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India Needs a Fresh Strategy to Tackle Online Extreme

Speech
SAHANA UDUPA

Sahana Udupa ([email protected]) is at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

and is the Principal Investigator ERC Project ONLINERPOL.
I am grateful to Matti Pohjonen for network graphs, and Neelabh Gupta for fieldwork
assistance in Delhi.

Text

Abuse and disinformation should be approached as an important culture of mediatised

politics in the digital age, which not only reflects extant political differences but
significantly shapes what it means to participate in public life for a net fed generation.

Allegations and counter-allegations around abusive speech and disinformation on social

media networks have made “trolling” and “fake news” significant actors in public discourse,
as India braces up for the next round of national elections.

From serious allegations around paid trolls to casual-jocular naming of an irritating user as
a troll, brazen language, “fact-filled” untruths and belligerent tone of exchange have
become an everyday reality of online political debates. With several prominent online users
coming out in the open to complain about abusive speech, online harassment is no longer a
private injury that is dealt with in a hush-hush manner—with the nervous, invisible clicks of
delete and block buttons. With several new civil society and business initiatives launched to
do fact-checking, the quality of information exchange has at the same time become a major
concern. Online abuse and disinformation have struck the public mainstream, bringing the
spotlight on the “dark side” of internet exchange.
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While global concerns over fake news and disinformation have found resonance in the
world’s second largest online sphere (with 450 million internet users), social media
exchange in India should also be understood in relation to longer cultures of political
exchange and structures of privilege that define who gets to spread disinformation or abuse
fellow users, and with what consequences. Far from dismissing rugged exchanges on online
media as political mud-slinging common to India’s fissured democratic landscape, it would
serve well to approach abuse and disinformation as an important culture of mediatised
politics in the digital age, which not only reflects extant political differences but
significantly shapes what it means to participate in public life for a net fed generation.

“Extreme speech” is a conceptual tool that could help to grasp the phenomenon of online
abusive exchange and disinformation. Extreme speech refers to speech acts that stretch the
boundaries of acceptable speech along the twin axes of civility/incivility and truth/falsity. As
a concept, “extreme speech” resists the temptation to label all manner of vitriol as “hate
speech”. While regulatory excess that could arise out of such overreach is obvious, what is
equally important, from a theoretical point of view, is the ambiguity of public speech forms.
Mazzarella and Kaur (2009) capture this as “cultural regulation.”

Rather than a field of polar opposites, cultural regulation defines a “spectrum of public
cultural interventions” between censorship and publicity that feed on each other to
“generate value (commercial or symbolic) out of a delicate balancing of incitement and
containment.” As regards online speech, this explains the contradictory climate of indulging
in online vitriol and its public disavowal, which is itself reflective of the broader tension
between containment as a value in the regulatory domain and incitement as an attribute of
practical politics. In other words, no political party or vested group will be untouched by the
culture of online vitriol and disinformation in the days to come.

From an analytical perspective, extreme speech allows us to pry open the field to map
different forms, formats and actors involved in online vitriol and disinformation. A departure
from the overarching category of “hate speech” allows for closer attention to actual user
practices and different new media affordances that enable such action. For instance, I have
argued that online abuse in India could be best captured as “gaali” which signals the
blurred boundaries between comedy, insult, shame and abuse emerging on online media
with divergent consequences (Udupa 2017). Such grounded analysis approaches online
abuse as “extreme speech” representing a spectrum of online practices rather than the
culturally flat antonymous conception of uncivil speech versus acceptable speech (Pohjonen
and Udupa 2017).

The key differentiator is that there is a performative moment to transgress the norm, and
incentives found in online media and political ecosystem to say the unsayable, make jibes
where none was permitted, or creatively mash up messages to offer a distorted view. In all
these moments, the “mainstream” or the “norm” are themselves moved and readjusted.
While such acts can have a subversive potential to “talk back to authorities,” they can also
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be a tool for dominance when used from positions of privilege.

How do we use these perspectives to map online extreme speech in India, which is gaining
momentum with upcoming national elections as a critical event? The brief analysis that
follows is based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork among politically active online users in
Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru that started in 2013, and social media content and network
analysis of online exchange based on purposive sampling. Methodologically, it is rooted in
“internet related ethnography” combining onground fieldwork with discourse and network
analysis of social media exchange (Pink et al 2016).

Form, Formats and Types

In our ongoing research on digital politics, we have found that extreme speech is
proliferating across social media platforms. Far from an ahistorical position that would
consider these forms as a new media phenomenon, such expressions should be understood
in relation to cultures of political sloganeering, subversive speech, and efforts to
“semiotically dominate the opposition” via oratory (Bate 2009) and campaignstyle
manoeuvring in postcolonial India. This history is beyond the scope of this short essay, but
suffice it to say that online media have brought these styles to the fore of everyday political
engagement, infusing them with globally resonant online user cultures. Online extreme
speech reflects and transforms face-to-face interactions set within polymedia environments
where television channels and a section of print media are increasingly embracing
accessible and provocative language.

Although extreme speech expressions are seen across social networking and messaging
services, it is possible to differentiate between platform-specific and platform-agnostic
formats of extreme speech.

Memes: Internet memes, for instance, cut through different social media platforms, as they
are shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp, depending on the popularity of
specific platforms within specific communities. In ethnographic interviews, we have found
vast variation in the use of these platforms for political discussions. While online actors
more comfortable in regional languages preferred Facebook and WhatsApp to Twitter,
urban users fluent in English found Twitter to be a “serious forum” for engaged political
commentators. In “assigning political moralities” to social media platforms (Miller 2011),
user groups differed in their preferences, reflecting linguistic differences and class location.
At the same time, political parties have started to nurture all these platforms, allowing
different platforms to resonate with different target groups. Internet memes available
across these platforms are images filled with wit and sarcasm, where “political, social and
playful purposes exist simultaneously” (Miller 2011: 70-73). Its “extreme” nature lies in the
wilful and playful disregard for sanctioned forms of political discourse or polite (elite) ways
of political messaging.

Labels: The second form of online extreme speech is in the labels assigned to online
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accounts, pages and profiles. These labels range from soft-touch sarcasm to aggressive
derision of the opposition. Facebook groups such as The Illogical Indian @illogicaldesi

(64,207 followers)[1], The Frustrated Indian (1.1 million followers)[2], India Against

Presstitutes (455,107 followers)[3] and Twitter handles such as Eminent Intellectual,

@padhalikha, @UnSubtleDesi and @Sussuswami are some example.

Hashtags: The third variety consists of hashtags, where extremeness is in the label but also
more fundamentally in the coinage of the hashtag itself. Hashtags are not just about framing
prevailing issues, but they actively bring them into existence. In many cases, they instigate
the discourse. Some of the most pertinent examples for extreme speech are available in the
analysis of hashtags on Twitter and Facebook. One example is the hashtag “gharwapsi” that
started to trend in 2015, tagging on to the Hindutva campaign to draw Muslims and
Christians “back to the Hindu community.” Reflecting the campaign on the ground, the
hashtag provoked voluminous discussions on Twitter around a seemingly pithy expression.
Another example is the heated public debate around Jawaharlal Nehru University campus in
2016, after allegations of anti-national slogans stirred a nationwide debate. Hashtags such
as #ShutDownJNU and #CleanUpJNU fired up discussions online, in as much as they fed
heated clashes on the campus. Such event-centric hashtags gain momentum with mass
media coverage and recede as organised media debates fade out (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Tweet record for 19,832 tweets gathered between 16 February 2016 and 5 May
2016 using TAGS Hawksey accessing Twitter API.
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Expressions with Syntax: The fourth format is verbal expressions with a more complete
syntax, sans images. Here, evocative phrases create the effect of “wounding words” (Butler
1997). An example would be lengthy diatribes on Facebook in the description of the pages,
posts, and comments. Some of them directly index their emphasis on parody and sarcasm.
Facebook page “The Illogical Indian” @illogicaldesi, for instance, states this under “about”:
“SARCASM is inevitable, since beating the shit out of hypocrites, in public, is illegal…

Hence we counter ILL-LOGIC of so-called LOGICAL pages with sarcasm”.[4]

Remix: The fifth format is visual remixing, digitally enhanced videos and “unofficial
uploads” of grainy video captured on mobile phones. These visual cultures as “small frame
politics” are prominent on YouTube (Dattatreyan 2017). They have upset official law and
order narratives by offering bottom-up witnessing (Sengupta 2012) but in other instances
they have played a key role in spreading rumours.

Across these online formats (not necessarily an exhaustive list), one could draw a typology
of extreme speech combining the axes of style and content (the two axes can be kept
separate as well, but here I have combined them to indicate the composite nature of
extreme speech). The first type involves ad hominem comments and name-calling that target
the attributes of the person, often in derisive hilarity (For example: “Kejriwal wears a 42
size shirt when his size is 38”).

The second type is gender-based shaming, based on tropes of sexual modesty and
heteronormative order, and related allegations of moral debauchery expressed as illicit
sexual relations and promiscuity. A common example here are allegations of female political
commentators “sleeping” with party leaders. There are examples aplenty from online
debates, and a more recent one we confronted in our fieldwork was the claim that a social
media strategist was given a prominent position in a national political party only because
she had an illicit relation with the head of the party.

The third type is anti-minority speech, most prominently anti-Muslim messages. A recent
example comes from an excerpt from our fieldwork, when our online interlocutor averred
“There are Maliks in Pakistan and Maliks in India. Indian Jats follow Hinduism, a worthy
religion and Pakistani Maliks are terrorists, without any sense of ethics.” Such messages
commonly label Indian Muslims as traitors, mischief makers, Pakistanis or traitors.

The fourth type are rhetorical appeals to national feelings and patriotism, and vehement
accusations of being anti-national. Regional nationalism and anti-caste politics complicates
this formation, as was evident in the Jallikattu campaign in Tamil Nadu (Cody 2018). In any
case, Indian national identity is a resonant trope, with commonly occurring themes of
foreign-funded biased media and pseudo-liberal intellectuals, that mingle with tropes of
making India a global power, and Hindutva stock topics of cow protection and Hindu
civilisational glory. The fifth type consists of caste slurs, especially anti-Dalit messaging;
while the other types are rumour, counter-facts and disinformation (debunked later on by
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organised media or fact-checking organisations); physical threats (death, rape and

abduction); and wordplay (derogatory acronyms, sobriquets, monikers for opponents:
“commies”, “urban naxals”, “libtards”, “presstitutes”, “Pappu”, “Feku”, “bhakt”, “Gappu”,
“Sanghi”).

More often, extreme speech is of hybrid types in which anti-Muslim messages combine with
gendered shaming or anti-Dalit speech, or accusation of “anti-national” ridicules political
opponents or journalists by referring to personal qualities and attributes rather than
argument (ad hominem attacks) or with name-calling and labeling.

An example for the first type is a tweet posted on 1 October 2017 in a tagged response to
Hindustan Times report that had tweeted, “Pakistan minister shares stage with LeT founder
#HafizSaeed ‘on Pak PM’s instructions’”. In response, the tweeter quipped: “Big deal, its
just stage, many Indian journos want to share bed with him…(sic).”

Another example is the accusation that Dalit political leaders are “Muslim sympathisers”
because they want “Muslim votes.” An example for the hybrid form of anti-national
allegations comes from the tweet pool for the hashtag #JNU in which labeling (as “traitor”)
was seen in the top 10 retweeted posts.

An excerpt below suggests its resonance:

RT: #JNU #JadavpurUniversity #HyderabadUniversity all r result of

Manipulative Politics;Traitors planning Smthg Big,Kick thm …(321)

RT: KamleshKumari sacrificed her life in 2001 parl attack which hero of
#JNU Afzal Guru had plotted #ArrestTheTraitors https://t.… (256)

RT: अब तो भी आतंकवादी सोच रहे होंगे कि हम कश्मीर के लिए फालतू में

कुत्तों की तरह मर रहे है जबकि भारतीय गद्दार फ्री में देने…(162)[5]

In the same hashtag tweet pool, the most retweeted post was the allegation that JNU
students had “disgraced” free speech provisions (1039 retweets), followed by the post that
read: “Pappu takes U-turn..Now he supports Police Investigation in #JNU So Before Lion
@Swamy39 enters into fight..Rat takes U-turn” (813 retweets; note the wordplay, “Pappu”).

One of the effects of extreme speech across these formats and types is the divisive
cacophony in political debates, often precipitating into two die-hard positions of imagined
liberals versus Hindu nationalists. While in reality these groups overlap and different
interest groups intersect, extreme speech pushes these positions to be starkly visible as
warring factions, in turn cementing the logics of Hindu nationalism as everyday common
sense.
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Based on textual content and network analysis of theoretically sampled Twitter hashtags
(with a focus on religious nationalism and hashtags derived organically from ethnographic
fieldwork as well as through media events), we have found that a set of highly prominent
actors drive discussions online. Clusters of discussions surrounding prominent tweeters is a
common pattern across the 10 hashtags we have analysed so far (#gharwapsi;
#ModiInsultsIndia; #ModiIndiasPride; #JNU; #ShutDownJNU: #CleanUpJNU; #Kathua;
#Unnao; #LetsTalkAboutTrolls; #GurmeharKaur). A striking example is the hashtag
#kathua (Figure 2) following the brutal rape, abduction and murder of a minor girl who
belonged to the nomadic Muslim community of Bakarwals in Jammu and Kashmir (Times of
India 2018).

Visualisation based on retweet networks[6] which revealed two polarised clusters with a few
highly prominent users (the two top tweeters by Eigenvector centricity measure that shows
most influential nodes in the pool have 62,000 and 134,000 followers respectively as on 17
December 2018). Visualisation based on retweet networks revealed topic polarisation
between tweeters defending the Bharatiya Janata Party or those critical of anti-BJP voices
on the one hand, and those critical of Hindu nationalist politics or more narrowly, BJP’s
specific role in the case.
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Figure 2: Network visualisation by retweet relations for Twitter hashtag #Kathua

Aside from revealing the prominence of power users (who come from formal politics,
mainstream media or rose to become one), such graphs reveal that real life events are not
only reflected but also augmented by social media discussions. Exclusionary extreme speech
voicing majoritarian concerns is a common occurrence within these social media exchanges.
No doubt, Hindu nationalism is fiercely contested on online media, and the shifting climate
of electoral gains reveals greater flux in online discourses. It should be noted that extreme
speech as a subversive practice is also common within Dalit and feminist online spheres.
However, the very bickering on social media through means of extreme speech has shifted
what counts as the center or the “norm”. Analysis of online debates in our sample, for
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instance, has offered a few counterintuitive results. Hashtag #ModiInsultsIndia revealed

that even the RSS (or Modi in this case) was not national enough for some staunch
nationalists online:

“Sanghis sided with the British Sanghis killed Gandhi Sanghis abuse Nehru,Ambedkar
Never Raise National Flag till 2002 Now #ModiInsultsIndia”

“So now I get why RSS didn't hoist tiranga for 55 years! They were ashamed of being an

Indian. Simple. #ModiInsultsIndia”[7]

The conjecture that opposition parties (Aam Aadmi Party or Indian National Congress
supporters) partly drove this discussion is palpable (since one of the prominent tweeters in
this hashtag pool was a Congress spokesperson), but what is notable is the pressure to be
identified as a nationalist, and the need to interlace it with tropes of Hindu civilisational
glory and Hindu religiosities.

Conclusions thus far suggest that banalisation of exclusion through formats of humour,
sarcasm and rumour have been key in cementing Hindu majoritarian positions within India’s
online discourse. While direct intimidation in online speech is also prevalent, it is largely
through argumentative confrontations and rebuttals that key tenets and tropes of Hindutva
have settled as a familiar ideological vision for a new generation of supporters. On the other
hand, remixing, mash-ups and fact-filled untruths of rumor mongering as a form of extreme
speech have provoked disturbing incidents of physical violence on ground (Narrain 2017).
This then brings the focus on the kinds of actors who compose extreme speech, and patterns
of political support and voluntary work that have emerged in the last decade of social media
expansion.

Actors of Extreme Speech

Ethnographic fieldwork suggests a layered and variegated landscape of actors who compose
Hindu nationalist online discourse, and extreme speech in particular. They comprise at least
five prototypes.

Techie turned ideologue: A diffused group of highly motivated, English educated and
tech-savvy social media volunteers whose knowledge of internet media as adept coders or
end users, is key to their claims to public discourse. In many cases within this subset,
ideological affiliation is an effect of media practice. A common refrain from these actors is
that they do not take any money from the political party, and their work is entirely
voluntary. One volunteer took pains to stress how they don’t expect any money for their
online voluntary labour, and that it is “pure passion, kuch karna he [we should do
something], we are here to change the youth.”

Party worker online: Committed party workers who took up online media as a potent
vehicle for communication and mobilisation. Among these actors, ideological affiliation
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precedes online uptake. The top-down organisational social media structure of the party
influences their decisions and networks, as information is handed out and allowed to spread
through state, regional and local channels. Local units are actively encouraged to build their
own content. BJP and Congress have set the goal to have at least one local activist for every
booth as a node for message circulation, in preparation for the national elections. For
instance, in Karnataka, A N Nataraja Gowda, head of the IT Cell of Karnataka Pradesha
Congress Committee, has said that the party aims to have one “digital youth for every
booth” who will build local WhatsApp groups on which “centralised number” will be added
(Shimladka 2018). Through these channels, the party aims to send messages via text, video
and animations. The plan is to have both “broadcast WhatsApp groups” for centralised
messaging and “organic groups” for bottom up messaging. According to Gowda, the party
currently has 2000 to 2500 “organic WhatsApp groups” in favor of the party. The local BJP
unit too aims to build on existing social media party networks and organise more WhatsApp
groups as they gear up for the national elections. Amaresh K, Karnataka BJP IT Cell
Convener, in a media interview averred that “there can be no elections without WhatsApp”

(Shimladka 2018). In a personal interview[8], Amit Malviya in New Delhi summed up BJP’s
social media strategy. “We have used various tools at our disposal,” he described, “to make
communication more precise, more informative and more consumer friendly so that the
ordinary individual, the man on the street, can appreciate what you are saying.” Giving an
overview of the IT operations of the party, he said the national team in New Delhi had
diversified the online communication channels, “…in the sense that we have gone down to
[regional] states and we are telling them, look, we have to have multiple layers of
communication, we have to communicate at the central level, we have to communicate at
the state level and perhaps localise it even further.”

Such strategies were pioneered by BJP and only partially by AAP in the last general
elections, but now many more political parties, including INC, are scrambling for online
influence through dedicated networks of party workers.

Political intelligence consultant: includes “politically agnostic” paid digital influencers

who offer digital campaigning, data analysis and digital influence as a “business solution”.
While international agencies such as Oligvy&Mather recruited for the Modi campaign in
2014, and high-profile influencers such as Prashant Kishor are known in the public domain,
the sphere of digital influencers is far more variegated in recent times, with many “data
solutions” agencies offering influence enhancement services to interested political parties.

During ethnographic interviews in Bengaluru and Mumbai, such actors who had started
their own small enterprises complained about the “lack of awareness” about digital
influence services within political party circles and acts of disrespect politicians meted out
to them. These actors shared their concerns about the financial viability of their enterprise,
even as they carried theirPowerPoint slides in their bags and sought appointments with
party officials to convince them to invest in “analytics and data solutions” for political
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campaigning.

Monetised Hindutva: Small media businesses that actively appeal to online Hindutva
supporters for commercial gains and boost online traffic to their pages that could later be
monetised with advertisements. These actors actively follow and court Hindutva supporting
online users and encourage them to join or follow their pages.

Bhakt business: Arguably the most intriguing group of online workers more likely to
engage in extreme speech. These comprise small-scale social media entrepreneurs who are
excited about Hindutva and Modi, and do not hesitate to make a small business out of it. In
some cases, these decisions have been driven by livelihood options. One such entrepreneur
in Laxminagar in Delhi started the conversation by declaring how he was a staunch Modi
fan, but as the interview progressed, he said his digital influence work for a local BJP leader
started because of sheer compulsion of gaining the first contract for his just launched digital
media company. As his business grew in strength, he said, his adoration for Modi gained
more confidence. In these instances, idolatry, ideological affiliation and commercial
interests enter a win-win relation. Such actors rarely have an adequate sense of the party
social media structure. One of them residing in Bhiwani in Haryana remarked that the
party’s social media structure was still a puzzle, even though he has been working for a
local “IT Cell.” “This is regulated at a very internal level,” he said, “We are not allowed to
discuss these things, but broadly, the central cell sends instructions to local offices for
recruitment. Through these local channels, people come in contact with BJP and then they
are provided with small monetary incentives to the tune of two to three thousand rupees.”
He continued that once websites and Facebook pages are ready, the party does not give any
more cash rewards. “But they help us to realise some revenue through these [social media]
platforms by making websites or portals.” Monetary incentives are not the only reason after
all. “As we get to know people at local level,” our interlocutor said, “It helps in getting jobs
for my friends and family.” “As you rise in position and influence, the sources of revenue
increase and you get many more opportunities, both offline and online. Both financial and
power-based opportunities, you know how it works in India”, he laughed, hinting at local
networks of patronage that he was able to activate by directly managing 10 Facebook pages
for the party, aside from overseeing several more pages across “North India” covering Uttar
Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

Disincentives and Awareness

In a pioneering study of political trolling in Philippines, Jonathan Corpus Ong and Jason
Cabanes (2018) conceptualise “networked disinformation as a distributed labour of political
deception to a hierarchy of digital workers.” They argue that “chief architects of networked
disinformation” who intimidate dissenting voices and craft new prospects for political
clients via digital influence are themselves “precarious architects of precarious labor
arrangements in the creative industries that make workers vulnerable to slipping into the
digital underground.” The Indian case of five prototypes of extreme speech actors reveals a
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similar variegated scenario of precarious labor, political patronage, and opportunism. In

addition, there is ideological activism that is independent of financial motivation or
economic necessity. One can turn into the other –for example, a techie ideologue may
become a full-time party worker online or start a digital analytics business for political
parties. In recent ethnographic follow-up interviews, we have found some disgruntled
techies coming out of the BJP fold. Regardless, the basic structure of difference defining
actors remains the same. While a techno savvy urban user is more likely to have a stable job
and offers voluntary work, bhakt business is more precarious. This calls for paying attention
to vulnerabilities and structures of disprivilege that have impelled a large number of social
media entrepreneurs to disregard the political fallout of their extreme speech labor. It also
draws attention to privileged middle-class online users who engage in partisan ideological
discourse, experiencing the collective pleasure of “defeating” their ideological rivals online.

What is significant is that different political parties are rushing to adopt a similar digital
media influence and analysis architecture. Optimistically, this could be seen as the dilution
of ideological hegemony, since there is lately more clamor online. However, the nature of
extreme speech discourse and patterns of labor that go behind it, warrant a far more
serious intervention than leaving it to the (digital) “market place of ideas” or political
wrangling. Govindraj Ethiraj, promoter of Boom Live, a fact-checking portal, has said in a
recent interview that “Most …fake news is originating from people aligned with the BJP.
People aligned with the Congress have not propagated fake news with the same frequency
yet” (Manish 2018). Nupur Sharma, Chief Editor of OpIndia, another fact-checking
initiative, contends that fake information is peddled by “all kinds of political and ideological
affiliations”.

Mindful of possible public criticism and international scrutiny, social media technology
companies have taken steps to stem negative effects of extreme speech in the current
election scenario. WhatsApp’s recent decision to limit the number of forward messages to
five chats (Indian Express 2018a) is an effort to prevent mass forwards from instigating
rumors and violence, while its “research grants” is a further attempt to gain insight and
possible soft capital (Indian Express 2018b). These steps are welcome. However, a more
“process oriented” approach to extreme speech, to follow Ong and Cabenes (2018), needs a
concerted co-regulatory effort where digital influencers are actively disincentivised from
channelising extreme speech.

What is worrying is that fake news busting as a growing civil society and business
enterprise is itself following the patterns of political and ideological fissures. OpIndia, for
instance, has declared openly that they do not claim to be “ideologically neutral”, and that
they will “continue to be right-leaning” (Sharma, 2018). As opposed to heavily funded fact
checking initiatives, grounded, community level interventions would work well to fend off
ideological heavyweights who are backed with financial power.

In an agenda-setting concept note on online hate speech, the European Commission

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emphasised the “importance of supporting civil society organisations and enhancing the
development of positive narratives and critical thinking” (European Commission Presidency
Conference 2017). It observed that while cooperation between governments and civil
society organisations is necessary, “cooperation of IT companies with civil society also
plays a fundamental role in counter-narrative campaigns”. According to the note, there is
evidence to show that deploying social media advertising tools to ‘target audiences’
improves awareness and engagement, and leads to a substantial increase of NGO’s social
media presence”.

A different experiment is seen in Germany. Inspired by the US website “Monetising the

Hate”, German startup hatr.org has developed a business model to monetize online abusive
comments. The site sells advertisements by placing them beneath hateful comments. Users
who receive such messages are encouraged to pass them on to the site. The website in turn
publishes them and sells ads to place them beneath the messages. Users, on their part, may
feel relieved for having passed the offensive content to a site where the “trash” gets
converted into “cash”. Money collected thus is donated to “feminist and gender
projects,” according to the owner of the startup. These initiatives resemble offline efforts to
turn hate into charity, when for instance, groups protesting neo-Nazi movements raised
money for every meter covered by a recent Neo-Nazi march in a Germany city.

What is needed in India is a multi-language initiative that can draw support from existing
voluntary and non-governmental organisations and equip them with tech ready
interventions. These interventions include counternarratives (using platforms such as
WhatsApp groups), reporting extreme speech cases to companies, and publication of reports
for awareness-raising. Regional language portals can act as local interlocutors to prevent
scenarios of “oxidising” extreme speech through repetitions and excitement of exchange
(Phillips 2018). This is especially important in combating false information. As regards
online abuse, teaming up with local parody and humour groups will be helpful. Advocacy
groups can publicise trolls and counter them by rhetorical flashes on social media, edging
away the shaming aspect of abuse.

Retrograde, false and belligerent messaging with political motivations, I suggest, can only
be met with counter-speech and more speech – with concerted digital advocacy, awareness,
and public detoxification of online abuse – rather than a legal heavy hand. A multi-throng
strategy to online extreme speech is urgently needed, as India prepares to face another
election, with a new arsenal of digital tools at its disposal.

End Notes:

[1] https://www.facebook.com/illogicaldesi/.

[2] https://www.facebook.com/TheFrustratedIndian/
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[3] https://www.facebook.com/IndiaAgainstPresstitute/.

[4] https://www.facebook.com/pg/illogicaldesi/about/?ref=page_internal

[5] Tweets (total: 91,466) gathered for the hashtag #JNU using TAGS Hawksey between
0702.2016 and 11.05.2016.

[6] A total of 200,000 tweets and retweets visualized in a sample of 308,781 tweets/retweets
collected, using retweet network with nodes sized for Eigenvector centrality, color by
modularity community detection and Force Atlast 2 algorithm for spatial distribution. I
thank Matti Pohjonen for drawing up centrality measures and visualization.

[7] Tweets (total: 84,762) gathered for the hashtag #ModiInsultsIndia using TAGS Hawksey
between 19.05.2015 and 20/05.2015.

[8] Dated 24 July, 2017.

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