Engaging with data that has been erased requires methodological creativity
This chapter in a longer, edited volume explores the quetion of how to collect data that have been erased from their primary locations on the Web, a category Freelon calls absent data. In such situations, the standard methods of data collection cannot be applied; indeed, in some cases it may not be possible to obtain absent data at all. Using an empirical case of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), Freelon offers four methods for when other, more standard methods fail.
To understand racism in our digital society, follow the money.
The study of race and racism in the digital society must produce theoretically distinct and robust formulations of Internet technologies as key characteristics of the political economy. The author puts forth racial capitalism as a coherent framework for this research agenda. The argument for racial capitalism draws on two examples of its engagement with two characteristics of the digital society: obfuscation as privatization and exclusion by inclusion. Internet technologies are now a totalizing sociopolitical regime and should be central to the study of race and racism.
Right-wing and left-wing activism online simply looks different - in magnitude and character
Digital media are critical for contemporary activism—even low-effort “clicktivism” is politically consequential and contributes to offline participation. We argue that in the United States and throughout the industrialized West, left- and right-wing activists use digital and legacy media differently to achieve political goals. Although left-wing actors operate primarily through “hashtag activism” and offline protest, right-wing activists manipulate legacy media, migrate to alternative platforms, and work strategically with partisan media to spread their messages. Although scholarship suggests that the right has embraced strategic disinformation and conspiracy theories more than the left, more research is needed to reveal the magnitude and character of left-wing disinformation. Such ideological asymmetries between left- and right-wing activism hold critical implications for democratic practice, social media governance, and the interdisciplinary study of digital politics.