Discursive Toolkits of Anti-Muslim Disinformation on Twitter

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the socio-technical ecology of Twitter, including the technological affordances of the platform and the user-generated discursive strategies used to create and circulate anti-Muslim disinformation online. During the first wave of Covid-19, right-wing followers claimed that Muslims were spreading the virus to perform Jihad. We analyzed a sample of 7000 tweets using Critical Discourse Analysis to examine how the online disinformation accusing Muslims in India was initiated and sustained. We identify three critical discourse strategies used on Twitter to spread and sustain the anti-Muslim (dis)information: (1) creating mediatized hate solidarities, (2) appropriating instruments of legitimacy, and (3) practicing Internet Hindu vigilantism. Each strategy consists of a subset of discursive toolkits, highlighting the central routes of discursive engagement to produce disinformation online. We argue that understanding how the technical affordances of Social Networking Sites are leveraged in quotidian online practices to produce and sustain the phenomenon of online disinformation will prove to be a novel contribution to the field of disinformation studies and Internet research.