New Media Politics.

New Media Politics.Rethinking Activism and National Security in Cyberspace Edited by

Banu Baybars-Hawks

Cambridge Scholars

Publishing

New Media Politics: R ethinking Activism and National Security in Cyberspace E dited by Banu Baybars-Hawks This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK B ritish Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for th is book is available from the B ritish Library Copyright © 2015 by Banu Baybars-Hawks and contributors All rights for th is book reserved. No part of th is book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transm itted, in any form or by any means, electronic, m echanical, photocopying, recording or otherw ise, w ithout the prior perm ission of th e copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7710-7 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7710-7

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables............................................................................x Acknowledgements.....................................................................................xi Part I. Chapter One..................................................................................................2 Introduction—Occupying Cyberspace: Cyberactivism, Cyberterrorism and Cybersecurity Banu Baybars-Hawks Chapter Two............................................................................................... 15 Resistance from within Hegemony: The Rise of Semi-Anonymous Resistance in the New Media Environment Sarphan Uzunoglu Chapter Three.............................................................................................34 Electronic Intifada: Platform for Conflict Transformation Eser Selen Chapter Four...............................................................................................49 Cyberactivism in Syria's War: How Syrian Bloggers Use the Internet for Political Activism Yenal Goksun Chapter Five...............................................................................................63 The Multitudes: From Ideological Disease to Conceptual Cure Cristina Ivan Chapter Six.................................................................. Activism, Transmedia Storytelling and Empowerment Eloisa Nos Aldas

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Chapter Seven.............................................................................................95 The Dynamics of a New Mediated Protest Cycle: Networked, Transitional and Radical? Pantelis Vatikiotis Chapter Eight............................................................................................ 112 The Internet's Impact on Social Movements: The Role of Facebook in the January 25 Revolution in Egypt Hussni Nasr Part II. Chapter Nine............................................................................................. 134 Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror Aşkın İnci Sökmen Chapter Ten.............................................................................................. 155 The Social Media OSINT Challenge to US Intelligence: Culture not Gigabytes Abdelrahman Rashdan Chapter Eleven......................................................................................... 173 Legitimizing Securitization of Cyberspace by using "Risk" Discourse Sevda Ünal Chapter Twelve........................................................................................ 186 Opinion Production by UGC: An Analysis of Readers' Reviews about Online News related to Al-Qaeda Bilge Narin and Bahar Ayaz Chapter Thirteen....................................................................................... 198 Technology, Surveillance, and National Security: Implications for Democracy Catherine A. Luther Chapter Fourteen......................................................................................215 The Dialectics of Internet Censorship: A Mouffian Analysis of Resistance and Subversion in the Case of Turkey Çağn Yalkin

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Chapter Fifteen.........................................................................................229 From the “Worst Menace to Societies” to the “Robot Lobby”: A Semantic View of Turkish Political Rhetoric on Social Media Suncem Koçer Chapter Sixteen........................................................................................244 Internet Surveillance and Censorship: Discourses of Security, Privacy and Morality İrem İnceoğlu Chapter Seventeen....................................................................................257 At a Critical Crossroads: New Media, Government and Society in Turkey Banu Baybars-Hawks Contributors..............................................................................................269

Chapter Twelve Opinion P roduction by UGC: An Analysis of Readers’ Reviews about Online N ews R elated to A l -Qaeda B ilge N arin and Bahar A yaz

Introduction UGC (User-Generated Content) has been an important component of the news since the advent of Web 2.0. Although UGC is one of the main innovations of new media, it remains a neglected area of new media studies. UGC can be simply described as content created by the consumers or end-users of an online system or service that is publically available to other consumers and end-users. The main aim of this research is to analyze UGC in online news about terrorism. In this context, reader reviews about news regarding the attacks of al-Qaeda affiliate ISIS in Turkey are taken as a sample. Many countries have designated both al-Qaeda and ISIS as terrorist organizations, and they have also been designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations, European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In light of this, the main question of this study is: How do users express their views about the sources and the causes of terrorism after reading online news? ISIS carried out a terrorist attack in Turkey on the 20th of March in 2014, opening fire on three members of security forces in the southern province of Nigde. The attack resulted in the deaths of a police officer and a soldier. Two of the assailants were captured alive and later the incident was linked to ISIS and al-Qaeda. Soon after, a third perpetrator was also captured. ISIS was established during the Iraq War and has changed its name several times, but it is widely known as the “al-Qaeda of Iraq” because of

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the group’s alliance with al-Qaeda. The group is active both in Iraq and Syria. Although al-Qaeda has claimed that they are separate entities, according to many sources it has ties with ISIS. The news items which were selected for this study also claim that ISIS has connections with alQaeda. In this study, readers’ comments about these news stories are analyzed through content analysis, which is a commonly used qualitative research technique for compressing text into a smaller number of content categories based on explicit rules of coding. In this way, the main arguments and views expressed by users will be determined and categorized. In addition, the varying opinions of users regarding al-Qaeda will be revealed and hence opinion production through UGC will be brought to light. Reader comments from three online newspapers based in Turkey (Hürriyet, Milliyet and Habertürk) are examined in this study. The comments concerning news related to the ISIS attack in Turkey are analyzed through content analysis with a focus on words, meanings, pictures, symbols, thoughts, themes and messages. Content analysis can be used to reflect the emotional states of readers, identify their intentions and demonstrate the existence of propaganda. Through this method, we intend to examine readers’ attitudes regarding the terrorist group, the stance of the Turkish government and the media. Hate speech will also become apparent through content analysis.

Al Qaeda and ISIS Al-Qaeda is a global terrorist organization, but it was originally created during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1988, and ISIS subsequently came into being during the Iraq War. Al-Qaeda has attacked both civilian and military targets, and is well known as the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks. After those attacks, the US launched a large-scale operation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime was sheltering the al-Qaeda network and its training camps. This first reaction, however, reflected a particular political climate and in the end those advocating an offensive against Saddam Hussein succeeded in imposing their views and finally got their Iraq war (Chaliand and Blin 2007, 414). American efforts ultimately resulted in the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, but in the meantime al-Qaeda continued attacks after 9/11 in Tunisia, Bali, Yemen, Kuwait, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and numerous other countries. Al-Qaeda still represents a major security problem. The situation in Syria is now getting worse, reaching the point of threatening Western security, particularly because of the entrenchment of al-Qaeda affiliates

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there (Baczko, Dorronsoro and Quesnay 2013, 4). The Arab Spring also strengthened al-Qaeda’s position and weakened US control over the Arab world. It is debatable, however, whether the killing of Osama Bin Laden weakened the power of al-Qaeda, but still that remains an important question. According to many sources, al-Qaeda is facing an uncertain future, but a report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Services suggests three scenarios for the future of Al Qaeda: gradual decline, incremental growth or rapid growth (CSIS Report 2013). It is clear from the report that there are many possibilities, but it is quite likely that alQaeda will continue to be a major threat in the near future.

Al Qaeda and the use of communication technologies Many developments have occurred regarding communication technologies, and as with many other groups, terrorist organizations also make use of them. The Internet facilitates media exposure, which is an important goal for terrorists. Evidence strongly suggests that terrorists used the Internet to plan their operations for 9/11 (Timothy 2003, 112), and al-Qaeda has created a highly mobile media wing called al-Sahab which has the specific aim of connecting with the world at large (Ciovacco 2009, 853). Al-Qaeda uses satellite television and ubiquitous user generated content on the Internet to reinvigorate a pan-Muslim identity via a vengeful, defiant underdog narrative in which Islam is under constant and global attack by a monolithic adversary (Venhaus 2010, 6). Internet users can easily create accounts with national firms such as America Online (AOL) or create an AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) account on a short-term basis. In addition, anonymous logins are possible for many of the thousands of chatrooms on the net (Timothy 2003, 115). In short, the Internet offers numerous opportunities for terrorist groups to operate in the online environment. The Internet can also be used to spread disinformation, send threatening personal messages and post horrific images (Timothy 2003, 116), and terrorists can create misperceptions through the use of the Internet. In this way, without revealing their own identities terrorists can exert influence over people and hence evaluating user reviews is a useful endeavor.


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Media coverage of Al-Qaeda In addition to terrorist groups, the media itself can create misperceptions. As pointed out by Entman (1993), Iyengar (1991), and Scheufele and Tewksbury (2007), framing effects refer to how the presentation of an issue in news stories can influence the way audiences understand the issue (Fahmy and Emad 2011, 217). An example of this is the Iraq War. Sources indicate that there were many misperceptions before the war, and a critical situation arose after the war when the US failed to find any WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) or even solid evidence of a WMD program (Kull, Ramsay and Lewis 2004, 572). The US misled world opinion about its decision to go to war and how it opted to deal with the problem of terrorism (Ibid., 573). One explanation for this is the way that the media reported the news. The large amount of variation in the extent of misperceptions suggests that numerous media sources may have gone to great lengths to disabuse their audiences of misperceptions they may have had so as to distance themselves from their implication in the outbreak of the war (Ibid., 592). The Iraq War, however, is not an exceptional situation. The media plays an important role in all news about terrorism. In Turkey, there are different approaches to discussing the PKK, and while it has been designated as a terrorist organization by some, others refer to it as an advocate of Kurdish rights. Media coverage of the PKK inevitably differs, but this is not an exception. Countries have come up with varying designations for such organizations; the EU, US, Russia and other countries have taken different stances, with some calling certain groups “terrorists” and others not. In the Arab world, media coverage of Bin Laden’s videos and the Iraqi insurgency led influential American officials to denounce Arab media as a collaborator with the jihadist movement. But the jihadists themselves have decried the Arab media for being unreliable (Lynch 2006, 51). Al-Jazeera has been an important source regarding al-Qaeda, but data suggests that even the English and Arabic outlets of Al-Jazeera have had differences while covering the conflict between the US and al-Qaeda (Fahmy and Emad 2011, 226). In short, different media organizations are likely to cover news regarding al-Qaeda in rather different ways, and hence coverage of al-Qaeda in the US, EU and Middle Eastern countries varies. As seen in the case of Al-Jazeera, different media organizations in the same country or even from the same media organization can cover stories in very different ways.

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The concept of UGC A portmanteau of the words “Internet” and “citizen” resulted in the term “netizen,” meaning a member of the network society. Netizens can easily access web-based information and communication technologies, and they have developed a habit of expressing their opinions in the virtual world through blogs, social networks and community forums. Their aim may be simply to share their ideas, whether casually or consciously, in response to any number of events and topics of interest. Such postings have become a trend among social acquaintances in the virtual world through the help of postings and counter-replies (Tanase 2010, 28-29). UGC is a potentially useful source for feedback. A local government or a terrorist organization for instance may be interested in finding out more about the responses of citizens after a new policy is announced or a major terrorist event occurs based on comments gleaned from the Internet: As users are free to post anything under the sun, the format is not in formal writing (unlike official letters); slang may be used and they differ from culture to culture. On the brighter side, netizens are responsive to new posts and new events. For example, any world news, such as earthquakes, terrorist attacks or economic crises that rock the world would attract them to proactively post and counter post on each other’s messages. They share their views in different emotions pertaining to the subject that they are commenting about. The online messages come in very different types of wish-making, suggestions, political opinions, critiques and praise, or dissatisfaction to share among friends and the rest of the world. (Fong 2012: 60)

UGC allows for a two-way flow of communication that blurs the difference between sender and receiver. It is expected that UGS will be extensively used for constructing “social dialogues” in future years.

UGC and internet journalism UGC is also an important feature of Internet journalism although it has a broader meaning which is relevant to the definition of the public sphere. According to Larsson (2012, 253-254), when we talk about interactivity scholars commonly point out two fundamental distinctions, one of which is about human interaction, and this is used to define users in communication with each other (Downes and McMillan 2000). Chat rooms and discussion forums are examples of human interactions that occur within the context of online newspapers. The other type is medium interaction, which allows users to control a technical interface (e.g. a web


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page). User-generated video clips and news graphics of online newspapers are examples of this group of interaction. Further research (Chung 2008; Chung and Nah 2009; Chung and Yoo 2008) suggests two relatively new types of interaction made possible through the development of medium definitions. One of these is the human-medium type and it delineates users’ personal opinions. The invitation of audiences to contribute photos, videos and blog posts to online newspapers is one example of this type, and the medium-human format makes it possible for users to customize news to their liking. Some scholars have argued that interactivity is not traditionally linked to democracy, especially in mainstream media because mechanisms of framing control and news selection are not decided upon by users: There is also a clear political economy of UGC. UGC provision in mainstream media to a great extent addresses users-as-consumers and is part of a context of consumption. Users-as-citizens are placed in a mostly reactive position (“We write, you read” becomes “we write, you read and possibly comment”). [...] Users are identified as consumers but approached as citizens. (Jonsson and Ornebring 2010, 140-141)

On the other hand, even if comments are moderated, the participation of users occurs now on a much broader scale than ever before (Jonsson and Ornebring 2010, 141). Because of user participation, some scholars have defined the Internet as a highly democratic medium (Siudikiene 2014: 14). In other words, social production on the Internet is still a powerful force. Despite existing limitations, users are active creators of meaning in the Web 2.0 era, and UGC is both a complementary element of online news and also an independent tool for constructing meaning. But when we consider UGC, are editorial boards or other censorship mechanisms necessary? How can we improve the amount of UGC and also the quality of content? What criteria define high-quality and lowquality media content? These problems have been recognized by both scholars and media companies around the world (Siudikiene 2014, 14). Videos of rapes, murders or terrorist attacks are also uploaded by users, so we need to think about regulatory policies as well. Media codes of ethics should not cover just the work of professional media workers but rather should be redefined to include UGC. Today, analyzing media content is not possible without taking into consideration UGC. Both the amount of UGC and the structures of meaning embedded within it have emerged as objects of analysis in the social sciences.

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Findings Three online newspapers, Hürriyet, Milliyet and Habertürk, were utilized as samples in this research. They are all independent newspapers with different owners. Hürriyet belongs to the Dogan Media Group, which is the largest broadcasting group in Turkey; approximately thirty percent of national newspapers belongs to this group. Milliyet, which was once owned by the Dogan Media Group, is now a part of the Demiroren Group. Unlike the other two newspapers, Habertürk started as a news portal and later started releasing in print, and it belongs to the Ciner Media Group. All of the holding companies have investments in other sectors besides media. According to Comscore, which is a global source of digital business analytics, Milliyet, Hürriyet, Mynet News and Habertürk are the most widely followed online news sites. Milliyet, Hürriyet and Habertürk are both online and have print versions. Because Mynet News is not released in a print version it was excluded from the study. Newspaper http://www.hurriyet.com.tr http://www.milliyet.com.tr http://www.haberturk.com TOTAL

Number of Readers’ Comments 331 17 8 356

Fig. 12-1. Number of readers’ comments in the samples.

As seen in Figure 1, the total number of readers’ comments in the samples was 356, and most of them appeared in www.hurriyet.com.tr. As indicated in Table 12-1, readers’ comments concerning the news about al-Qaeda reflect varying perspectives. The most common theme was criticism of the terrorists, with 50% of people making comments in this regard. The Turkish government and security policies were also criticized by many readers. Critiques of foreign policy, the claim that the government supports terrorism, the question of how the terrorists could enter the country and Islamist parliamentarians’ rhetoric are salient discourse in the readers’ comments. Thirty percent of the readers who posted comments supported these negative opinions. Only five percent of readers expressed positive ideas about the Turkish government and its security policies, and they claimed that the government’s counter terrorism policy is adequate and successful.


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Table 12-1. The subjects of readers’ comments. The Subject of the Readers' Comments ■ Criticisms of the terrorist ■ Criticism of the national government and security policies ■ Criticism of the opposition parties ■ Criticism of the other nations' governments and security policies

Five percent of the readers blamed other nations’ governments and security policies for supporting terrorism. In this context, Syria and President Bashar Hafez al-Assad were most criticized. Readers claimed that the US and other western countries were also supporters of terrorism, and three percent of the readers conversely supported other nations’ counter-terrorism policies. Table 12-2. Instances of hate speech

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In this study we attempted to reveal narratives containing hate speech, as indicated in Table 12-2. We found that twenty-seven percent of the opinions contained hate speech, the basis of which was focused on race and religion. The readers defined the terrorists as “degraded,” “Middle East oriented,” “Arab,” “inhuman,” “bigoted,” “evil” and so on. The high proportion of hate speech suggests that in Turkey we need to reconsider media ethics and codes of media ethics should encapsulate readers’ reviews as well. Table 12-3. Emphasis on Islamic Terrorism

Fifty-five percent of the comments included emphasis on “Islamic terrorism.” This and similar expressions were used to identify terrorist events. Statements such as “extremist terrorism” and “religiously motivated terrorism” would make more sense than targeting a religion as a whole.


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Table 12-4. Relevance to Islam Relevance to Islam 0%

■ Relevant ■ Not Relevant ■ Coding Unavailable

A large proportion of readers (88%) thought that acts of terrorism were not in accordance with Islam even though the terrorists claim that they carry out such attacks in the name of God. The main concern of these comments was an inaccurate and incomplete representation of Islam, but the readers rarely used the concept of “Islamophobia” in their comments and they preferred to use a non-academic terminology.

Conclusion The structures of meaning constructed by readers differ and they represent important and integral parts of online news. On the other hand, the contents of readers’ reviews often go beyond the news topics and exceed them. In this study, we examined readers’ opinions about online news items related to al-Qaeda. The narrative structures of the readers’ reviews can extend beyond the common forms of meaning in news about terrorism, and readers can both criticize and support the terrorists and security policies. In doing so, they can produce new and various meanings by linking the terrorist act to other events. This study also indicated that some of the readers’ reviews included hate speech, and hence we argue that the ethical guidelines of media must be restructured to include readers’ reviews.

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In conclusion, user-generated content has both positive and negative dimensions, and UGC is a neglected component in media research at the present time. Nonetheless, it will likely take on an increasingly important role in media studies because of its utility in the dissemination of news.

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