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Understandably, scholars have responded to the rise of far-right, reactionary and conspiratorial politics by practicing ‘surveillance-as-method,’ or the use of computational tools to scrape data on extremist communities on digital platforms, typically in order to trace networked connections or track the spread of particular keywords or phrases. However, digital media cultures are often more internally incoherent than they appear when examined through datasets, and ‘surveillance-as-method’ also risks reproducing ethical problems associated with state surveillance. This talk explores the problems and possibilities of digital methods, arguing for conceptually informed approaches to digital methods for the study of digital extremism.
Dr. Robert Topinka is a senior lecturer at the Birkbeck, University of London. His areas of expertise are in reactionay politics, race and racism, digital culture and the city. He is currently researching how reactionary digital politics shape public culture.
Methods and ethics webinar series
This webinar is part of the series 'Researching the far right: methods and ethics', co-organized by C-REX and PERIL (American University).
This webinar series aims to initiate and facilitate a much needed discussion about the methodological, ethical, political, personal, practical and professional issues and challenges that arise when researching far right parties, protest movements, and violent actions.
The webinars last one hour and take place every second Thursday of the month. The webinar will have one or two (short) presentations followed by a Q&A session.
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