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Critical Security Studies
in the Digital Age
Social Media and Security
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
ISSN 2731-0329 ISSN 2731-0337 (electronic)

New Security Challenges
ISBN 978-3-031-20733-4 ISBN 978-3-031-20734-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20734-1
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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
1 Introduction to Social Media and Critical Security

Studies in the Digital Age 1
1.1 Introducing Social Media and Critical Security
in the Digital Age 1
1.2 Challenges and Limits to Investigating Social Media
and Security 3
1.3 Take Home Messages 4
1.3.1 The Need to Shatter Disciplinary Boundaries
1.3.2 Empirical Security Paradoxes: Expecting
the Unexpected on Social Media 5
1.3.3 The Temperamental Topography of Social
Media: The Rise, Rise and Fall of Platforms,
Data and Methods 6
1.3.4 The Unrealised Promises of Critical Theory:
Social Media and Discursive Emancipation 7
1.4 Charting the Road Ahead: Critical Insights
into the Social Media Securityscape 9
Bibliography 18
2 Conceptualising Social Media and Critical Security
Studies in the Digital Age 23
2.1 Introducing International Relations and Security 23
vii
viii CONTENTS
2.2 Classical Security Studies: Realism, Liberalism,

Constructivism 28
2.3 The Critical Security Studies World Tour: Copenhagen,
Paris and Wales 31
2.3.1 The Discursive Turn and the Copenhagen School 33
2.3.2 Security and the Prospects of Emancipation:
The Welsh School of Security Studies 42
2.3.3 Crossing the Chanel: The Paris School
of Security Studies 45
2.4 From the General to the Specific: More Particular
Developments in Critical Security Studies 50
2.4.1 Voices from Below: Vernacular Security Studies 51
2.4.2 Making Sense of the Post-9/11 World: Critical
Terrorism Studies 52
2.5 Security and Technology: Social Media
and CyberSecurity Debates 55
2.6 Conclusions on Critical Security Studies, Technology
and Social Media 62
Bibliography 64
3 Social Media, Digital Methods and Critical Security
Studies 71
3.1 Introducing Digital Methods, Critical Security Studies
and Social Media 71
3.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Methods 74
3.3 Digital Research Challenges: Data Access,
Demographics and Ethics 79
3.3.1 Digital Demographics: Lessons from the Fake
Warren Buffett and the Twitter Blue Tick 82
3.3.2 Digital Data: Financial, Ethical and Access
Challenges 85
3.4 Digital Approaches to Critical Security Studies:
Methodological Notes 87
3.4.1 Social Network Analysis and Critical Security
Studies 88
3.4.2 Netnography, “Self-Destruction” and Critical
Security Studies 89
3.4.3 Digital Discourse: Security Speak and Social
Media 94
CONTENTS ix
3.5 Conclusions on Methods, Critical Security and Social

Media 100
Bibliography 101
4 Social Media, Security and Terrorism in the Digital Age 109
4.1 Introducing Social Media, Security and Terrorism
4.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Terrorism
in a Digital Age 112
4.3 Social Media, Terrorism and Local Themes
of Resistance 120
4.3.1 Social Media, Re-Constructing Terrorism
and Urban Identity 124
4.3.2 Social Media, Terrorism and Football
Resistance 127
4.4 Conclusions on Social Media and Terrorism
Appendices 130
Bibliography 132
5 Social Media and Vernacular Security in the Digital Age 141
5.1 Introducing Social Media and Vernacular Approaches
to Security in the Digital Age 142
5.2 Conceptualising Social Media and Vernacular Security
5.3 Investigating Social Media and Vernacular Security
5.3.1 Social Media and Vernacular Resistance
to Non-State Actors on YouTube 149
5.3.2 Social Media and Vernacular Insecurity
on Snapchat 158
5.4 Conclusions on Social Media Vernacular Security
Appendices 170
Bibliography 171
6 Social Media, Security and Democracy in the Digital
Age 179
6.1 Introducing Social Media, Security and Democracy
x CONTENTS
6.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Democracy

6.3 Investigating Social Media, Security and Democracy
6.3.1 Social Media, Security, Democracy and Election
Meddling 192
6.3.2 Social Media, Security, Democracy
and Abstention 197
6.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Democracy
Appendices 201
Bibliography 203
7 Social Media, Security and Identity in the Digital Age 209
7.1 Introducing Social Media, Security and Identity
7.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Identity
7.3 Investigating Social Media, Security and Identity
7.3.1 Social Media, Security and National Identity
on Twitter 219
7.3.2 Social Media, Security and Internationalising
Muslim Identity on Twitter 224
7.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Identity
Appendices 230
Bibliography 231
8 Conclusions on Social Media and Critical Security
Studies in a Digital Age 239
8.1 Introducing Conclusions on Social Media and Security
8.2 Macro Reflections on Social Media and Critical
Security in a Digital Age 240
8.2.1 The Centrality of Interdisciplinary Approaches 240
8.2.2 Expecting the Unexpected and Broadening
the Empirical Insights into Security 240
8.2.3 New Platforms, New Insights 241
8.2.4 Discursive Emancipation and Social Media 241
CONTENTS xi
8.3 Conclusions on Social Media and Critical Security

Concepts 242
8.4 Conclusions on Social Media, Digital Methods
and Critical Security Studies 246
8.5 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Terrorism 248
8.6 Conclusions on Social Media and Vernacular Security
8.7 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Democracy
8.8 Conclusions on Social Media, Security and Identity
Bibliography 256
Index 261
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to Social Media and Critical

Security Studies in the Digital Age
1.1 Introducing Social Media

and Critical Security in the Digital Age
Social media has become one of the key components of the contemporary
global political landscape. From the circulation of horrific ISIS recruit-
ment videos to the will they/won’t they/oh they have de-platforming
debate about the Twitter account of the 45th president of the United
States of America, Donald Trump, “social media” is never far from the
political headlines. However, the headlines, as always, can be simplistic,
sensationalist and essentialising of “social media”. Is it really true that
jokes, spread online, won the 2017 presidential election for Donald
Trump? (Nussbaum, 2017). Giving primacy to the role of “digital” social
media narratives above and beyond the archaic “analogue”, structural and
social factors seems to have become quite a trend. If we are to inter-
rogate such claims with scholarly rigour, a set of questions, some even
beyond the scope of this book raise their head. To what extent is social
media “new” or simply an extension of, or means of articulating, old
social cleavages and grievances? Is social media really the driving force
behind a populist social movement, rooted in rising inequality and the
de-alignment of voters from traditional left-wing parties that become
increasingly concerned with middle-class (Thomas, 2022), young (Rosen-
tiel, 2008), urban (Thompson, 2019) voters at the expense of their
traditional power bases? Clearly, social media needs to be situated with
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
J. Downing, Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age, New Security
Challenges, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20734-1_1
2 J. DOWNING
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
It is important to note that these are only a few selected examples

of a wide range of questions that one could pose about the relation-
ship between social media, politics and security more generally. Thus,
grafting this confounding array of technological possibilities to a body
of theoretical and conceptual work as diverse critical security studies is
no straightforward task. Once again one needs to beg the question if the
elite-centric, discursively pre-occupied Copenhagen school (Buzan et al.,
1997) should or can be considered under the same rubric as Critical
Terrorism Studies (Breen Smyth et al., 2008; Jackson et al., 2007) or the
emergent vernacular security studies. Also, to what extent do ongoing
debates about the intersecting questions of gender, race and ethnicity in
the security field (inter alia Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020) under-
mine the validity of the CSS endeavour entirely? Opening up these twin
Pandora’s boxes could be seen to set up this book to fail miserably in
its primary purpose to give answers to the desperately needed discussion
of how the CSS needs to reconsider its key conceptual underpinnings in
the wake of a sea change in communications and discourse because there
are too many “critical security studies” and “social medias” to enable
a modest work of circa 80,000 words to make any significant headway.
Indeed, this is a discussion that has, and is, going to take up volumes of
work in the field in the coming decades as these two hydras will only grow
more and more heads, and become ever more intertwined in an awkward
and at times combative embrace. It is better than to consider this book
a starting point for some of these discussions and a point of departure
rather than a point of arrival. Reminiscent of a joke I share frequently
during research design seminars with my students, it is always wise for
an academic to recommend the need for further research in the field
not only for instrumental reasons of future utility and employment, but
because the process of intellectual enquiry into the social world around
us is never-ending.
1.2 Challenges and Limits

to Investigating Social Media and Security
It is also important to set the limits of this book before we go on to offer
insights into what it seeks to address. The first important point to note
is the empirical limits of this book from a number of perspectives. It is
important to foreground that there are indeed several “missing chapters”
that would warrant significant engagement and discussion. These include
4 J. DOWNING
empirical areas such as environmentalism, gender and state-based violence

as areas where social media has important intersection with them. Indeed,
the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine has thrown up an array of ques-
tions for scholars of technology and conflict, and more specifically the
use of social media by the open-source intelligence community and the
geolocation of targets from social media pictures are likely going to be
important points of enquiry for years to come. Conceptually, the decolo-
nial turn in social theory has received some attention from critical security
scholars (Adamson, 2020) and could have easily been a chapter in its own
right as these debates rage on social media. Additionally, there could have
also been a far wider range of empirical contexts included in this book
as the engagement between critical security studies and social media “in
the wild” knows no geographical, linguistic or platform-based boundaries.
Thus while acknowledging the well-documented Western bias in security
studies (Bilgin, 2010) more generally, this book acknowledges its Western
case study bias. Additionally, it is important to remain critical of critical
security studies throughout, as this is a field of theory that has numerous
issues. An important and difficult one to square here has been the focus
of much of critical security studies on “emancipation” (Aradau, 2004;
Bigo & McCluskey, 2018; Wyn Jones, 1999) which while admirable, has
been often poorly defined and operationalised in the literature. That said,
perhaps in a thin sense, social media offers at the bare minimum a sort
of discursive emancipation where some previously excluded voices find a
place to articulate narratives of security.
1.3 Take Home Messages

It is also important to offer some key, if brief, summaries of the “take
home” messages from the enquiries undertaken in this book.
1.3.1 The Need to Shatter Disciplinary Boundaries in the Digital

Age
The first of these relates to how attempting to understand the myriad ways
that social media relates to security requires the shattering of disciplinary
boundaries. This is a core commitment of critical security studies (Bigo &
McCluskey, 2018; Jarvis, 2019), and scholars have gone as far as to argue
that boundary nationalism plays a role in “Hiding the struggles and hier-
archies inside these discursive activities” (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018, p. 5).
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.
1.3.2 Empirical Security Paradoxes: Expecting the Unexpected

on Social Media
The second take home message from this book in examining social media
from the perspective of critical security studies is that it is important to
remember to “expect the unexpected”. When examining social media
empirics, security can pop up in the most unusual places, articulated by
those without any previous security pedigree, with users becoming influ-
ential in social media debates on security who again have no previous
security credentials. This comes hand in hand with opening up security
studies to a range of disciplinary perspectives. As mentioned, in the most
“extreme” form of this, the theoretical “emptiness” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110)
of the vernacular school opens up security in significant ways. However,
this relies a lot on the view of the observer of security, and begs the
important questions are we prepared to see constructions of security in
unexpected places? In scholarship on critical terrorism studies, we can
see a turn to examining questions of how terror becomes embedded
in popular culture such as TV shows (Erickson, 2008; Holland, 2011)
and comic books (Veloso & Bateman, 2013). This demands that scholars
and observers take seriously that security is increasingly found in unex-
pected places, articulated in unexpected ways. Social media offers users
numerous, if not endless, opportunities for users to articulate themselves
however they like. Put simply, one needs to be prepared to not only see
6 J. DOWNING
security where they don’t expect, for example in a meme, or on YouTube,

but also to see it articulated and constructed in ways we don’t expect—for
example through adapted football slogans as seen in later chapters of this
book. As such, important opportunities to study security on social media
can come from anywhere, and can take the most unexpected and coun-
terintuitive directions. A valuable observation has been made in relation
to identifying methods and methodologies in security studies that “Both
method and methodology are instrumental in identifying what counts for
research” (Aradau, Coward et al., 2015, p. 59). This shows that there is
still significant debate about what “counts” as worthy of attention. Social
media, and the analysis to come in this book, demonstrates that not only
do the disciplinary boundaries of security studies need to be broadened
by social media, but that the empirical boundaries of security studies need
to also be dramatically revised if we are to get to grips with social media.
1.3.3 The Temperamental Topography of Social Media: The Rise,

Rise and Fall of Platforms, Data and Methods
As we begin to think about how method and methodology can help us to
consider what “counts for research” (Aradau, Coward et al., 2015, p. 59)
when it comes to engaging with social media, we need to move beyond
the ongoing debates about the diversification of international relations.
This is because as much as debates in international relations are dynamic
and fluid, the social media landscapes move just as fast. For example, in
2022 Facebook loosed overall users’ figures for the first time in its history
(Dwoskin et al., 2022). While this does not mean the giant will close
anytime soon, it does demonstrate how the landscape can dramatically
shift. This is also true for the tools and data access questions that are
central to social media analysis. This is well-illustrated by a particularly
valuable resource that was one of the first I consulted when considering
a pivot into social media research which was a blog piece on “Using
Twitter as a data source” (Ahmed, 2021). This resource is referred to
as a “long running series” having been published initially in 2015, then
re-published in 2017, 2019 and then 2021 (Ahmed, 2021), rather than
a fixed point blog entry. Indeed, the 2021 edition was necessitated by
a sea change in social media research—Twitter’s release of an “academic
research product track” offering academics free access to its data (Ahmed,
2021). This demonstrates something important—the rapid, unpredictable
and enormous change that the tools and data of social media analysis
go through constantly. This is only part of the story as new platforms

emerge, become popular, and indeed less popular over time. Thus, there
is no easy answer here, and the most important take home from these
issues and changes for aspiring scholars of social media and security is to
be extremely flexible and open to new tools as well as new social media
platforms. An example of adaptability here in this book is the application
of netnographic methods to the app Snapchat in part to overcome the
“self-destructing” (Bayer et al., 2016) ephemeral nature of its data which
means it is neither kept on the company’s servers, nor is it downloadable
for off-line analysis as Twitter data is. These data access issues clearly don’t
make the platform less important for analysis—and indeed they may actu-
ally render it even more important given that users can be sure that their
data will disappear, but it did require some imaginative methodological
thinking.
1.3.4 The Unrealised Promises of Critical Theory: Social Media

and Discursive Emancipation
The emancipatory burden weighs extremely heavily on critical theory, and
thus by extension it places an equally important burden on critical secu-
rity studies. Indeed, some have argued that that without the emancipatory
dimension, critical security studies should not be referred to as critical
(Hynek & Chandler, 2013). The rationale goes that the horizons have
been lowered to such an extent that it undermines the very normative
impulse that is a key underpinning of the project more broadly (Hynek &
Chandler, 2013). A range of critical security scholars have attempted to
promote this commitment to emancipation, from the Welsh school (Wyn
Jones, 1999) to the Paris school (Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). In partic-
ular, the Welsh school changes the nature of the world and emancipates
individuals from both the physical and mental constraints that they may
even be unaware of (Wyn Jones, 1995).
However, this is not a burden that critical security studies has shoul-
dered well. The Copenhagen school, who kicked out the discursive, and
to a certain extent, the critical turn in security studies (Buzan et al.,
1997) has received critique for lacking a clear normative commitment
to an emancipatory agenda (Filimon, 2016), focusing more on security
elites. This is set against a broader, and indeed troubling, observation
that theory has failed to bring better societies into existence (Wyn Jones,
1999, p. 21). In particular, the lack of concrete examples of “what types of
8 J. DOWNING
institutions and relationships might characterise a more emancipated soci-

ety” and “the commitment of critical theorists to emancipation became
merely metaphysical in character” (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 35). While crit-
ical security scholars have attempted to theorise emancipatory alternatives
(Aradau, 2004), this is still an area in which the theory is found lacking.
Add to this, despite early optimism that social media would be an
“emancipatory” technology, a much more complex picture has emerged.
Social media has been conceptualised as locked in a complex struggle
between emancipation and control (Dencik & Leistert, 2015), where
causes can use social media for emancipatory projects, but thus open
themselves up to new forms of censorship, surveillance and control
(Dencik & Leistert, 2015). Added to this are the many questions of the
commodification of social media (Allmer, 2015), and how it is being
dominated by commercial interests, and indeed commercial interests
that are at times diametrically opposed to emancipatory causes. Add to
this, the observation that a significant digital divide exists, where global
inequalities exclude many from the ownership of the devices, and the
fast data connectivity required, and indeed even the literacy to be able
to compose a tweet (Ali, 2011). This is also not just a simple global
north/south divide, as this divide can exist within national, regional and
even local contexts (Cullen, 2001; van Dijk, 2006).
This leaves us at quite a pessimistic juncture, where critical theory, crit-
ical security studies and social media all fail at providing viable recipes
for global emancipation. This is without even begging the question as to
whether or not the “powerless” even see themselves as such, nor want
to seek emancipation through the dismantling of global capitalism at all,
and who may instead prefer to take their chances under capitalism than
to either wage an uncertain class struggle or wait to be emancipated by
theorists at universities thousands of miles away.
However, perhaps all is not lost when we consider questions of
discourse and voice on social media. Scholars that have argued that a
central tenant of critical approaches to social media needs to include an
emancipatory component (Allmer, 2015) perhaps offer an insight. This
has taken the form of advocating “a normative and partial approach giving
voice to the voiceless and supporting the oppressed classes of society”
(Allmer, 2015, p. 7). Here, despite a digital divide, the failures of eman-
cipatory theory and the control and commodification of social media
output, there is a glimmer of hope that communications technologies
can at least give a voice to the voiceless, a sort of “discursive emancipa-

tion”. Here, from a critical security perspective and highlighted by some
examples provided in this book, individuals who would not have previ-
ously been able to articulate security narratives, and how actually may
have become influential in security debates, have been significantly aided
in this by social media technologies. This dovetails well with the “vernac-
ular security studies” literature that seeks to highlight the importance of
everyday voices and how they construct security from a range of perspec-
tives (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis, 2019) and it is likely that for a number of
years to come, a range of synergies between vernacular security studies
and social media data will become ever more apparent.
1.4 Charting the Road Ahead: Critical

Insights into the Social Media Securityscape
Indeed, it is examining a range of theoretical observations and their syner-
gies with social media that begins this book. Security studies has been on
a journey in the past century. From post-World War II realism (inter alia
Gorski, 2013; Huysmans, 1998) to the “critical turn” of the Copenhagen,
Welsh and Paris schools (inter alia Buzan et al., 1997; Didier Bigo &
McCluskey, 2018; Floyd, 2007), the field has developed in tandem with,
and in opposition to a range of political and social developments and
events as well as technologies. However, an important caveat of this is
to not fall into the trap of seeing these theories as discrete and separate.
It is important, as many have argued (Floyd, 2007) not to see various
“schools” of CTS as discreet 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 synergies and contradictions between
them, for example in the “hierarchical” understandings of security speak
in the Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997) and the “flat” under-
standing of security speak in vernacular security studies (Jarvis & Lister,
2012). This sets the ground for an informed understanding of how these
bodies of work can, or cannot, account for the disruptive potential of
social media.
Chapter 2 of this book seeks to highlight key aspects of these theo-
ries that are important for the coming discussion of how critical security
studies informs social media. The discursive turn, marked by the Copen-
hagen school’s schema of (de)securitisation (Buzan et al., 1997) was a
significant shift in security studies. Here, the Copenhagen school had
10 J. DOWNING
“established itself—for European scholars at least—as the canon and indis-

pensable reference point for students of security” (McSweeney, 1996).
An important take-home for this book that emerges from the Copen-
hagen school can be seen in the ability to see security as a construct—i.e.
the material realities of security only go so far in deciding if a particular
situation is threatening. Thus we must also examine the way that actors,
in this case security elites “speak” threats into existence, and on what
grounds they make claims about particular situations requiring partic-
ular responses. Cleary for an understanding of social media, this ability
to examine narrations of security, and to consider that security is not
simply an objective material reality, but part of a political process of threat
construction is valuable. However, the elite-centric notion articulated by
the Copenhagen school, that elites speak security and the audience listens,
is very much complicated by changes in communications technologies and
struggles to consider the disruptive potential of social media. This is not
the only critique of the Copenhagen school, as it has been argued to be
thin on emancipatory commitments (Filimon, 2016; Hynek & Chandler,
2013) and lacking in considering the racialised dynamics of global and
domestic security situations (Howell & Richter-Montpetit, 2020). It also
does not have the monopoly on critical understandings of security and
while laying some crucial groundwork for critical takes on security prob-
lems, we are necessitated to delve further into the murky depths of the
theoretical pond.
Bigger on emancipatory commitments is the Welsh school of security
studies (Wyn Jones, 1995). The Welsh school, like much of critical secu-
rity studies, emerges in the wake of the end of the Cold War. This was
buoyed by the optimism of the end of the bi-polar conflict and the new
possibilities this could bring, and the developing “interregnum” of this
old system of states and an emerging borderless world community (Wyn
Jones, 1995). The Welsh school committed to the idea of bringing about
change and aiding in the production of a new world that would emanci-
pate individuals from both the physical and mental constraints that they
may even be unaware of (Wyn Jones, 1995). This “emancipation” has
some significant rhetorical synergies with some narrations about the possi-
bilities of social media to bring voice to the masses, especially in the early,
more positive, days when it was seen that social media could spark a wave
of democratisation, peace and stability (Persily & Tucker, 2020). Clearly
both ideas, that the end of the Cold War and the emergence of social
media would bring about a utopian state of emancipation, have proved
somewhat naïve. However, in approaching social media, it is important

to consider how an albeit thin notion of discursive emancipation might
be possible to a certain extent on social media, as it undeniably does
give “voices to the voiceless” and enables a range of actors to construct
security narratives that would have previously been excluded from doing
so.
However, to understand the range and scope of these new security
narratives, we need to go further as the tools of international relations
are not sufficient to do this. One key take-home of the Paris school can
be seen in its rallying cry to smash disciplinary boundaries and hierarchies
(Bigo & McCluskey, 2018). This in fact proves to be a sage and highly
insightful observation in the context of critical security studies and social
media because precisely the broadening of the narrative security landscape
on social media requires new tools to understand how individuals subvert,
contest and contort security in tandem with a range of sociological, crim-
inological and anthropological means. If it seems superfluous for the Paris
school to deny a geographical label and to instead propose to be known
as the “Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology”
(Bigo & McCluskey, 2018), then the anthropological and sociological
parts are spot on.
The journey does not stop here, however, as the field of critical secu-
rity studies remains in constant flux, responding as it does to the flux
of the global system. Two exciting developments in the last two decades
have been the more recent additions to the landscape of critical security
studies in “Vernacular” security studies (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis & Lister,
2012) and critical terrorism studies (Richard Jackson, 2007). Given that
social media gives the audience the ability to “speak” security and become
an important part of the security discussion, vernacular security studies
has an important part to play in conceptualising how binary, hierarchical
understandings of relationships of the “audience” and the “elite” central
to critical security studies (Buzan et al., 1997) begins to break down on
social media. However, it is not as simple as embracing a completely “flat”
conception of security speak on social medial, as metrics such as influence
enable a small number of non-security elite users to reach large audi-
ences in sometimes ephemeral ways. Critical terrorism studies fits in here
as it seeks to apply the critical, constructivist perspective to the sub-field
of terrorism (Richard Jackson, 2007). Rather than narrowing the focus,
it also seeks to broader the discussion of terrorism away from problem-
solving perspectives so beloved of security elites, but to understand the
12 J. DOWNING
much broader context in which terrorism is constructed. This has even

gone as far as to include how terrorism infiltrates into, and is constructed
by, popular culture (Holland, 2011), an observation that validates the
vital importance of bringing in disciplinary approaches such as sociology,
cultural studies and anthropology into the security discussion.
However, just because there is some novelty in bringing social media
into greater dialogue with critical security studies, this does not mean
we are the first to produce scholarship on social media. In fact, far from
it as social media, and indeed more broadly questions of technology
in politics and security are well advanced fields in many ways, and one
that can give insights into the discursive, emancipatory and interdisci-
plinary positions of security that critical approaches offer. Additionally,
the synergies between technology, politics and IR are nothing new and
have a history almost as long as humanity itself (Reuter et al., 2019). It is
important here to consider the literatures on critical approaches to social
media to get a better handle on the difficult relationship between critical
theory and social media technologies. For example, while early theory
highlighted the emancipatory potential of new media technologies, the
picture has become far more complex (Dencik & Leistert, 2015). This
is because not only are social media companies’ capitalist entities and
thus commodify social media output (Allmer, 2015), they can also be
monitored by governments and give new opportunities for authoritarian
governments to surveil and control their populations (Dencik & Leistert,
2015).
Building on these observations, Chapter 3 of this book examines the
important questions of method and methodology. This is because social
media presents an enormous, diverse and ever-changing cornucopia of
“data” and opportunities for study that can be quite frankly bewildering
and intimidating. Access costs, and indeed whether it is possible to access
data at all, change constantly between and within platforms. However,
“data” questions are only one part of a much larger discussion about
approaching social media that is required here. Critical security studies
has done a lot in the past decade to both broaden and deepen the
method and methodological approaches that the field offers, resulting in
the production of some excellent tomes containing important insights
(inter alia Aradau, Huysmans et al., 2015; Salter & Mutlu, 2013). This
demonstrates both that solid foundations have been laid in considering
the vital question of exactly what critical in critical security studies actu-
ally means from a method’s perspective (Salter & Mutlu, 2013). This is
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
investigate terrorism without foregrounding the need to “solve it” as a

problem, and thus look into the broader dynamics of terrorism, but also
to see on what terms it is constructed as a meaning-making exercise.
These are both vital observations for considering how communications
technologies and terrorism can be seen to relate to each other, and indeed
how this relationship changes. Indeed, while “the 9/11 spectacle of terror
was a global media event” (Kellner, 2007, p. 123) projected into the
living rooms of people the world over, 14 years later the emergence of
#JeSuisCharlie enabled one to dialogue with, and re-construct terrorism
from their smartphone (An et al., 2016; Titley et al., 2017). While crit-
ical terrorism studies has found application in a range of contexts, such
as the UK prevent strategy (Qurashi, 2018) and social media as a place
of communication by extremists and a place for possible recruitment
(Davey & Weinberg, 2021; Laytouss, 2021; Prothero, 2019), there has
been little application of critical terrorism studies to social media. This
chapter seeks to offer two examples that demonstrate two aspects of the
way that terrorism is discussed and constructed on social media to estab-
lish the unexpected symbolic and discursive repertoires that users use of
social media to discuss terrorism. This is tackled thematically, looking at
the Twitter responses to both a threat made against France by ISIS and
the response to the Manchester bombing in the UK. Both of these exam-
ples demonstrate the importance of the disciplinary plurality of critical
security studies because it allows us to conceive of local identity structures,
such as crime, violence and football, and how these become impor-
tant in constructions of terrorism. Dialoguing with the literature that
examines the broader culture context in which terrorism is constructed,
this example demonstrates that when examining social media, instead of
bringing terrorism into culture, bring culture into the construction of
terrorism.
Chapter 5 continues this dialogue with questions of social media and
critical security studies by specifically considering in more depth the
recent, exciting, vernacular turn in security studies. This is aided greatly
by vernacular security studies overt theoretical position of “theoretical
emptiness” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110). This “allows for greater fidelity to the
diversity of everyday stories” (Jarvis, 2019, p. 110). This is important
when considering a key mission of the critical turn in security studies is to
increase the range of “what counts for research” (Aradau, Coward et al.,
2015). Thus rather than schools of critical security thought such as the
Copenhagen school which begin with the assumption of the primacy of
elite discourses of security (Buzan et al., 1997), this approach enables a

far greater range of security speech to be captured and analysed. A caveat,
however, is to remember that the social media landscape is not completely
democratic nor “flat”, as we have seen the issues with access and control
that social media presents (Dencik & Leistert, 2015).
This said, the vernacular turn does enable us to consider important
security questions as will be examined through the two examples included
in this chapter. The first example examines YouTube as a site of the
construction of vernacular security debates by offering an in-depth exam-
ination of a video uploaded by a football YouTuber that responds to ISIS
terrorism in France. This demonstrates the importance of local, and at
times offensive and profane, discourses in further pushing the boundaries
of how vernacular security studies relate to social media technologies.
The second example pushes vernacular security studies research further
by flipping one of its key themes. It has to date championed how indi-
viduals from below contest and re-construct security imposed from above
in local idioms (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis & Lister, 2012). However, the
example of a netnography conducted on the application Snapchat analyses
how those seeking to foster insecurity from below discuss this insecurity
in their own local idioms. This demonstrates the importance of both the
methodological innovation of examining apps with ephemeral data (Bayer
et al., 2016) in security studies, but also highlights the way that users go
to great efforts to “brand” their insecurity in specific ways. This draws
on the sociological and criminological literature on deviance, space and
place.
Chapter 6 shifts gears from examining social media and security from
below, to considering the intersection of social media, security and the
political system “from above” in terms of constructions of democracy.
Both the increases in polarisation in advanced democracies, and the radical
transformation of the media landscape has once again thrust threats to
democracy into the headlines. It has long been argued that a key aspect
of democracies have been free and independent media outlets (Baker,
2001). However, social media radically alters this idea, which formed in
the context of free and fair “old” media outlets. While this book refutes
simplistic arguments about social media and democracy, for example
that memes won Trump the US presidential election (Nussbaum, 2017),
it is clear that the rise of social media has important implications not
only for democracy more broadly, but also more specifically for ques-
tions of democracy and security. This is because the new social media
16 J. DOWNING
online landscape presents significant security questions to the practice

of democracy. The second round of the French 2017 presidential elec-
tion offers two examples through two very different hashtag campaigns
with quite different implications for democracy. The first is within the
context of a “hack and leak” operation of data from Emmanuel Macron’s
campaign team (Vilmer, 2019). It is argued here that rather than just
looking at the hack and leak part of this, it is also important to examine
the broader context of social media discourses that relate to it under
the rise of the hashtag #MacronLeaks to understand which kinds of
discourses about democracy emerge. The coverage on Twitter is domi-
nated by anti-Macron sentiment that delve into anti-Semitic conspiracy
theories, connect Macron to terrorism and the “Islamisation” of France
and refute Russian involvement in the leak. This demonstrates that the
critical discursive turn in the security studies enables us to go further in
examining how the social media environment can construct democracies,
and indeed direct threats to them, in connection with other key themes in
contemporary security and politics, like conspiracy theories and terrorism.
The second example examines abstention under #SansMoi7Mai that high-
lights how political distrust is constructed on social media shines a light
on something quite different in terms of security and democracy. This is
through a hashtag that promotes voter abstention. This highlights how
social media discourses of abstention are centred on themes of political
distrust. Trust in institutions has been conceptualised as an important
part of feeling “ontologically” secure (Perry, 2021; van der Does, 2018).
However, this becomes problematic in light of contemporary trends in
political distrust away from distrust in particular politicians to the entire
system itself (Bertsou, 2019). Within the discussion of non-participation
under the hashtag #SansMoi7Mai distrust in the French media and in the
broader political system as at the service of the oligarchy are important
themes which emerge. This highlights how discussions of political distrust
on social media share common features with a range of conspiracy theo-
ries that separate the world into an honest “us” exploited by “them” the
corrupt political elite (Oliver & Wood, 2014).
Chapter 7 intervenes in examining questions of identity on social
media. Identity emerges as important in critical security studies in the
context of the end of the Cold War, and how identity concerns emerged
as key security concerns in conflicts such as the civil war in the former
Yugoslavia. Identity concerns have retained their centrality to questions
of security in a range of contemporary arenas, which have catapulted
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
Conceptualising Social Media and Critical

Security Studies in the Digital Age
2.1 Introducing International

Relations and Security
Security studies has been on quite a journey in the past century. From
post-World War II realism (inter alia Gorski, 2013; Huysmans, 1998) to
the “critical turn” of the Copenhagen, Welsh and Paris schools (inter alia
Buzan et al., 1997; Didier Bigo & McCluskey, 2018; Floyd, 2007), the
field has developed in tandem with, and often in opposition to, domi-
nant trends in the broader global security evolution. For example, the
increased salience of concerns around terrorism in light of the post-9/11
war on terror, spawned its own mini-field of critical analysis, in terms of
the emergence of critical terrorism studies (Jackson, 2007). It is important
here to note that when considering the critical turn that “CSS takes on a
larger burden” (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 35). This is precisely to attempt to
provide the means by which to analyse security that can keep pace with
developments in the field. Thus the field is immense, diverse and highly
contested. This is even prior to mentioning developments in social media
and the technological landscape. To enable some progress on this book’s
raison d’etre of patching the revolutionary and monumental social media
developments to the already gargantuan field of CTS, it is important to lay
some of the conceptual foundations that this book will then draw upon.
This second chapter thus sets the theoretical groundwork for the
enquiry into social media and critical security studies. This requires an
understanding of the emergence of security studies, the turn to critical
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Switzerland AG 2023
J. Downing, Critical Security Studies in the Digital Age, New Security
Challenges, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20734-1_2
24 J. DOWNING
security studies and more importantly how they conceive of discourse

and communication. This is fundamental to understanding the disrup-
tive potential of social media. This chapter proceeds as follows. Firstly,
it introduces the emergence of security studies in the classical realist and
liberal understandings of security. This gives the broader, state-centric,
elite-centric conceptions of security that dominated the field in the latter
half of the twentieth century. It is important to understand because of the
narrow field of study out of which critical interventions later emerge. It is
important to be nuanced here and not to construct “traditional” security
studies as a “non-reflective” “straw man” (Hynek & Chandler, 2013).
Even seemingly stable and concrete ideas within “traditional” security
studies, such as a national interest, were always shifting, changing and
diverse (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). With this said, it remains evident
that both realism, with its focus on states seeking power in an anarchical
international system, and the liberal modification that sought to add to
this the importance of the internal composition of states offers little in
the way of conceptions upon which social media can be understood.
Secondly, this book uses this discussion of classical security as a spring-
board into understanding the emergence of the critical turn in security
studies. Of particular importance here is conceptualising the move in
security studies away from a concentration on the material aspects of secu-
rity, i.e. the size of standing armies or structures of security governance
emerge. The resulting shift in focus to socially constructivist understand-
ings of security (Buzan et al., 1997) will be discussed, but also the broader
underpinnings of the critical school of social theory to give a broader
context to understanding critical security studies. Indeed, it is difficult to
overestimate the magnitude of the change that the Copenhagen school
facilitated. The Copenhagen school had “established itself-for Euro-
pean scholars at least-as the canon and indispensable reference point for
students of security” (Mcsweeney, 1996). The chapter then moves to
go into detail about the various approaches to critical security studies—
including the Copenhagen school (Buzan et al., 1997). Important here
is the discursive turn and the opening up of the field by the work of the
Copenhagen school. Their focus moves from either the inherent power-
seeking nature of states (realism) or the composition of states (liberalism)
onto discourse and the “speaking” of security by security elites. Here,
while not completely excluding the material or state-centric aspects of the
security equation, the Copenhagen school sought to argue for the impor-
tance of threat construction and how this can also be understood as a
2 CONCEPTUALISING SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRITICAL … 25
central means by which insecurity occurs in the international system. This

has, after some thirty years of informing the security debate, been robustly
critiqued but remains an extremely important intervention into the very
creation of the critical field of security studies.
It is also important to note that the Copenhagen school is not alone
in applying a critical lens to the security debate. The Welsh school sought
to set out an agenda for critically understanding security but with one
caveat—an increased focus on normative aspects of security. Indeed, a
critique of the Copenhagen school is its lack of normative commitments
to emancipation. Indeed, some have argued that without the emancipa-
tory dimension, critical security studies should not be referred to as critical
(Hynek & Chandler, 2013). The rationale goes that the horizons have
been lowered to such an extent that it undermines the very normative
impulse that is a key underpinning of the project more broadly (Hynek &
Chandler, 2013).
It is into this discussion about the necessity and importance of a
normative, emancipatory dimension that the Welsh school of securitisa-
tion intervenes. This emerges out of the optimist at the end of the Cold
War and the hopes raised across the political spectrum by the possible
opportunities that the end of this bi-polar conflict could bring. For the
Welsch school, the post-Cold War era was an “interregnum” between the
decline of the “old” Westphalian system of states and an emerging border-
less world community (Wyn Jones, 1995). To them, this opened the way
for an “emancipatory” project that sought to not only describe the world
as is, but also to go further and to change the nature of the world and
emancipate individuals from both the physical and mental constraints that
they may even be unaware of (Wyn Jones, 1995). This “emancipation”
has some significant rhetorical synergies with some narrations about the
possibilities of social media to bring voice to the masses, especially in
the early, more positive, days when it was seen that social media could
spark a wave of democratisation, peace and stability (Persily & Tucker,
2020). Clearly, with nearly thirty years of hindsight, there is little evidence
that the Welsh school, like many other intellectual movements who advo-
cated increased emancipation at the end of the Cold War, have achieved
much if any, significant progress. However, an important aspect of the
Welsh school that still has purchase, is its valuable advocacy, like many
CSS perspectives, of opening up of the security studies field much more
broadly (Wyn Jones, 1999). If perhaps the material and mental emancipa-
tory ambitions of the Welsh school remain unfulfilled, then perhaps being
26 J. DOWNING
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.,
1997) and the “flat” understanding of security speak in vernacular secu-

rity studies (Jarvis & Lister, 2012). This sets the ground for an informed
understanding of how these bodies of work can, or cannot, account for
the disruptive potential of social media. Where they cannot, suggestions
would then be made about the empirically and theoretically informed
discussions to come.
Beyond this, there is an observation about the scale of the theories
themselves. In a sense these Copenhagen, Welsh and Paris theories are
at the macro scale of the analysis of security—i.e. the broader interna-
tional system, the range of security challenges and the broader workings
of security within it. While this is a gross over simplification as their
approaches are far more diverse and multifaceted, it does offer somewhat
of a necessary delineation between them and two more niche theoret-
ical schools that have significant importance within this book. These are
the more recent additions to the field of critical security studies in “Ver-
nacular” security studies (Bubandt, 2005; Jarvis & Lister, 2012) and
critical terrorism studies (Jackson, 2007). Given social media gives the
audience the ability to “speak” security and become an important part of
the discussion vernacular security studies has an important part to play in
conceptualising how binary, hierarchical understandings of relationship of
the “audience” and the “elite” central to critical security studies (Buzan
et al., 1997) begin to break down on social media. However, it is not
as simple as embracing a completely “flat” conception of security speak
on social medial, as metrics such as influence enable a small number of
non-security elite users to reach large audiences in sometimes ephemeral
ways. Critical terrorism studies fits in here as it seeks to apply the critical,
constructivist perspective to the sub-field of terrorism (Jackson, 2007).
Rather than narrowing the focus, it also seeks to broaden the discussion
of terrorism away from problem-solving perspectives so beloved of secu-
rity elites, but to understand the much broader context in which terrorism
is constructed. This has even gone as far as to include how terrorism
infiltrates into, and is constructed by, popular culture (Holland, 2011).
It is also important to look up and out from the specifics of the social
media landscape when we consider how social media can be related to
critical security studies. Specifically, social media is, after all, a “technol-
ogy” and the synergies between technology, politics and IR are nothing
new and have a history almost as long as humanity itself (Reuter et al.,
2019). Building on this observation and considering that social media is
one in a universe of cases of technology, security and politics, the final
28 J. DOWNING
task of this chapter is in looking specifically at questions of this chapter

to importantly tease out the key means by which scholarship accounts
for this relationship. While it is important to consider the contending
understandings the various schools of critical security studies have of tech-
nologies of security, we need to go further. For example, the Copenhagen
school’s later work began to consider the “little security nothings” where
technologies of security become an increasingly large parts of the fabric
of daily life with phenomena such as CCTV (Huysmans, 2011). While an
interesting starting point in considering the possibilities that communi-
cations technologies open up, this remains underdeveloped. Additionally,
it is important to consider how the Foucaultian understanding of secu-
rity bureaucracies in the Paris school (D. Bigo, 2008) can be applied to
how large social media companies work in their inadvertent “doing” of
security in de-platforming users and patrolling the digital landscape.
2.2 Classical Security Studies:

Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism
To understand the broader interventions, and indeed the founding raison
d’etre of the critical security studies field, it is important to first consider
against what their critique is made. It is fair to say that in this sense,
critical and classic security studies exist in a far more symbiotic and inter-
twined relationship than may at first be clear—for without “traditional”
security studies and its practitioners which remain in the world, it is not
possible to build nor sustain a critique of their methods, assumptions and
practices. Realism, perhaps one of the founding theories of contemporary
security studies, has received renewed attention in the past year owing
to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This horrific, violent and destructive
conflict has echoes of the early twentieth century when realism was artic-
ulated, being a state-to-state conflict analysed through the lens of state
power and pursuit of state interests through violent means. However, the
renewed attention lavished on realism has been negative, owning to the
critiques of the views of John J Mearsheimer and his lack of sympathy
with Ukraine’s aspirations to look towards the EU, NATO and democ-
racy. Mearsheimer roots his commentary in an observation that elites in
the USA and Europe “tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little
relevance in the twenty-first century and that Europe can be kept whole
and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic
interdependence, and democracy” (Mearsheimer, 2014, p. 2). In his
opinion, as early as the 2014 Russian intervention in Ukraine and annex-

ation of Crimea, it is important to remember that “realpolitik remains
relevant—and states that ignore it do so at their own peril” (Mearsheimer,
2014, p. 2). Here, he points to a provocation of Moscow by the USA
and the European Union (EU) in projecting their power into Eastern
Europe where he highlights the efforts made by the West in “peeling Kiev
away from Moscow” as part of a broader effort to spread Western values
(Mearsheimer, 2014). This view has been rightly critiqued as deeply prob-
lematic for sidelining the autonomy of Ukraine, and seemingly advocating
ignoring their preference to lean into the West. However, it is important
to note that this articulates a very narrow and limited and problematic
conception of realism. It is important to dig deeper than to understand
the key assumptions of realism.
The point here is not to trace the historical development of realism
from antiquity to the present day but to give a brief sketch of some
of realism’s key assumptions about the world of international secu-
rity to understand the context against which critical security studies
emerges. Realism is also far more diverse and contested internally, this
is often visible from the outside, with its different proponents drawing
on differing and competing notions of such fundamental ideas within the
school as human nature. The key principles of realism, such as the pursuit
of self-interest and the futility of higher moral aspirations, can be seen
in an early classical realist “politics among nations” (Morgenthau, 1948).
This draws strongly on ideas of universal laws of nature that apply to state-
to-state relations across time and space, and where the state, and thus
the elite within it, can “master” the intricacies of international politics
through understanding and obeying these laws—i.e. that national interest,
defined as securing greater power, is the basic cut and thrust of interna-
tional politics, or “realpolitik” (Morgenthau, 1948). A second key feature
of the realist school is the notion that states operate on these power-
seeking terms within, and in part because of, the anarchic nature of the
international system that has no higher authority than the state (Waltz,
1979). As such we can easily draw issues here with a homogenisation of
states, noted in the critique of realism being Eurocentric and unable to
explain the historical evolution of states in Asia (Kang, 2003) nor Africa
(Herbst, 2015). Additionally, realism is also extremely state-centric.
However, a differing conception of international politics, also with
long historical roots, also came to prominence in international politics—
liberalism. A key idea here is that states can cooperate to build a system
30 J. DOWNING
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
by theories such as realism, it is important to understand that even in a

broader social science sense, social constructivism does not wholly exclude
the material world from this process of meaning-making. Social science
scholars have advocated more “realist” view of social constructivism, such
as Elder-Vass (2013) and Gorski (2013). This seeks to combine the bene-
ficial aspects of social constructivism with the realist work of scholars such
as Bhaskar (2008) to bring the role of social reality and social structures
back into the work of social constructivism. Thus constructivism in an
international relations sense builds upon their complex interplay of mate-
rial realities and social meanings in its attempt to understand the complex
global system of states and occurrences within it. This is a vital obser-
vation as we both draw to a close of our sketch of the more “classical”
understandings of international relations and security, and begin consid-
ering the understandings of international security that centrally situate
the role of construction. This is by no means exhaustive, but rather a
brief and vulgar outlining of classic takes on international security against
which critical security studies emerge.
2.3 The Critical Security Studies World

Tour: Copenhagen, Paris and Wales
Critical security studies has blossomed from its genesis in the late 1990s.
The emergence of critical security studies can be seen as a product of
the tension between the problem-solving orientation dominant in secu-
rity studies at the end of the Cold War vs a deeper reflection on security
and indeed the nature of theorising itself (Hynek & Chandler, 2013).
This “critical” turn in security studies owes much of its genesis to the
Copenhagen school’s early forays into considering how security is not
simply an objective fact but also something that is “constructed”, and
not only constructed, but constructed through “discourse”. Indeed, the
Copenhagen school has “established itself-for European scholars at least-
as the canon and indispensable reference point for students of security”
(Mcsweeney, 1996). However, this has significantly widened and can
be considered critical in several different ways. The Copenhagen school
(Buzan et al., 1997) emerged in response to classical security studies
and sought to integrate social constructivism into the creation of secu-
rity threats, while the Welsh (Wyn Jones, 1999) and Paris (Didier Bigo &
McCluskey, 2018) schools draw more overtly on critical theory of Marx
and Foucault, respectively. There are a couple of observations here that
32 J. DOWNING
are important in situating these theories in the broader range of security

studies. Firstly, the Copenhagen school seeks to be closer to traditional
security studies (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 35). Additionally, it is important
to not construct “traditional” security studies as a “non-reflective” “straw
man” (Hynek & Chandler, 2013). Even seemingly stable and concrete
ideas within “traditional” security studies, such as a national interest, were
always shifting, changing and diverse (Hynek & Chandler, 2013).
They have also been subject to significant application, reformulation
and critique, even within the question of what constitutes the “critical”
in “critical security studies”. Some scholars have argued that without an
overt commitment to an emancipatory dimension of theory and practice,
critical security studies should not be referred to as critical (Hynek &
Chandler, 2013). The rationale goes that the horizons have been lowered
to such an extent that it undermines the very normative impulse that
is a key underpinning of the project more broadly (Hynek & Chandler,
2013). Thus, in this definition the Welsh school, with its commitment to
emancipation, would score highly, and the Copenhagen school with its
lack of an overt commitment to emancipation scores poorly. While this
is a meta point that is important to consider—i.e. what is the point of
theorising security, this book does not advocate the ex-communication
of theories based on their lack of emancipatory potential per se. Rather
the point here is assess their architecture and how their structures offer
possible synergies with social media developments, or as is also the case,
identifying aspects of their architecture that require further work to be
able to take account of social media.
It is worth considering the boundary issues present within the context
of the critical turn, because of the expansion of the field and how this
increasingly wide boundaries of critical security studies necessitate ques-
tioning how far should/can it go (Browning & McDonald, 2013) and
thus does pushing the definition of security further and further mean we
are actually discussing nothing? (Wyn Jones, 1999, p. 37). However, there
have been some progress in this regard with scholars suggesting that the
sub-discipline can be defined by three key commitments:
1. Fundamental critique of realist approaches (Browning & McDonald,

2013)
2. Seeking to understand the politics of security and what security does
politically (Browning & McDonald, 2013)
3. Questioning the ethics of security and what progressive practices

look like with respect to security (Browning & McDonald, 2013).
Within this, this ethics dimension is about figuring out normative
positions—i.e. what defines the “good” when it comes to security
(Browning & McDonald, 2013, p. 1). This creates a need to “refor-
mulate” or “escape” the sometimes problematic language and logic
of security altogether (Browning & McDonald, 2013, p. 236).
What will become apparent in the following discussion of the three

key pillars of the critical turn is interesting, if sometimes confusing, syner-
gies between them. Additionally, the different approaches offer different
conceptual and practical suggestions as to the best ways to operationalise
these commitments.
2.3.1 The Discursive Turn and the Copenhagen School

The “critical” turn in security studies owes much to the Copenhagen
school of securitisation from its publication of “security: a new framework
for analysis” (Buzan et al., 1997). The Copenhagen school has “estab-
lished itself-for European scholars at least-as the canon and indispensable
reference point for students of security” (Mcsweeney, 1996, p. 81). While
it is important to acknowledge the robust critiques of the Copenhagen
school, as it has many shortcomings, it is still important as a cornerstone
of the critical security studies landscape. Copenhagen school is a welcome
intervention, but it is lacking in numerous areas (Howell & Richter-
Montpetit, 2020; McDonald, 2008). It is important to begin with the
key contributions of the Copenhagen school before moving onto in more
details the key critiques.
The origin of the Copenhagen school lies in an opposition to the
classical, and especially “realist” understandings of security in the inter-
national system. Discussions of nationalism, ethnic conflict and migration
not only were not discussed in classical security studies, but could also not
be discussed, due to the state-centric focus of traditional security studies
(Buzan & Wæver, 1997). This state-centric approach, with its Cold War
focus on standing armies, “objective” military strength, etc., could not
account for these threats that emerge from more diffuse forces that while
not divorced from the activities of states, owe their importance to a much
wider range of forces.
34 J. DOWNING
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:
They have to be staged as existential threats to a referent object by a secu-

ritizing actor who thereby generates endorsement of emergency measures
beyond rules that would otherwise bind. (Buzan et al., 1997, p. 5)
This establishes a simple relationship where elites speak security, and

laypeople listen. This is important because the focus here is discourse
and discourse clearly is applicable in many ways to the landscape of
social media, whether as text, images or memes. An important feature
of the Copenhagen school that complicates a simple application to social
media is the elite focus. Thus, it employs a “methodological elitism”
(Stanley & Jackson, 2016) which has characterised much security and
terrorism research. A key issue is a too narrow focus on the speech of
dominant actors (McDonald, 2008, p. 563). Obviously, dominant actors
exist on social media, but the speaking of security, and indeed who is
important in the speaking of security, needs to be pushed much further
(Downing & Dron, 2020). However, neither do new media technologies
totally “flatten” the discursive landscape as clearly opening a Twitter or
YouTube account does not turn one into a security elite with a persuasive
argument that convinces a given audience.
To unpick this discursive landscape, it is worth considering that the
conceptualisation of discourse by the Copenhagen school goes further.
As such in the Copenhagen view, it is not enough that a security issue is
simply “spoken” about in a broad sense, but must follow quite specific
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en se jetant entre les bras de son gendre, il y porta pers. c. 29.
le noir dessein de lui ravir la couronne avec la vie.
Pour mieux cacher ses perfides projets, il quitte Eumen. Pan. c.
encore une fois la pourpre. La générosité de son 14 et 15.
gendre lui en conserva tous les honneurs et tous
les avantages: Constantin le logea dans son palais, il l'entretint avec
magnificence; il lui donnait la droite partout où il se trouvait avec lui;
il exigeait qu'on lui obéît avec plus de respect et de promptitude qu'à
sa propre personne; il s'empressait lui-même à lui obéir: on eût dit
que Maximien était l'empereur, et que Constantin n'était que le
ministre.
Le pont que ce prince faisait construire à Cologne,
donnait de la crainte aux barbares d'au-delà du An 309.
Rhin, et cette crainte produisait chez eux des effets
contraires: les uns tremblaient et demandaient la xlix. Il la
paix; les autres s'effarouchaient et couraient aux reprend.
armes. Constantin qui était à Trèves rassembla
ses troupes; et suivant le conseil de son beau-
père, dont l'âge et l'expérience lui imposaient, et Eumenius, Pan.
c. 16.
dont sa propre franchise ne lui permettait pas de
se défier, il ne mena pour cette expédition qu'un
détachement de son armée. L'intention du perfide Lact., de mort.
vieillard était de débaucher les troupes qu'on lui pers. c. 29.
laisserait, tandis que son gendre, avec le reste en
petit nombre, succomberait sous la multitude des barbares. Quand
après quelques jours il crut Constantin déja engagé bien avant dans
le pays ennemi, il reprend une troisième fois la pourpre, s'empare
des trésors, répand l'argent à pleines mains, écrit à toutes les
légions, et leur fait de grandes promesses. En même temps pour
mettre toute la Gaule entre lui et Constantin, il marche vers Arles à
petites journées en consumant les vivres et les fourrages, afin
d'empêcher la poursuite; et fait courir partout le bruit de la mort de
Constantin.
Cette nouvelle n'eut pas le temps de prendre
crédit. Constantin, averti de la trahison de son l. Constantin
beau-père, retourne sur ses pas avec une marche contre
incroyable diligence. Le zèle de ses soldats lui.
surpasse encore ses désirs. A peine veulent-ils
s'arrêter pour prendre quelque nourriture; l'ardeur Eumen. Pan. c.
de la vengeance leur prête à tous moments de 18.
nouvelles forces; ils volent sans prendre de repos
des bords du Rhin à ceux de la Saône [Arar]. Lact., de mort.
L'empereur pour les soulager les fait embarquer à pers. c. 29.
Châlons [Cabillonensis portus]; ils s'impatientent
de la lenteur de ce fleuve tranquille; ils se saisissent des rames, et le
Rhône même ne leur semble pas assez rapide. Arrivés à Arles ils n'y
trouvent plus Maximien, qui n'avait pas eu le temps de mettre la ville
en défense, et s'était sauvé à Marseille. Mais ils y rejoignent la
plupart de leurs compagnons qui, n'ayant pas voulu suivre
l'usurpateur, se jettent aux pieds de Constantin et rentrent dans leur
devoir. Tous ensemble courent vers Marseille, et quoiqu'ils
connaissent la force de la ville, ils se promettent bien de l'emporter
d'emblée.
En effet, dès que Constantin parut, il se rendit
maître du port, et fit donner l'assaut à la ville: elle li. Il s'assure de
était prise, si les échelles ne se fussent trouvées sa personne.
trop courtes. Malgré cet inconvénient, grand
nombre de soldats s'élançant de toutes leurs Eumen. Pan. c.
forces, et se faisant soulever par leurs camarades, 19 et 20.
s'attachaient aux créneaux et s'empressaient de
gagner le haut du mur, lorsque l'empereur, pour
épargner le sang de ses troupes et celui des Lact., de mort.
habitants, fit sonner la retraite. Maximien s'étant pers. c. 29.
montré sur la muraille, Constantin s'en approche,
et lui représente avec douceur l'indécence et l'injustice de son
procédé. Tandis que le vieillard se répand en invectives
outrageantes, on ouvre à son insu une porte de la ville, et on
introduit les soldats ennemis. Ils se saisissent de Maximien et
l'amènent devant l'empereur, qui, après lui avoir reproché ses
crimes, crut assez le punir en le dépouillant de la pourpre, et voulut
bien lui laisser la vie.
Cet esprit altier et remuant, qui n'avait pu se
contenter ni du titre d'empereur sans états, ni des An 310.
honneurs de l'empire sans le titre d'empereur,
s'accommodait bien moins encore de lii. Mort de
l'anéantissement où il se voyait réduit. Par un Maximien.
dernier trait de désespoir, il forma le dessein de
tuer son gendre; et par un effet de cette
imprudence, que Dieu attache ordinairement au Lact., de mort.
pers. c. 30.
crime pour en empêcher le succès ou pour en
assurer la punition, il s'en ouvrit à sa fille Fausta
femme de Constantin: il met en usage les prières Euseb. Hist.
et les larmes; il lui promet un époux plus digne eccl. l. 8, c. 13.
d'elle; il lui demande pour toute grace, de laisser
ouverte la chambre où couchait Constantin, et de Eutrop. l. 10.
faire en sorte qu'elle fût mal gardée. Fausta feint
d'être touchée de ses pleurs, elle lui promet tout, et
Vict. epit. p.
va aussitôt avertir son mari. On prend toutes les
221.
mesures qui pouvaient produire une conviction
pleine et entière. On met dans le lit un eunuque,
pour y recevoir le coup destiné à l'empereur. Au Idat. chron.
milieu de la nuit Maximien approche; il trouve tout
dans l'état qu'il désirait: les gardes restés en petit Orosius, l. 7, c.
nombre s'étaient éloignés; il leur dit en passant 28.
qu'il vient d'avoir un songe intéressant pour son fils
et qu'il va lui en faire part: il entre, il poignarde
Till. art. 17.
l'eunuque et sort plein de joie, en se vantant du
coup qu'il vient de faire. L'empereur se montre
aussitôt, environné de ses gardes; on tire du lit le Médailles.
misérable, dont la vie avait été sacrifiée: Maximien [Eckhel, doct.
reste glacé d'effroi; on lui reproche sa barbarie Num. vet. t. viii,
meurtrière, et on ne lui laisse que le choix du p. 34-40].
genre de mort: il se détermine à s'étrangler de ses
propres mains; supplice honteux, dont il méritait bien d'être lui-même
l'exécuteur et la victime. Il ne fut pourtant pas privé d'une sépulture
honorable. Selon une ancienne chronique[9], on crut, vers l'an 1054,
avoir trouvé son corps à Marseille, encore tout entier, dans un
cercueil de plomb enfermé dans un tombeau de marbre. Mais
Raimbaud, alors archevêque d'Arles, fit jeter dans la mer le corps de
ce persécuteur, le cercueil, et même le tombeau. Constantin, assez
généreux pour ne pas refuser les derniers honneurs à un beau-père
si perfide, voulut en même temps punir ses crimes par une
flétrissure souvent mise en usage dans l'empire romain à l'égard des
princes détestés: il fit abattre ses statues, effacer ses inscriptions,
sans épargner les monuments mêmes qui lui étaient communs avec
Dioclétien. Maxence qui n'avait jamais respecté son père pendant sa
vie, en fit un dieu après sa mort[10].
[9] Voyez la Collection de Duchesne, t. iii, p. 641.—S.-M.
[10] Plusieurs médailles où il est appelé divus, sont la preuve de son apothéose,
voyez Eckhel, Doct. num. vet., t. viii, p. 38.—S.-M.
Maximien, selon le jeune Victor, ne vécut que
soixante ans. Il avait été près de vingt ans collègue liii. Ambition et
de Dioclétien. Pendant les cinq dernières années vanité de
de sa vie, il fut sans cesse le jouet de son Maximien.
ambition, tour à tour tenté de reprendre et forcé de
quitter la puissance souveraine; plus malheureux Vict. epit. p.
après en avoir goûté les douceurs, qu'il ne l'avait 222.
été dans la poussière de sa naissance, que son
orgueil lui fit oublier dès qu'il en fut sorti. Les Mamertin. Pan.
panégyristes, corrupteurs des princes quand ni c. 1.
l'orateur ni le héros ne sont philosophes,
s'entendirent avec lui-même pour le séduire. Il avait pris le nom
d'Herculius; ce fut pour la flatterie des uns et pour la vanité de l'autre
un titre incontestable d'une noblesse qui remontait
à Hercule. Pour effacer la trace de sa vraie origine, Incert. pan.
il fit construire un palais dans un lieu près de Maximien, et
Sirmium, à la place d'une cabane où son père et Const. c. 8.
sa mère avaient gagné leur vie du travail de leurs
mains.
Il mourut à Marseille au commencement de l'an
310, qui est marqué dans les fastes en ces termes, liv. Consulats.
la seconde année après le dixième et le septième
Consulat: c'était celui de Maximien et de Galérius, Idat. chron.
en 308. Galérius n'ayant point nommé de consuls
pour les deux années suivantes, elles prirent pour
date ce consulat. Quoi qu'en dise M. de Tillemont, Till. art. 14 et
je soupçonne qu'Andronicus et Probus, marqués note 25 sur
Constantin.
pour consuls en 310, dans les fastes de Théon, ne
furent nommés par Galérius qu'après la mort de
Maximien. Il ne voulut pas qu'on continuât de dater Pagi, in Baron.
les actes publics par le consulat d'un prince, qui
venait de subir une mort si ignominieuse. En Italie [Eckhel, doct.
Maxence s'était fait seul consul pour la troisième num. vet. t. viii,
fois, sans prendre pour collègue son fils Romulus, p. 59.]
comme dans les deux années précédentes: ce qui
donne à quelques-uns lieu de croire que ce jeune prince était mort
en 309. Son père le mit au nombre des dieux.
La révolte de Maximien avait réveillé l'humeur
guerrière des barbares; son malheureux succès lv. Constantin
leur fit mettre bas les armes. Sur la nouvelle de fait des
leurs mouvements, Constantin se mit en marche offrandes à
Apollon.
vers le Rhin: mais dès le second jour, comme il
approchait d'un fameux temple d'Apollon, dont
l'histoire ne marque pas le lieu, il apprit que tout Eumen. Pan. c.
était calmé. Il prit cette occasion de rendre 21.
hommage de ses victoires à ce dieu, qu'il honorait
d'un culte particulier, comme il paraît par ses [Eckhel, doct.
médailles, et de lui faire de magnifiques offrandes. num. vet. t. viii,
p. 75.]
Il continua sa marche jusqu'à Trèves, et s'occupa à
réparer et à embellir cette ville, où il faisait sa lvi. Il embellit la
résidence ordinaire. Il en releva les murailles ville de Trèves.
ruinées depuis long-temps: il y fit un cirque
presque aussi grand que celui de Rome, des Eumen. Pan. c.
basiliques, une place publique, un palais de 22.
justice; édifices magnifiques, si l'on en croit
Euménius, qui prononça en cette occasion l'éloge du prince
restaurateur.
Le repos de Constantin était pour les barbares
d'au-delà du Rhin le signal de la guerre. Dès qu'ils lvii. Guerre
le voient occupé de ces ouvrages, ils reprennent contre les
les armes, d'abord séparément; ensuite, ils barbares.
forment une ligue redoutable et réunissent leurs
troupes. C'étaient les Bructères, les Chamaves, les Nazar. Pan. c.
Chérusques, les Vangions, les Allemans, les 18.
Tubantes. Ces peuples occupaient la plus grande
partie des pays compris entre le Rhin, l'Océan, le Euseb. vit.
Véser et les sources du Danube. L'empereur Const. l. 1, c.
toujours préparé à la guerre dans le sein même de 25.
la paix, marche contre eux dès la première alarme;
et fait, en cette occasion, ce qu'il avait vu pratiquer
à Galérius dans la guerre contre les Perses. Il se Médailles.
[Eckhel, doct.
déguise, et s'étant approché du camp ennemi avec num. vet. t. viii,
deux de ses officiers, il s'entretient avec les p. 94].
barbares et leur fait accroire que Constantin est
absent. Aussitôt il rejoint son armée, fond sur eux lorsqu'ils ne s'y
attendaient pas, en fait un grand carnage, et les oblige de regagner
leurs retraites. Peut-être fut-ce pour cette victoire qu'on commença
cette année à lui donner sur ses monnaies le titre de Maximus, que
la postérité lui a conservé. Rappelé dans la Grande-Bretagne par
quelques mouvements des Pictes et des Calédoniens, il y rétablit la
tranquillité.
Tandis que Dieu récompensait, par ces heureux
succès, les vertus morales de Constantin, il lviii. Nouvelles
punissait les fureurs de Galérius, qui avait le exactions de
premier allumé les feux de la persécution, et qui la Galérius.
continuait avec la même violence. Ce prince après
l'élection de Licinius s'était retiré à Sardique. Lact., de mort.
Honteux d'avoir fui devant un ennemi qu'il se pers. c. 31.
croyait en droit de mépriser, plein de rage et de
vengeance, il songeait à rentrer en Italie, et à rassembler toutes ses
forces pour écraser Maxence. Un autre dessein occupait encore sa
vanité. La vingtième année depuis qu'il avait été fait César, devait
expirer au 1er mars 312. Les princes se piquaient de magnificence
dans cette solennité, qu'on appelait les Vicennales; et l'altier
Galérius, qui se mettait fort au-dessus des trois autres Augustes, se
préparait de loin à donner à cette cérémonie toute la splendeur qu'il
croyait convenir au chef de tant de souverains. Pour remplir ces
deux objets, il avait besoin de lever des sommes immenses, et de
faire de prodigieux amas de blé, de vin, d'étoffes de toute espèce,
qu'on distribuait au peuple avec profusion dans les spectacles de
ces fêtes. Sa dureté naturelle et la patience de ses sujets était pour
lui une ressource qu'il croyait inépuisable. Un nouvel essaim
d'exacteurs se répandit dans ses états; ils ravissaient sans pitié ce
qu'on avait sauvé des vexations précédentes: on pillait les maisons;
on dépouillait les habitants; on saisissait toutes les récoltes, toutes
les vendanges; on enlevait jusqu'à l'espérance de la récolte
prochaine, en ne laissant pas aux laboureurs de quoi ensemencer
leurs campagnes; on voulait même exiger d'eux à force de
tourments ce que la terre ne leur avait pas donné: ces malheureux
pour fournir aux largesses du prince, mouraient de faim et de
misère. Tout retentissait de plaintes, lorsque les cris affreux de
Galérius arrêtèrent tout-à-coup les violences de ses officiers, et les
gémissements de ses sujets.
Il était tourmenté d'une cruelle maladie: c'était un
ulcère au périnée, qui résistait à tous les remèdes, lix. Sa maladie.
à toutes les opérations. Deux fois les médecins
vinrent à bout de fermer la plaie; deux fois la Lact., de mort.
cicatrice s'étant rompue, il perdit tant de sang qu'il pers. c. 33.
fut prêt d'expirer. On avait beau couper les chairs,
ce mal incurable gagnait de proche en proche; et après avoir dévoré
toutes les parties externes, il pénétra dans les
entrailles et y engendra des vers, qui sortaient Euseb. Hist.
comme d'une source intarissable. Son lit semblait eccl. l. 8, c. 16.
être l'échafaud d'un criminel: ses cris effroyables,
l'odeur infecte qu'il exhalait, la vue de ce cadavre Anony. Vales.
vivant, tout inspirait l'horreur. Il avait perdu la figure
humaine: toute la masse de son corps venant à se
corrompre et à se dissoudre, la partie supérieure Vict. epit. p.
restait décharnée, ce n'était qu'un squelette pâle et 221.
desséché; l'inférieure était enflée comme une
outre; on n'y distinguait plus la forme des jambes Zos. l. 2, c. 11.
ni des pieds. Il y avait un an entier qu'il était en
proie à ces horribles tourments: n'espérant plus Rufin. l. 8, c. 18.
rien de ses médecins, il eut recours à ses dieux; il
implora l'assistance d'Apollon et d'Esculape; et
comme les victimes se trouvaient aussi Oros. l. 7, c. 28.
impuissantes que les remèdes employés
jusqu'alors, il se fit amener par force tout ce qu'il y avait de médecins
renommés dans son empire, et se vengeant sur eux de l'excès de
ses douleurs, il faisait égorger les uns, parce que ne pouvant
supporter l'infection ils n'osaient approcher de son lit, les autres,
parce qu'après bien des soins et des peines ils ne lui procuraient
aucun soulagement. Un de ces infortunés qu'il allait faire massacrer,
devenu hardi par le désespoir: «Prince, s'écria-t-il, vous vous
abusez, si vous espérez que les hommes guérissent une plaie dont
Dieu vous a frappé lui-même: cette maladie ne vient pas d'une
cause humaine; elle n'est point sujette aux lois de notre art;
souvenez-vous des maux que vous avez faits aux serviteurs de
Dieu, et de la guerre que vous avez déclarée à une religion divine, et
vous sentirez à qui vous devez demander des remèdes. Je puis bien
mourir avec mes semblables, mais aucun de mes semblables ne
pourra vous guérir.»
Ces paroles pénétrèrent le cœur de Galérius, mais
sans le changer. Au lieu de se condamner lui- An 311.
même, de confesser le Dieu qu'il avait persécuté
dans ses serviteurs, et de désarmer sa colère en se soumettant à sa
justice, il le regarda comme un ennemi puissant et cruel avec qui il
fallait composer. Dans les nouveaux accès de ses
douleurs, il s'écriait qu'il était prêt à rebâtir les lx. Édit de
églises, et à satisfaire le Dieu des chrétiens. Enfin, Galérius en
plongé dans les noires vapeurs d'un affreux faveur des
chrétiens.
repentir, il fait assembler autour de son lit les
grands de sa cour; il leur ordonne de faire sans
délai cesser la persécution, et dicte en même Lact. de mort.
temps un édit dont Lactance nous a conservé pers. c. 33 et
l'original: en voici la traduction. 34.
«Entre les autres dispositions dont nous sommes

sans cesse occupés pour l'intérêt de l'état, nous Euseb. Hist.
nous étions proposé de réformer tous les abus ecc. l. 8, c. 17.
contraires aux lois et à la discipline romaine, et de ramener à la
raison les chrétiens qui ont abandonné les usages de leurs pères.
Nous étions affligés de les voir comme de concert tellement
emportés par leur caprice et leur folie, qu'au lieu de suivre les
pratiques anciennes, établies peut-être par leurs ancêtres mêmes,
ils se faisaient des lois à leur fantaisie, et séduisaient les peuples en
formant des assemblées en différents lieux. Pour remédier à ces
désordres nous leur ordonnâmes de revenir aux anciennes
institutions: plusieurs ont obéi par crainte; plusieurs aussi, ayant
refusé d'obéir, ont été punis. Enfin, comme nous avons reconnu que
la plupart, persévérant dans leur opiniâtreté, ne rendent pas aux
dieux le culte qui leur est dû, et n'adorent plus même le dieu des
chrétiens, par un mouvement de notre très-grande clémence, et
selon notre coutume constante de donner à tous les hommes des
marques de notre douceur, nous avons bien voulu étendre jusque
sur eux les effets de notre indulgence, et leur permettre de reprendre
les exercices du christianisme, et de tenir leurs assemblées, à
condition qu'il ne s'y passera rien qui soit contraire à la discipline.
Nous prescrirons aux magistrats, par une autre lettre, la conduite
qu'ils doivent tenir. En reconnaissance de cette indulgence que nous
avons pour les chrétiens, il sera de leur devoir de prier leur Dieu
pour notre conservation, pour le salut de l'état, et pour le leur, afin
que l'empire soit de toute part en sûreté, et qu'ils puissent eux-
mêmes vivre sans péril et sans crainte.»
Cet édit bizarre et contradictoire, plus capable
d'irriter Dieu que de l'apaiser, fut publié dans lxi. Mort de
l'empire, et affiché le dernier d'avril de l'an 311 à Galérius.
Nicomédie, où la persécution s'était ouverte, huit
ans auparavant, par la destruction de la grande Lact. de mort.
église. Quinze jours après on y apprit la mort de ce pers. c. 33.
prince. Il avait enfin expiré à Sardique après un
supplice d'un an et demi, ayant été César treize
ans et deux mois, Auguste six ans et quelques Euseb. Hist.
eccl. l. 8, c. 17.
jours. Licinius reçut ses derniers soupirs, et
Galérius, en mourant, lui recommanda sa femme
Valéria et Candidianus, son fils naturel, dont nous Hist. Misc. l. 11,
raconterons dans la suite les tristes aventures. Il apud Murat. t. 1,
fut enterré en Dacie, où il était né, dans un lieu p. 71.
qu'il avait nommé Romulianus, du nom de sa mère
Romula. Par une vanité pareille à celle Vict. epit. p.
d'Alexandre-le-Grand, il se vantait d'avoir eu pour 222.
père un serpent monstrueux. On ignore le nom de
sa première femme, dont il eut une fille qu'il donna [Eckhel, doct.
en mariage à Maxence. Malgré ses débauches il num. vet. t. viii,
avait respecté Valéria, et lui avait fait l'honneur de p. 38].
donner son nom à une partie de la Pannonie. Il
avait auparavant procuré à cette province une grande étendue de
terres labourables, en faisant abattre de vastes forêts, et dessécher
un lac nommé Pelso dont il avait fait écouler les eaux dans le
Danube. Maxence, qui se plaisait à peupler le ciel de nouvelles
divinités, en fit un dieu, quoiqu'ils eussent été mortels ennemis; et ce
ne fut qu'après la mort de Galérius qu'il se ressouvint que ce prince
était son beau-père, titre qu'il lui donna alors avec celui de Divus sur
ses propres monnaies.
Je ne dois pas dissimuler que plusieurs auteurs
païens ont parlé assez avantageusement de lxii. Différence
Galérius: ils lui donnent de la justice et même de de sentiment au
bonnes mœurs. Mais outre que ce sont des sujet de
Galérius.
abréviateurs qui n'entrent dans aucun détail, et
qu'il faut croire sur leur parole, le zèle de ce prince
pour la religion que ces auteurs professaient, peut Eutrop. l. 10.
bien, dans leur esprit, lui avoir tenu lieu de mérite.
Peut-être aussi les auteurs chrétiens, par un motif Aurel. Vict. de
contraire, ont-ils un peu exagéré ses vices. Mais il Cæs. p. 169 et
n'est pas croyable que des hommes célèbres, tels 170.
que Lactance et Eusèbe, qui écrivaient sous les
yeux des contemporains de Galérius, et qui Vict. epit. p.
développent toute sa conduite, aient voulu 222.
s'exposer à être démentis par tant de témoins sur
des faits récents et publics. Or, à juger de ce prince non pas par les
qualités qu'ils lui donnent, mais par les actions qu'ils en racontent,
parmi une foule de vices on ne lui trouve guère d'autre vertu que la
valeur guerrière.
Il était, quand il mourut, consul pour la huitième
fois. Les fastes sont fort peu d'accord sur les lxiii. Consulats
consulats de cette année: les uns donnent pour de cette année.
collègue à Galérius, Maximin pour la seconde fois;
d'autres Licinius; et il est constant que celui-ci avait Lact. de mort.
été consul avant l'année suivante: quelques-uns pers. c. 35.
nomment Galérius seul consul. Maxence laissa
Rome et l'Italie sans consuls jusqu'au mois de
Till. note 28 sur
septembre, qu'il nomma Rufinus et Eusébius Constantin.
Volusianus.
A la première nouvelle de la mort de Galérius,
Maximin, qui avait pris d'avance ses mesures, lxiv. Partage de
accourt en diligence pour prévenir Licinius et se Maximin et de
saisir de l'Asie jusqu'à la Propontide et au détroit Licinius.
de Chalcédoine. Il signale son arrivée en Bithynie
par le soulagement des peuples, en faisant cesser Lact. de mort.
toutes les rigueurs des exactions. Cette générosité pers. c. 36.
politique lui gagna tous les cœurs, et lui fit bientôt
trouver plus de soldats qu'il n'en voulut. Licinius approche de son
côté; déja les armées bordaient les deux rivages; mais au lieu d'en
venir aux mains, les empereurs s'abouchent dans le détroit même,
se jurent une amitié sincère, et conviennent, par un traité, que toute
l'Asie restera à Maximin, et que le détroit servira de borne aux deux
empires.
Après une conclusion si favorable, il ne tenait qu'à
Maximin de vivre heureux et tranquille. Ce prince, lxv. Débauches
sorti, ainsi que Galérius et Licinius, des forêts de de Maximin.
l'Illyrie, n'avait pourtant pas l'esprit aussi grossier. Il
aimait les lettres, il honorait les savants et les Vict. epit. p.
philosophes: peut-être ne lui avait-il manqué 222.
qu'une bonne éducation et de meilleurs modèles,
pour adoucir l'humeur barbare qu'il tirait de sa
naissance. Mais enivré du pouvoir suprême, pour Lact. de mort.
pers. c. 38.
lequel il n'était pas né, emporté par l'exemple des
autres princes, enfin devenu féroce par l'habitude
de verser le sang des chrétiens, il n'épargna plus Euseb. Hist.
ses provinces; il accabla les peuples d'impositions, eccl. l. 8, c. 14.
il se livra sans réserve à tous les désordres. Il ne
se levait guère de table sans être ivre, et le vin le rendait furieux.
Ayant observé qu'il avait alors plusieurs fois donné des ordres dont il
se repentait ensuite, il commanda que ce qu'il ordonnerait après son
repas, ne fût exécuté que le lendemain: précaution honteuse, qui
prouvait l'intempérance dont elle prévenait les effets. Dans ses
voyages il portait partout la corruption et la débauche, et sa cour
fidèle à l'imiter flétrissait tout sur son passage. Avec ses fourriers
courait devant lui une troupe d'eunuques et de ministres de ses
plaisirs, pour préparer de quoi le satisfaire. Plusieurs femmes, trop
chastes pour se prêter à ses désirs, furent noyées par ses ordres:
plusieurs maris se donnèrent la mort. Il abandonnait à ses esclaves
des filles de condition, après les avoir déshonorées: celles du
commun étaient la proie du premier ravisseur; il donnait lui-même
par brevet, et comme une récompense, celles dont la noblesse était
distinguée; et malheur au père qui, après la concession de
l'empereur, aurait refusé sa fille au dernier de ses gardes, qui
presque tous étaient des Barbares et des Goths chassés de leur
pays.
L'édit de Galérius en faveur des chrétiens avait été
publié dans les états de Constantin et de Licinius; lxvi. Maximin
et il devait l'être dans tout l'empire. Mais Maximin, fait cesser la
à qui il ne pouvait manquer de déplaire, le persécution.
supprima, et prit grand soin d'empêcher qu'il ne
devînt public dans ses états. Cependant, comme il
n'osait contredire ouvertement ses collègues, il Euseb. Hist.
ordonna de vive voix à Sabinus son préfet du eccl. l. 9, c. 1.
prétoire de faire cesser la persécution. Celui-ci
écrivit à tous les gouverneurs des provinces une lettre circulaire; il
leur mandait que, l'intention des empereurs n'ayant jamais été de
faire périr des hommes pour cause de religion, mais seulement de
les ramener à l'uniformité du culte établi de tout temps, et
l'opiniâtreté des chrétiens étant invincible, ils eussent à cesser toute
contrainte, et à n'inquiéter personne qui fît profession du
christianisme.
Maximin fut mieux obéi qu'il ne désirait. On mit en
liberté ceux qui étaient détenus en prison ou lxvii. Délivrance
condamnés aux mines pour avoir confessé le nom des chrétiens.
de Jésus-Christ. Les églises se repeuplaient,
l'office divin s'y célébrait sans trouble: c'était une nouvelle aurore
dont les païens même étaient frappés et réjouis; ils s'écriaient que le
Dieu des chrétiens était le seul grand, le seul véritable. Ceux d'entre
les fidèles qui avaient courageusement combattu pendant la
persécution, étaient honorés comme des athlètes couronnés de
gloire; ceux qui avaient succombé, se relevaient et embrassaient
avec joie une austère pénitence. On voyait les rues des villes et les
chemins des campagnes remplis d'une foule de confesseurs qui,
couverts de glorieuses cicatrices, retournaient, comme en triomphe,
dans leur patrie, chantant à la louange de Dieu des cantiques de
victoire. Tous les peuples applaudissaient à leur délivrance, et leurs
bourreaux mêmes les félicitaient.
L'empereur, dont les ordres avaient procuré cette
joie universelle, était le seul qui ne la goûtait pas; lxviii. Artifices
elle faisait son supplice; il ne put l'endurer plus de contre les
six mois. Afin de la troubler, il saisit un prétexte chrétiens.
pour défendre les assemblées auprès de la
sépulture des martyrs. Ensuite il se fit envoyer des Eus. Hist. eccl.
députés par les magistrats des villes, pour lui l. 9, c. 2 et 3.
demander avec instance la permission de chasser
les chrétiens et de détruire leurs églises. Dans ces pratiques
secrètes il s'aida des artifices d'un certain
Théotecnus magistrat d'Antioche. C'était un Lact. de mort.
homme qui joignait à un esprit violent une malice pers. c. 36.
consommée. Ennemi juré des chrétiens, il les avait
attaqués par toutes sortes de moyens, décriés par les calomnies les
plus atroces, poursuivis dans leurs retraites les plus cachées, et il en
avait fait périr un grand nombre. Maximin était adonné aux affreux
mystères de la magie; il ne faisait rien sans consulter les devins et
les oracles: aussi donnait-il de grandes dignités et des priviléges
considérables aux magiciens. Théotecnus, pour autoriser par un
ordre du ciel une nouvelle persécution, consacra, avec de grandes
cérémonies, une statue de Jupiter Philius, titre sous lequel ce dieu
était depuis long-temps adoré à Antioche; et après un ridicule
appareil d'impostures magiques et de superstitions exécrables, il fit
parler l'oracle, et lui fit prononcer contre les chrétiens une sentence
de bannissement hors de la ville et du territoire.
A ce signal, tous les magistrats des autres villes
répondirent par un semblable arrêt, et les lxix. Édit de
gouverneurs, pour faire leur cour, les y excitaient Maximin.
sous main. Alors l'empereur, feignant de vouloir
satisfaire aux instances des députés, fit graver sur Euseb. Hist.
des tables d'airain un rescrit dans lequel, après eccl. l. 9, c. 7.
avoir félicité ses peuples en termes magnifiques
de leur zèle pour le culte des dieux, et de l'horreur qu'ils
manifestaient contre une race impie et criminelle, il attribuait aux
chrétiens tous les maux qui dans les temps passés avaient affligé la
terre, et à la protection des dieux de l'empire tous les biens dont on
jouissait alors, la paix, l'heureuse température de l'air, la fertilité des
campagnes: il permettait aux villes, conformément à leur requête, et
leur ordonnait même de bannir tous ceux qui resteraient obstinés
dans l'erreur: il leur offrait de récompenser leur piété en leur
accordant sur-le-champ telle grace qu'elles voudraient demander.
Il n'en fallait pas tant pour renouveler les fureurs
de la persécution. On vit aussitôt rallumer tous les lxx. La
feux, lâcher sur les chrétiens toutes les bêtes persécution
féroces. Jamais il n'y avait eu plus de martyrs, ni recommence.
plus de bourreaux. Maximin choisit en chaque ville,
entre les principaux habitants, des prêtres d'un Euseb. Hist.
ordre supérieur, qu'il chargea de faire tous les eccl. l. 9, c. 4 et
jours des sacrifices à tous leurs dieux, d'empêcher 6.
que les chrétiens ne fissent, ni en public ni en
particulier, aucun acte de leur religion, de se saisir Lact. de mort.
de leurs personnes, et de les forcer à sacrifier ou pers. c. 36.
de les mettre entre les mains des juges. Pour
veiller à l'exécution de ces ordres, il établit dans Vales. in Euseb.
chaque province un pontife suprême, tiré des p. 169.
magistrats déja éprouvés dans les fonctions
publiques; ou plutôt, comme l'institution en était ancienne, il
augmenta la puissance de ces pontifes, en leur donnant une
compagnie de gardes, et des priviléges très-honorables: ils étaient
au-dessus de tous les magistrats; ils avaient droit d'entrer dans le
conseil des juges, et de prendre séance avec eux.
Comme la superstition s'allie avec tous les crimes,
Maximin, étant passionné pour les sacrifices, ne lxxi. Passion de
passait point de jour sans en offrir dans son palais, Maximin pour
et pour y fournir on enlevait les troupeaux dans les les sacrifices.
campagnes. Ses courtisans et ses officiers
n'étaient nourris que de la chair des victimes. Il Lact. de mort.
avait même imaginé de ne faire servir sur sa table pers. c. 57.
que des viandes d'animaux égorgés au pied des
autels et déja offerts aux dieux, pour souiller tous ses convives par la
participation à son idolâtrie.
Tous ceux qui aspiraient à la faveur, s'efforçaient à
l'envi de nuire aux chrétiens: c'était à qui lxxii.
inventerait contre eux de nouvelles calomnies. On Calomnies
forgea de faux actes de Pilate, remplis de contre les
blasphèmes contre Jésus-Christ, et par ordre de chrétiens.
Maximin on les répandit par toutes les provinces;
on enjoignit aux maîtres d'école de les mettre entre [Euseb. Hist.
les mains des enfants, et de les leur faire eccl. l. 9, c. 7].
apprendre par cœur: on suborna des femmes
perdues, pour venir déposer devant les juges qu'elles étaient
chrétiennes, et pour s'avouer complices des plus horribles
abominations, pratiquées, disaient-elles, par les chrétiens dans leurs
temples. Ces dépositions, insérées dans les actes publics, étaient
aussitôt envoyées par tout l'empire.
Le théâtre le plus ordinaire des cruautés de
Maximin était Césarée de Palestine. Mais partout lxxiii. Divers
où il allait, son passage était tracé par le sang des martyrs.
martyrs. A Nicomédie il fit mourir, entre autres,
Lucien, célèbre prêtre de l'église d'Antioche: à Euseb. Hist.
Alexandrie, où il paraît qu'il alla plusieurs fois, il fit eccl. l. 9, c. 6, et
trancher la tête à Pierre, évêque de cette ville, à un l. 8, c. 14.
grand nombre d'évêques d'Égypte, et à une
multitude de fidèles. Il ôta la vie à plusieurs Lact. de mort.
femmes chrétiennes, à qui il n'avait pu ôter pers. c. 36.
l'honneur. Eusèbe en remarque entre les autres
une qu'il ne nomme pas; c'est, selon Baronius,
celle que l'église honore sous le nom de sainte Euseb. Mart.
Catherine, quoique Rufin la nomme Dorothée. Elle Pal. c. 8.
était distinguée par sa beauté, sa naissance, ses
richesses, et plus encore par sa science; ce qui [Euseb. hist.
n'était pas sans exemple entre les femmes eccl. l. 8, c. 14.
d'Alexandrie. Le tyran, épris d'amour, avait Rufin. l. 8. c.
inutilement tenté de la séduire. Comme elle se 17].
montrait prête à mourir, mais non pas à le satisfaire, il ne put se
résoudre à la livrer au supplice; il se contenta de confisquer ses
biens et de la bannir d'Alexandrie; et ce trait fut regardé dans le
tyran comme un effort de clémence, que l'amour seul pouvait
produire. Enfin, las de carnage et de massacres, par un autre effet
de cette même clémence qui lui était particulière, il ordonna qu'on ne
ferait plus mourir les chrétiens, mais qu'on se contenterait de les
mutiler. Ainsi, on arrachait les yeux aux confesseurs, on leur coupait
les mains, les pieds, le nez et les oreilles; on leur brûlait, avec un fer
rouge, l'œil droit et les nerfs du jarret gauche, et on les envoyait en
cet état travailler aux mines.
La vengeance divine ne tarda pas à éclater. Maximin, dans son édit
contre les chrétiens, faisait honneur à ses dieux de la paix, de la
santé, de l'abondance qui rendaient les peuples
heureux sous son règne. Les commissaires lxxiv. Famine et
chargés de porter cet édit dans toutes les peste en Orient.
provinces, n'avaient pas encore achevé leur
voyage, que le Dieu jaloux, pour démentir ce Euseb. Hist.
prince impie, envoya tout à la fois la famine, la eccl. l. 9. c. 8.
peste et la guerre. Le ciel ayant refusé pendant
l'hiver ces pluies qui fertilisent la terre, les fruits et les moissons
manquèrent, et la famine fut bientôt suivie de la peste. Aux
symptômes ordinaires de cette maladie s'en joignit un nouveau:
c'était un ulcère enflammé, qu'on appelle charbon, qui, se répandant
par tout le corps, s'attachait surtout aux yeux, et qui fit perdre la vue
à un nombre infini de personnes de tout âge et de tout sexe, comme
pour les punir par le même supplice qu'on avait fait endurer à tant de
confesseurs. Ces deux calamités réunies dépeuplaient les villes,
désolaient les campagnes: le boisseau de blé se vendait plus de
deux cents francs de notre monnaie: on rencontrait à chaque pas
des femmes recommandables par leur naissance, qui, réduites à
mendier, n'avaient d'autres marques de leur ancienne fortune, que la
honte de leur misère. On vit des pères et des mères traîner dans les
campagnes leur famille, pour y manger comme les bêtes le foin et
les herbes même malfaisantes et qui leur donnaient la mort: on en
vit d'autres vendre leurs enfants pour la misérable nourriture d'une
journée. Dans les rues, dans les places publiques, chancelaient et
tombaient les uns sur les autres des fantômes secs et décharnés,
qui n'avaient de force que pour demander, en expirant, un morceau
de pain. La peste faisait en même temps d'horribles ravages; mais il
semblait qu'elle s'attachait surtout aux maisons que l'opulence
sauvait de la famine. La mort, armée de ces deux fléaux, courut en
peu de temps tous les états de Maximin; elle abattit des familles
entières; et rien n'était si commun, dit un témoin oculaire, que de voir
sortir à la fois d'une seule maison deux ou trois convois funèbres: on
n'entendait dans toutes les villes qu'un affreux concert de
gémissements, de cris lugubres, et d'instruments alors employés
dans les funérailles. La pitié se lassa bientôt: la multitude des
indigents, l'habitude de voir des mourants, l'attente prochaine d'une
mort semblable avait endurci tous les cœurs; on laissait au milieu
des rues les cadavres étendus sans sépulture, et servant de pâture
aux chiens. Les chrétiens seuls, que ces maux vengeaient,
montrèrent de l'humanité pour leurs persécuteurs: eux seuls
bravaient la faim et la contagion, pour nourrir les misérables, pour
soulager les mourants, pour ensevelir les morts. Cette charité
généreuse étonnait et attendrissait les infidèles; ils ne pouvaient
s'empêcher de louer le Dieu des chrétiens, et de convenir qu'il savait
inspirer à ses adorateurs la plus belle qualité, qu'ils pussent eux-
mêmes attribuer à leurs dieux, celle de bienfaiteurs des hommes.
A tant de désastres, Maximin ajouta le seul qui
manquait encore pour achever de perdre ses lxxv. Guerre
sujets. Il entreprit contre les Arméniens une guerre contre les
insensée. Ces peuples, depuis plusieurs siècles, Arméniens.
amis et alliés des Romains, avaient embrassé le
christianisme, dont ils pratiquaient tranquillement les exercices.
[Cette guerre, dont le souvenir nous a été
conservé par le seul Eusèbe, et qui fut entreprise à [Hist. eccl. l. 9,
cause de l'attachement que les Arméniens avaient c. 8.]
pour la religion chrétienne, n'a pas été assez
remarquée par les savants modernes, qui se sont occupés des
antiquités ecclésiastiques. Elle nous révèle un fait d'une grande
importance resté inconnu jusqu'à présent. Elle nous montre qu'en
l'an 311, c'est-à-dire avant que Constantin se fût déclaré chrétien, la
doctrine de l'Évangile était professée publiquement dans un grand
royaume, voisin de l'empire, ce qui donne lieu de penser que la
religion chrétienne y était déja établie depuis quelque temps. Cette
simple indication, donnée par Eusèbe, suffit pour faire voir que les
Arméniens sont réellement la première nation qui ait adopté la foi
chrétienne. Ce fait aussi curieux que remarquable, est resté inconnu
aux Arméniens eux-mêmes; mais il est pleinement démontré par la
série de leurs rois, comparée à la succession de leurs patriarches.
Cette portion de la chronologie arménienne est environnée de
difficultés; c'est là ce qui a empêché de reconnaître cette vérité. Quoi
qu'il en soit, on peut regarder comme constant que le christianisme
devint, vers l'an 276, la religion du roi, des princes, et des peuples
de l'Arménie. Le roi Tiridate, issu du sang des Arsacides, fut alors
converti avec tous ses sujets, par saint Grégoire, surnommé
l'illuminateur, ainsi que lui de la race des Arsacides, mais descendu
d'une branche collatérale, de la portion de cette famille, qui avait
long-temps régné sur la Perse. Dix-sept ans avant cette époque et, à
ce qu'il paraît, au temps de la malheureuse expédition de Valérien
contre Sapor, Tiridate avait été rétabli par les Romains sur le trône
de ses aïeux, dont il avait été dépouillé dans sa tendre enfance,
vingt-sept ans auparavant, vers l'an 233, par le roi de Perse
Ardeschir, fils de Babek, fondateur de la dynastie des Sassanides.
Ce souverain, appelé ordinairement Artaxerxès, ayant détruit
l'empire des Arsacides en Perse, en l'an 226, fut obligé de soutenir
une guerre longue et opiniâtre, contre le prince de la même race, qui
possédait l'Arménie et se nommait Chosroès. Après des succès
balancés par des revers, un assassinat délivra le roi de Perse de
son antagoniste, l'Arménie fut sa conquête, et le jeune Tiridate, fils
de Chosroès, fut porté chez les Romains, où il trouva un asile, des
instituteurs, et enfin des vengeurs[11]. Le même prince occupait
encore le trône, et il y avait plus de cinquante ans qu'il régnait quand
Maximin entreprit son expédition contre les Arméniens en haine du
christianisme].—S.-M.
[11] Tous ces résultats qui seraient susceptibles de plus grands développements,
ont déja été indiqués dans le premier volume (pag. 405, 406, 412 et 436) de mes
Mémoires historiques et géographiques sur l'Arménie, publiés en 1818.—S.-M.
Le tyran se mit à la tête de ses troupes pour aller
les forcer dans leurs montagnes, et relever les Juvenal, sat. 15.
idoles qu'ils avaient abattues. Les historiens ne
nous ont point instruits du détail de cette expédition: ils nous
apprennent seulement, que l'empereur et l'armée, après avoir
beaucoup souffert, n'en rapportèrent que la honte et le repentir. Si
l'on excepte ces querelles sanglantes qu'une ridicule superstition
avait quelquefois excitées en Égypte entre deux villes voisines, c'est
ici la première guerre de religion dont parle l'histoire[12]. J'ai
rassemblé tout ce que nous savons de Maximin pour cette année et
la suivante, afin de n'être pas obligé d'interrompre ce qui reste de
l'histoire de Maxence jusqu'à sa mort.
[12] Cette observation empruntée au savant Tillemont (Hist. des Emp., t. iv, p.
145, édition de 1723), n'est pas exacte. Il ne serait pas difficile de trouver dans
l'histoire ancienne d'autres guerres qui eurent la religion pour motif. Je me
contenterai de rappeler, à ce sujet, les guerres des rois de Syrie contre les
Macchabées et les Juifs.—S.-M.
Ce prince, en montant sur le trône, avait trouvé
grand nombre de chrétiens à Rome et en Italie. lxxvi. État du
Comme il savait qu'ils étaient portés d'affection christianisme en
pour Constantin, qui imitait à leur égard la douceur Italie.
de son père, pour se les attacher il fit cesser la
persécution, leur fit rendre leurs églises, et feignit Euseb. Hist.
même pendant quelque temps de professer leur eccl. l. 8, c. 14.
religion. Le christianisme reprenait haleine en
Italie; et pour suffire au baptême et à la nourriture Anastas. Vit.
spirituelle des fidèles, qui se multipliaient tous les Marcel. p. 11.
jours, le pape Marcel avait augmenté jusqu'à vingt-
cinq le nombre des titres de la ville de Rome:
c'étaient des départements pour autant de prêtres Platina, in
Marcel.
et comme autant de paroisses. Il avait engagé
deux femmes pieuses et riches, nommées Priscilla
et Lucine, l'une à bâtir un cimetière sur la voie Sigon. de Imp.
Salaria, l'autre à laisser par testament à l'église Occ. p. 43 et
l'héritage de tous ses biens. Ces donations ne seq.
furent pas heureuses. Maxence, jaloux de la
pieuse adresse de ce saint pape, leva le masque, Baron. Ann.
se déclara ennemi des chrétiens, voulut
contraindre Marcel à sacrifier aux idoles; et sur son refus, il le fit
enfermer dans une de ses écuries pour y panser les chevaux.
Marcel y mourut de misère après cinq ans, d'autres disent deux ans
de pontificat, dont la plus grande partie s'était passée, comme celui
de presque tous ses prédécesseurs, ou dans l'attente continuelle de
la mort, ou dans les souffrances. Eusèbe, Grec de naissance qui lui
succéda, ne resta sur le saint siége que quelques mois, et fut
remplacé par Miltiade, dont j'aurai occasion de parler dans la suite.
Tandis que Maxence faisait aux chrétiens en Italie
une guerre, où il ne courait aucun risque, il en lxxvii. Guerre
terminait en Afrique une autre, qui aurait été contre

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Critical Security Studies in the Digital

Age: Social Media and Security Joseph

ISSN 2731-0329 ISSN 2731-0337 (electronic)

Cover illustration: © metamorworks/Shutterstock

1 Introduction to Social Media and Critical Security

2.2 Classical Security Studies: Realism, Liberalism,

3.5 Conclusions on Methods, Critical Security and Social

6.2 Conceptualising Social Media, Security and Democracy

8.3 Conclusions on Social Media and Critical Security

Introduction to Social Media and Critical

1.1 Introducing Social Media

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

It is important to note that these are only a few selected examples

1.2 Challenges and Limits

empirical areas such as environmentalism, gender and state-based violence

1.3 Take Home Messages

1.3.1 The Need to Shatter Disciplinary Boundaries in the Digital

1.3.2 Empirical Security Paradoxes: Expecting the Unexpected

security where they don’t expect, for example in a meme, or on YouTube,

1.3.3 The Temperamental Topography of Social Media: The Rise,

go through constantly. This is only part of the story as new platforms

1.3.4 The Unrealised Promises of Critical Theory: Social Media

institutions and relationships might characterise a more emancipated soci-

can at least give a voice to the voiceless, a sort of “discursive emancipa-

1.4 Charting the Road Ahead: Critical

“established itself—for European scholars at least—as the canon and indis-

somewhat naïve. However, in approaching social media, it is important

much broader context in which terrorism is constructed. This has even

investigate terrorism without foregrounding the need to “solve it” as a

elite discourses of security (Buzan et al., 1997), this approach enables a

online landscape presents significant security questions to the practice

Bertsou, E. (2019). Rethinking political distrust. European Political Science

Fredette, J. (2014). Constructing Muslims in France: Discourse, public identity,

McDonald, M. (2008). Securitization and the construction of security. Euro-

Conceptualising Social Media and Critical

2.1 Introducing International

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

security studies and more importantly how they conceive of discourse

central means by which insecurity occurs in the international system. This

1997) and the “flat” understanding of security speak in vernacular secu-

task of this chapter is in looking specifically at questions of this chapter

2.2 Classical Security Studies:

opinion, as early as the 2014 Russian intervention in Ukraine and annex-

by theories such as realism, it is important to understand that even in a

2.3 The Critical Security Studies World

are important in situating these theories in the broader range of security

1. Fundamental critique of realist approaches (Browning & McDonald,

3. Questioning the ethics of security and what progressive practices

What will become apparent in the following discussion of the three

2.3.1 The Discursive Turn and the Copenhagen School

They have to be staged as existential threats to a referent object by a secu-

This establishes a simple relationship where elites speak security, and

«Entre les autres dispositions dont nous sommes

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