Keeping the Internet safe for the Normies
I will presenting my research on the role of Christian Persecution and Victimhood as a tool for white nationalists on Twitter to mobilize and recruit at the American Academy of Religion – South West Regional Conference, in Irving, Texas.
The conference is being held on March 4-6, 2022. For more information and to register please click here.
Myself and the research team at the Disinformation Project at SFU, will be presenting our research on dark participation/conspiracy theories on BitChute.
Centre on Hate, Bias, and Extremism: Hating on Social Media Symposium. February 7-10, 2022. For more information or to register click here.
I will be presenting a video presentation of my recent research into the use of social media, by those who have been deplatformed. While YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have received positive media for deplatforming individuals for violations of hate speech, conspiracy, and racism policies, the deplatformed individuals are easily available on these platforms via their media brands.
Centre on Hate, Bias, and Extremism: Hating on Social Media Symposium. February 7-10, 2022. For more information or to register click here.
In mid-November I was interviewed for an article for Global News, on the topic of viral hoaxes on TikTok. Following the release of this written article Global News Radio contacted me to continue the discussion.
I was interviewed by Noor Ibrahim of Global News on the topic of the potential of the spreading of misinformation in the metaverse. Watch the clip here.
On November 12-14th, 2021, the North American Association for the Study of Religion will be holding their Annual Meeting virtually. I will be presenting my paper “Pop Goes the People—Populism, Panics, and Pandemics” on the Crisis as Method in the Study of Religion Panel. For more information, you can find it on the NAASR conference site.
This is an article in The Hill Times which I was interviewed for:
“The things that are providing some of this momentum is people’s sense of injustice to things. And it articulates their fears,” she said. “In many ways, we pay a lot of attention to the salacious nature of things without actually
looking underneath to see what are the topics and the injustice as a society that we need to address or speak to”
The article is behind a paywall, but you can find it here.
A few months ago I did an interview with the Religious Studies Project on my research and publications. The interview was just posted, and I am excited to share this podcast!
From their introduction: In this episode, Maxinne Connolly-Panagopoulus discusses the range of Dr. Carmen Celestini’s work on religious conspiracy theories, Christian apocalyptic thought its impacts on the American political system. and tracks some of the parallels between early and modern conspiracy theories. They cover early grassroots movements such as the Anti-Masonic Party and the Know Nothings, who sought to fight against what they perceived as a threat to Christian values from a New World Order. This is paralleled to QAnon and current theories which hold a similar distrust of the government, the media and beliefs of a Satanic New World Order. We then move to discuss The John Birch Society and how their form of improvisational conspiracism linked to contemporary right-wing mobilisation and the Christian Identity Organisation. Threaded throughout our discussion, we ask explore the motivations for joining such a movement and what keeps people there despite moving targets and failed prophecies. Finally, Carmen describes the state of the field of conspiracy movements today, and where she sees it going in the future.
You can listen to the interview here.
I am excited to announce that I will be working with Dr. Megan Boler at the University of Toronto and Dr. Barbara Perry at the Centre on Hate, Bias, and Extremism, as a Research Consultant on their project “Promoting Social Cohesion and Resilience to Far-Right Disinformation through Adult Disinformation Literacy: A Systematic Review and Pilot Assessment of Gaps and Needs.” This is an amazing preliminary project to assess where we need to develop adult literacy on disinformation. I am super excited to work with both these academics, and to continue my connection with Dr. Perry.
I am excited to announce that I am now a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Disinformation Project, in the School of Communications at SFU. Working with Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi on the Understanding hate groups narratives and conspiracy theories in traditional and alternative social media project. This project empirically examines Canadian right-wing extremism (RWE) narratives, conspiracies, and discourses on traditional and alternative social media. The project not only examines the textual content but also the multimodal discourses such as the use of memes, hashtags, emojis, and videos which, we argue, provide important clues on the way certain hate messages are communicated. Finally, the use of a unique mixed method that involves a networked thematic examination of social media posts as well as a keyword-based and other digital approaches provide richer and more meaningful insight into the nature of Canadian RWE discourses than if only one textual analysis approach is followed.
More information on The Disinformation Project.