Hate online: The creation of the “Other”
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Dr Maloba Wekesa is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Languages at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. His research interests revolve around the wide area of discourse analysis with particular focus on digital media dynamics, translation studies, public and development communication and language in conflict. He has published in various journals in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Dr. Maloba is also a communication consultant with several International Organizations and a contributor to several broadcast media houses in Kenya.
Abstract
Social media has redefined the thinking around the capacity and intensity of interaction among individuals and groups of people across national and international borders. Messages on social media are instantaneous, unhinged to interpretation and inherently dialogic. Through app designs that encourage near addiction to use in various platforms, it is becoming more probable that public debates and social protests start, are fanned and may even be resolved online in these platforms. Many state actors including politicians, religious leaders and social commentators have exploited social media to drive their agenda; personal or otherwise. The anonymity and direct accessibility granted by social media to these actors have given them a brazen green light to promote hate online and a platform for divisive and anarchist agenda. In this paper, I explore the dynamics of hate in social media; how the “Other” is created and used as the target for hate online using the case of electioneering in Kenya. I will attempt to provide a structure profile of social media communication in Kenya during the electioneering period while correlating this to the functional features that facilitated hate on social media. I will deconstruct how the “Other” is created by examining discourse arguments and the underlying subjective benefits in the creation of the “Other”. I will then show how anonymity and publicity interact to promote the process of hate online. This paper employs a phenomenological approach, first propounded by Edmund Husserl, to illustrate how misinformation creates the “Other” and to profile how hate that is spread online is a by-product of this misinformation. The research validity in this paper is premised on the currency of social media as a new dynamic in communication requiring rigorous academic inquiry.
About the author
Dr Maloba Wekesa is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Languages at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. His research interests revolve around the wide area of discourse analysis with particular focus on digital media dynamics, translation studies, public and development communication and language in conflict. He has published in various journals in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Dr. Maloba is also a communication consultant with several International Organizations and a contributor to several broadcast media houses in Kenya.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Typology of motion events in Tugen
- Setting the agenda in a distant nation: The 2016 US presidential election in a New Zealand newspaper
- Japanese intercultural communication hindrances in business environment: Case studies with Polish counterparts
- Hate online: The creation of the “Other”
- Sex in language: Euphemistic and dysphemistic metaphors in internet forums
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Typology of motion events in Tugen
- Setting the agenda in a distant nation: The 2016 US presidential election in a New Zealand newspaper
- Japanese intercultural communication hindrances in business environment: Case studies with Polish counterparts
- Hate online: The creation of the “Other”
- Sex in language: Euphemistic and dysphemistic metaphors in internet forums
