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Critical Security Studies in The Digital Age Social Media and Security Joseph Downing Full Chapter
Critical Security Studies in The Digital Age Social Media and Security Joseph Downing Full Chapter
Critical Security Studies in The Digital Age Social Media and Security Joseph Downing Full Chapter
Joseph Downing
New Security Challenges
Series Editor
George Christou, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
The last decade has demonstrated that threats to security vary greatly in
their causes and manifestations and that they invite interest and demand
responses from the social sciences, civil society, and a very broad policy
community. In the past, the avoidance of war was the primary objective,
but with the end of the Cold War the retention of military defence as
the centrepiece of international security agenda became untenable. There
has been, therefore, a significant shift in emphasis away from traditional
approaches to security to a new agenda that talks of the softer side of secu-
rity, in terms of human security, economic security, and environmental
security. The topical New Security Challenges series reflects this pressing
political and research agenda.
For an informal discussion for a book in the series, please contact the
series editor George Christou (G.Christou@warwick.ac.uk), or Palgrave
editor Alina Yurova (alina.yurova@palgrave-usa.com).
This book series is indexed by Scopus.
Joseph Downing
Critical Security
Studies in the Digital
Age
Social Media and Security
Joseph Downing
Senior Lecturer of International
Relations and Politics
Department of Politics, History
and International Relations
Aston University
Birmingham, UK
Visiting Fellow
European Institute
London School of Economics
and Political Science
London, UK
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
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Acknowledgements
This book owes the most to the two data science specialist that were
instrumental in producing the data analysis for some of the examples in
this book. To Wasim Ahmed and Richard Dron, this book owes a huge
debt of gratitude. Also, from a theoretical and conceptual perspective,
Jennifer Jackson-Preece was key in introducing me to the critical security
literature and has been positive and encouraging throughout my academic
career thus far. Additionally, Estelle E. Brun provided significant coding
support and very mature scholarly reflections on some of the examples in
this book.
v
Contents
vii
viii CONTENTS
Index 261
CHAPTER 1
the much broader social context in which it is only one part of the much
larger political jigsaw of the early twenty-first century.
However, essentialisation of social media does not stop at discussions
of its posited unstoppable capacity for social and political transforma-
tion. Rather, “social media” is used unproblematically as if it describes
a unitary entity with clear and unidirectional implications. However, this
catch all term homogenises an incredibly bewildering array of technolo-
gies, platforms and communication technologies with significantly varying
and multifaceted possibilities for human use, interaction and subversion.
Indeed, there is a lot to be said for abandoning the term “social media” as
essentialising and homogenising to the point of uselessness. For example,
to lumber telegram, a smart phone app used for private communication
under the same umbrella term as YouTube and Twitter seems extremely
reductivist.
Another common folie in the discussion of communications tech-
nologies is presenting them in ahistorical terms. The communications
“revolution” of social media, opening up new avenues for those at the
“bottom” to contest the political agenda of those at the “top” is arguably
not as new, or as revolutionary as it seems. Indeed, the possibilities
afforded by technology for challenging those in authority was not some-
thing lost on those seeking to disrupt political, religious and social order
since with technology since antiquity (Reuter, 2019).
However analogue this may sound, the “digitalisation” of communi-
cation technologies and how these have sent ripples through the political
and social order is also something not unique to the adoption of the smart
phone. Indeed, there is a much longer historical relationship between
media, security and international relations. The revolutionary Islamist
messages carried on the cassette tapes of the Iranian revolution, Alge-
rian FLN and Egyptian Muslim brotherhood changed the political field
of North Africa and the Middle East, ushering in a dark and sinister
era of conspiratorial anti-systemic politics that shook the foundations of
authoritarian regimes long before anyone could conceive the possibilities
of tweeting about the Arab spring. Indeed, the deposed Shah of Iran
and the bloodied and battered regime of ex-freedom fighters in Algiers
saw first-hand the devastating consequences of how long-neglected struc-
tural social grievances could be given new life and meanings through
communications technologies.
1 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRITICAL … 3
As such, the early critical work done in the discursive turn by the Copen-
hagen school (Buzan et al., 1997) which broke open the security studies
discipline has been widely critiqued for a poorly defined sense of inter-
disciplinarity and a “methodological elitism” (Stanley & Jackson, 2016)
that focuses too much on the speech of dominant actors (McDonald,
2008, p. 563). An important intervention here can be found in the calls
to include a range of disciplinary approaches into security studies, such
as the tools of sociology and criminology (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018).
Perhaps the most extreme articulation of this has been found in the
vernacular school of security studies which advocates a theoretical “empti-
ness” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110) which “allows for greater fidelity to the
diversity of everyday stories” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110). However, while this
is important, it is not only in the everyday that this finds resonance, but
in a range of contexts. This leads onto the second key take home message
of this book.
important because this sets the scene for a larger discussion, and theme
within this book, about the diversity of social media platforms and the
need to nuance what constitutes “social media” in any given context that
we are analysing. Indeed, a key insight is that “both method and method-
ology are instrumental in identifying what counts for research” (Aradau,
Coward et al., 2015, p. 59) and it is important to make a case as to
why social media deserves greater attention from critical security scholars.
Indeed, “doing it right” in terms of research ethics in social media is far
from settled and straightforward and how we both sample and analyse
social media for insights into security requires reflection.
It is important to consider the limitations of social media research,
especially in light of some of the key commitments of critical security
studies. If we are to make even the thinnest claim about discursive eman-
cipation, it is important to understand how the demographics of social
media are extremely skewed and unrepresentative. The digital divide both
between the global North and South, and indeed even within particular
societies, massively complicates notions that the globally “oppressed” can
use digital media as a liberation technology because frankly they often do
not have access to it.
This chapter then moves on to offer some initial reflections on
operationalising methods for social media research in terms of some
methodological notes on approaches used to produce some of the conclu-
sions to come in later chapters of this book. This includes some reflections
on social network analysis, netnography and aspects of discursive methods
that not only can be used by security researchers when considering
questions of social media, but also inform the empirical chapters to come.
Chapter 4 forms the first chapter that seeks to bring in specific empirics
into questions of critical security and social media through questions of
terrorism. “Terrorism” and indeed the post-9/11 “war on terror” have
been key features of the post-Cold War security landscape (Council of
Councils, 2021). More recently, the emergence of ISIS and the Charlie
Hebdo and Bataclan concert hall attacks in Paris have once again cata-
pulted “terrorism” into the public eye (Titley et al., 2017). Critical
terrorism studies has emerged into this context to bring the construc-
tivist orientation offered by critical security studies to understand how
terrorism is not only a set of objective security occurrences, but also a
social construct that should be studied away from the “problem-solving”
concerns of classical terrorism studies (Herring, 2008; Jackson et al.,
2007; Richard Jackson, 2007). This opens up not only the ability to
14 J. DOWNING
social media to the fore as a key area where identity concerns are created,
contested and discussed. These include #BlackLivesMatter and the quest
for greater social justice (Mourão & Brown, 2022), as well as the specifics
of the various groups that seek to articulate particular notions of what an
Islamic identity means in a political context such as ISIS (Awan, 2017).
Examples are presented here of how identities are contested and re-
constructed in a range of arenas in the social media context. There is the
example of the emergence of the hashtag #JeSuisAhmed in the context
of the Charlie Hebdo attacks (Arceneaux, 2018) which co-occurs with,
and sits alongside, discourses which support and contest #JeSuisCharlie.
Here, narratives emerge in a range of ways that re-construct both Ahmed,
and by extention French Muslims as defenders of the nation and as
important aspects of state security. A range of discourses and symbols are
deployed on social media that construct Ahmed as an important defender
of the freedom of speech upon which the French republic is founded,
and comments seek to nuance questions of where Muslims stand vis-à-
vis terrorism in France by discussing how a Muslim dies as a police offer
attempting to protect French values. The second example is a comparison
of the globalisation of Muslim identity debates in the wake of security
situations in the UK. Both the Grenfell tower fire and the Manchester
Arena bombing resulted in significant social media activity.
The social media activity in the wake of both events demonstrates
the way that security and identity debates become internationalised on
social media in a context of the contested nature of Muslim identity and
its broader place in the global context. The two examples also demon-
strate something that critical security studies needs to consider when
approaching questions of social media in what a notion of security elite
means in the social media context. Both users presented here become
important in the debates and in a sense could be considered “elites”, but
this is not only unpredictable, but also extremely fleeting and ephemeral.
As such, it is difficult to reproduce the notion of elites when it comes
to security speech on social media. While discussing the intersection of
British security concerns, and the role of Muslims within them, the debate
can become highly decontextualised. Thus these debates can, and often
do, become about the more general questions of Islam and terrorism, and
the nexus of identity and security on social media, resulting in discussions
that lack nuance and structure. Thus, while it can be argued that social
media makes security debates more diffuse, and can offer users an albeit
“thin” kind of discursive emancipation, as they can contribute, and even
18 J. DOWNING
become elite in debates about security and identity, this processes are
complex and multifaceted.
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CHAPTER 2
part of the call for the emancipation of broader areas of study as counting
as part of IR has been partially fulfilled.
It is in this broadening of the field that this book finds the Paris school
of security studies of particular interest. One key issue with the Paris
school if, however, is its inbuilt ambiguity. This goes as far as an overt
rejection of being referred to as a “Paris” approach, and the redefinition
away from the city itself to the “Political Anthropological Research for
International Sociology” (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). Here, they
seek to highlight that a “Paris” approach is much broader in terms of its
approaches, and cultural and geographical influences than either the city
of light or the broader Francophone world (Didier Bigo & McCluskey,
2018). The Paris school makes a bold claim, that it should not be consid-
ered a theoretical school or a particular line of thought per se, but rather
a “problematisation” (problématique) to enable the questioning of estab-
lished knowledge (Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). Thus while it is
somewhat difficult to pin down the key tenants of a Paris school of secu-
ritisation, even being seemingly requested not to utter its very name, it
is however possible to take away a clear observation that is important
for the coming discussions in this book—the integration of a broader
range of data and approaches to the study of security. This is of upmost
importance, as the revolutionary nature of this assertion is easy to forget
given the progress that some aspects of international relations have made
through a greater dialogue with sociological concepts and theories. Thus,
discussing the Copenhagen (Buzan et al., 1997), Welsh (Wyn Jones,
1999) and the Paris schools (D. Bigo, 2008) is a vital step in bringing
out the synergies and contradictions between these different schools. A
key argument is that while they all have bases in both social construc-
tivism and critical theory, the various ways in which they apply them
have different implications for bringing a focus on CSS and social media
studies.
More specifically, given the discourse focused nature of the social
media landscape, and of many aspects of critical security studies, it is
of particular importance to begin to unpick synergies and contradictions
between notions of “security speak”. It is important, as many have argued
(Floyd, 2007) not to see various “schools” of CTS as discrete and isolated
entities—they owe each other and a far broader range of social theory
considerable intellectual debts. Thus, it is vital to consider the syner-
gies and contradictions between them, for example in the “hierarchical”
understandings of security speak in the Copenhagen school (Buzan et al.,
2 CONCEPTUALISING SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRITICAL … 27
of peace and security with shared benefits (Kant, 1795). Thus begins to
emerge notions of the democratic peace theory—where democracies are
unlikely to go to war due to the unpopularity of bloodshed within the
electorate (Kant, 1795). This was given further momentum in the post-
World War II state system, where it was noted that, while democracies do
fight wars, generally it is not with other democracies because of capitalist
ties, and thus the spread of capitalism and democracy globally could, if
not bring conflict to an end, dramatically minimalise it (Keohane & Jr,
1977). Within this, something else becomes a key feature of the inter-
national system as a result of the horrors of the European great wars
of World War I and World War II—international institutions, such as
the United Nations, which aim to foster cooperation that challenge the
realist understandings of states locked in an eternal struggle for power
and influence.
Constructivism emerged out of observations similar to liberalism about
the roles of institutions, norms and ideas in IR towards the end of the
twentieth century. Constructivism paid more attention directly to these
norms and ideas, such as democracy and human rights in an attempt to
add the role of these more diffuse concepts into the equation of how and
why states behave in the ways that they do in an anarchical international
system (Adler, 2012). However, it was met with a significant degree of
scepticism by mainstream international relations (Hopf, 1998) because of
its attempts to give a place to the more ambiguous role of norms and
ideas in shaping the behaviour of states in the international system. Thus
it stood accused of being more interested in “meta theory” than empirical
research (Adler, 2012). Constructivism in IR emerges from the broader
developments in social constructivism more broadly which is important to
understand in some detail given that this school of thought also greatly
informs critical security studies.
Social constructivism has a long and storied history in the social
sciences since it was coined by Berger and Luckman (1966). The concep-
tual underpinning of this school of thought contests that reality is socially
situated and that knowledge is constructed through interaction with social
stimuli in works such as the invention of tradition (Hobsbawm & Ranger,
1984). This is a conceptual tradition that is strongly rooted in the rela-
tional nature of social experience and that meaning is relational—i.e. it
emerges in interactions with individuals, or indeed in the international
system, other states, institutions and non-state actors. Thus while clearly
not primarily rooted in a materialist understanding of security espoused
2 CONCEPTUALISING SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRITICAL … 31
A key starting point here sits in questioning the primacy of the state
and the military in conceptualisations of security (Buzan et al., 1997,
p. 1). While acknowledging the issues with including “everything” under
the security rubric and thus rendering it imprecise and meaningless, the
Copenhagen school openly advocated the widening of notions of secu-
rity and taking security discussions to previously neglected arenas by the
narrow focus of orthodox security studies (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 1).
Here, they highlight an important aspect of global developments at the
time by juxtaposing the narrowing of the security agenda to the military
and nuclear obsessions of the Cold War era with the parallel “emerg-
ing” areas of environmental, economic, identity and transnational crime
concerns (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 2). The fact that these observations
appear archaic, self-evident and “old” are to a certain extent because of
the success of the Copenhagen agenda. Here, the security is more than
simply the “political” but rather: