Welcome to our Blog!

Dear Readers,

We would like to warmly welcome you to our research blog, which catalogues the development of our project, our research results, as well as our thoughts on current developments in the collective fight against antisemitism.

This first blog post is specifically dedicated to the very first study that we carried out in the beginning of 2022. Its main objective was to uncover and analyze the different types of antisemitic discourse that young people encounter on a daily basis in their social media feeds. In order to do so, we recruited 47 participants to monitor their social media channels for a period of three weeks. During that time, they were asked to spend about 15 to 20 minutes per day, scrolling through their feeds as they normally would, to see if they found posts or comment threads that were related to a number of relevant topics. Those included:

• manifestations of Jewish life;
• discussions about Israel and Zionism, the conflict in the Middle East, Palestine, or the intifada;
• conversations mentioning antisemitism, also in the context of the Holocaust, German guilt, the Second World War, concentration camps, or fascism;
• and finally, accounts about powerful individuals who have secret knowledge about humanity.

Our dedicated team is currently analyzing all of the posts we received in the social media diaries that were sent to us. Altogether, we collected 1100 posts. Given that some of the posts and related threads were very long, they were split up, generating a total of 2222 pieces of data. In order to interpret our data, our teams at Touro University Berlin and the University of Potsdam are using a technique known as “Qualitative Content Analysis” (or “QCA”). We have broken down our work into five separate steps, during which we:

• identify the theme of each post;
• decide whether it is antisemitic or not; record all of its superficial characteristics (such as the number of likes, shares, and comments it received);
• if we decide that a post is indeed antisemitic, we determine whether the hate speech against Jewish people is explicit, or whether it is hidden and only implicitly present in the text;
• record the intensity of hate speech directed against Jews;
• and finally, mark the kinds of arguments that are used to support antisemitic stances presented in each post or related comments.

Our decisions with regards to the presence or absence of antisemitic hate speech are guided in part by the  IHRA working definition of antisemitism. They are, however, also informed by the scholarly work of a number of researchers in the field, all of which emphasize slightly different aspects of antisemitism. Those include, but are not limited to, Volkov’s (2000) and Schwarz-Friesel’s (2019) assertions that antisemitism is a set of stereotypes about Jewish people that serve to portray as “the others.” They are deeply embedded in our culture, as well as in our thought and feeling structures. We also draw on Schäuble’s (2012) classification of Christian antisemitism, race-based antisemitism, modern, or secondary antisemitism. Moreover, we look to the work of Bergmann and Erb (1986), as well as Ionescu and Salzborn (2014), who discuss the tendency to use codes and implicit discourses to discuss antisemitic content in the post-WWII German society. Thus, our broad understanding of the phenomenon allows for a comprehensive and nuanced analysis of today’s manifestations of antisemitic hate speech on social media.

In addition to using QCA, our Bielefeld Team is employing the so-called an approach termed “Conversation Analysis” to analyze the social media posts from Study 1. This technique focuses on the way that social interactions develop in interactive settings, and is particularly suitable for the scrutiny of counterspeech on social media. That is because it can expose how (in)effective different argumentation patterns are in reducing antisemitic hate speech, and promoting understanding and cooperation. To do so, the Bielefeld Team is examining long comment threads documenting the exchange of different opinions and viewpoints about the subject matter to discover how social media users react to each other’s comments.

Taken together, Study 1 served as a stepping stone within RESPOND!’s 4-year-long research design, focused on developing a program fostering young people’s media competence en route to combating antisemitism. At the same time, we hoped to boost our participants’ skills in recognizing and addressing antisemitic hate speech online by taking the time to carefully debrief them after the data collection for our first study was over. During said debriefing sessions, all of our participants got the chance to take part in a conversation with one of our principal investigators, and discuss their experiences, observations, and insecurities that arose while creating their media diaries. We were truly overwhelmed and impressed by the extent of our participants’ thoughtfulness and commitment to the research process! Many of them engaged with their family and friends to initiate important conversations about their experiences, and most expressed their willingness to continue supporting future studies within RESPOND!. We are beyond grateful for all of your help!

While the analysis of our Study 1 data is still ongoing, we are already in the process of collecting and recruiting participants for our second study. Building upon the media diary entries submitted to us by participants of our first study, the second study focuses on a closer investigation of the strengths and vulnerabilities of young people with regards to dealing with antisemitic hate speech online. To this end, we are conducting group discussions with participants from the Berlin, Bielefeld, and Potsdam area. Does this sound interesting to you? If so, please feel free to reach out to us via email! We would be happy to have you participate in our studies!

Please do not hesitate to share your opinions and questions about RESPOND! in the comments section below. We are thrilled to hear your thoughts about what we are doing!

Your RESPOND! Team

References:

Bergmann, W. & Erb, R. (1986). Kommunikationslatenz, Moral und öffentliche Meinung. Theoretische Überlegungen zum Antisemitismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (S. 209-222). In: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 38.

Bernstein, J., Chernivsky, M., Rensmann, J., & Spaney, M. (2020). Antisemitismus an Schulen in Deutschland: Befunde – Analysen – Handlungsoptionen (1. Auflage). Beltz Juventa.

Schwarz-Friesel, M. (2019). Judenhass im Internet: Antisemitismus als kulturelle Konstante und kollektives Gefühl. Hentrich & Hentrich.

Schwarz-Friesel, M. (2020). Israelbezogener Antisemitismus und der lange Atem des Anti-Judaismus – von Brunnenvergiftern, Kindermördern, Landräubern‘. Institut für Demokratie und Zivilgesellschaft (Hg.):  Wissen schafft Demokratie. Schwerpunkt Antisemitismus, 8, 42-57.

Volkov, S. (2000). Antisemitismus als kultureller Code. Zehn Essays. Beck.