although not claiming to illuminate the one true Nietzsche, I contend that his sociocultural and social psychological arguments about German antisemitism and nationalism not only contradict alt right views but also theorize conditions that give rise to this distinctive type of demagoguery. Conflictive appropriations of Nietzsche have been part of the battle over capitalist crises and reactionary populist revivals for over a century, and unregulated growth and massive expansion of the global economy relative to the biosphere greatly increased material throughput and production of waste and generated a host of severe global environmental problems, including especially climate change. In this situation, the alt right contends that cosmopolitan people are deracinated, emptied of their cultural particularity, and spiritually lost. Progressives contend that cosmopolitans potentially benefit from more diverse people and perspectives, enhanced ability to empathetically play the role of the other, and consequent wider communicative capacities and refined powers of cooperation. Nietzsche too exhorted humans to “remain true to the earth” and its “garden joy,” and implied a naturalist esthetics and pacification of nature, and he should be rescued from alt right by reaching beyond his legacy to envision and forge new political-economic alternatives and collective actions capable of sustaining life on the planet and creating and perpetuating a more just democracy that favors cosmopolitan human flourishing.

In 2015, Idris Elba declared ‘I’m probably the most famous Bond actor in the world … and I’ve not even played the role’. Speculation about Elba taking on the role of the world’s most famous spy has circulated for over a decade, fuelled by current Bond Daniel Craig’s assertion that the role has ruined his life. This chapter will examine the role of fans in driving hype about the future of Bond, focusing on the case study of alt-right outrage at the potential casting of Elba. The anti-Elba camp have framed their outrage as informed by authorial intent, and the desire to maintain canon, with claims that Ian Fleming’s Bond was, and should always be white and Scottish. Bond’s expansive narrative universe has remained constant since its inception, enabling fans of the series to form an emotional connection and sense of ownership over the text as a cohesive brand, a form of ‘affective economics’ (Hills, 2015; Jenkins, 2006a). By situating the debate over Elba’s suitability within the timeline of the Bond franchise, the author will posit that the rigid casting and structure of the film series to date enables feelings of fan ownership to flourish. Whilst the influence of vocal fan groups has altered the future direction of numerous popular texts, this chapter will suggest that the sameness of Bond-as-brand provides the justification for fan backlash towards potential change. In sum, this chapter will highlight the Elba-as-Bond rumours as a reflection of the contemporary political moment which seeks to flatten out difference under the auspice of protecting the canon and tradition of ‘brand Bond’.

Academic literature and news media on young people’s activism predominantly champions young people who align with liberal or progressive values, evident most recently in the youth-led climate strikes around the world. Research is often undertaken by scholars who see their work as advocacy for children and young people, countering deficit-based depictions of politically disengaged or ill-informed youth. Yet, this scholarship rarely includes young people whose forms of political activism align with conservative, right-wing, or even alt-right politics. Such ‘selective advocacy’ reinforces a limited picture of the who and what of young people’s political participation. In this chapter, I explore what it might mean for the field of youth studies to provide a more complex picture of young people’s activism and the necessary discomfort that emerges when the desire to advocate for young research participants conflicts with a researcher’s own political and moral concerns. Through a feminist post-structural frame, I examine media and public discourses surrounding instances of young people’s activism in conservative, right-wing, and alt-right spaces. I present the case of a conservative protest organised by a group of university students and targeting a drag queen hosted children’s story time at a library in Brisbane, Australia. This case highlights the importance of maintaining ‘epistemic uncertainty’ when it comes to the complexity of youth and activism. If we are to provide a fuller picture of youth activism, I argue that it is important not to overlook less ‘comfortable’ forms that do not neatly align with the progressive advocacy that dominates the field of youth studies.

This study aims to make the reader aware of recent changes in the white supremacist movement and how such changes have altered the ways in which the movement can be combatted.

The authors study the movement in two periods: from 1970 to 2005 and from 2006 onward. The authors contrast the two periods and discuss the legal and financial issues within each.

The authors find that while legal concepts such as vicarious liability and respondeat superior apply today just as they did before, new tools are needed to fight the new means of financing the movement.

The main limitation of this study is the lack of quantitative data. Because the “alt-right” became popular around 2015, there has not been enough time for the construction of detailed data sets.

While many law papers have explored the white supremacist movement, the financing side has gone under-analyzed in scholarly research. This is important in light of the rise of the internet, online payment processors, cryptocurrencies and remote organizing and fundraising.

The 2017 Charlottesville rally was organized and financed via podcasts, online forums, encrypted chats and anonymous payments. Since then, the movement has mostly gone underground and has become more violent and radical as many members have come to believe that marches and politics do not help them.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no papers in finance that deal extensively with this topic. The authors believe that the severity of the issue and the importance of its funding make this study a valuable source of information. The recent changes occurring within the movement are likely to become even more critical to its success or failure in the future.

Purpose: In this chapter, the authors posit that, shadowing the etiological crises in criminology, much crime media scholarship remains “lost in the mediascape.” The authors outline why dominant positivist methodologies in crime media scholarship leave us lost and offer tools that researchers may use for better wayfinding in this complex and dynamic environment.

Methodology/approach: Drawing on the concept of liquid criminology, the authors join a growing chorus in the crime media field calling for methodological and theoretical concepts more reflective of the social dimensions of liquid modernity, that is, uncertainty, ambiguity, impermanence, precarity, etc.

Findings: The conditions of liquid modernity inform a mediascape characterized by an abundance of data, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories resulting in collective disorientation and the inability to form coherent narratives about the past, present, or future. As such, these conditions defy positivistic conventions like representative sampling and demand new, imaginative approaches to the study of crime media. To that end, informed by the cultural criminological perspective, the authors offer two methodologies and one theoretical concept.

Research limitations: The authors believe our methodological and theoretical suggestions are best suited for analyzing themes and concepts among discourse around crime incidents that have significant legal and social implications. The authors offer no definitive answers, but hope to begin building a better toolbox for wayfinding in this digital wilderness.

Originality/value: The currently dominant methodology within crime media scholarship is a poor fit with contemporary media culture. Here, the authors begin to remedy that by proposing an orientation that fits better with the fluid, uncertain, and dynamic media environment that permeates our social world.