Keyboard Warriors
：The Production of Islamophobic Identity and an Extreme Worldview within an Online Political Community
Publication subTitle ：The Production of Islamophobic Identity and an Extreme Worldview within an Online Political Community
Author： Graham Edward Geddes
Publisher： Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Publication year： 2016
E-ISBN: 9781443898553
P-ISBN(Hardback): 9781443894623
Subject： B9 Religion
Keyword： 宗教
Language： ENG
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Description
The far-right English Defence League (EDL) is a strange product of global and local dynamics, most prominently the ‘War on Terror’. While the EDL has become well known for its high-profile Islamophobic demonstrations within local communities, the bulk of its day-to-day activity occurs online within its social networking sites, between supporters – referred to as ‘keyboard warriors’. ‘Keyboard warriors’’ activities are confined to the virtual realm and they are unlikely to attend EDL events in physical space, such as demonstrations. This book explores the kind of Islamophobic identity that is produced by EDL supporters within the networking sites, and focuses on how this identity is constructed around insecurities that are central to the lives of this population.
EDL supporters can be identified as members of the working class that have experienced significant ontological insecurity since the 1980s, as a consequence of globalisation and related deindustrialisation. Working class identity has been weakened in contrast to the post-war era when stronger roles could be located for such groups. Adrift in a post-industrial landscape, located in an ethno-religious war attached to feelings of class and national pride and now mediated by new social networking systems, the insecurities of these sections of the white working class have become attached to a construct of Islamic identity that is defined as essentially immoral and dangerous. This attribution of ‘otherness’, however,
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