Let's Disqus Racism: News Commenting in Malta and the Production of Race Online

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Let’s Disqus Racism

News Commenting in Malta and

the Production of Race Online

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture Graduate School of Humanities

Universiteit van Amsterdam 27 June 2014

Name of student: Rebecca Cachia Student Number: 10620508

Address: 15, The Colonnade, Marfa Road, Mellieha Malta MLH9063

Telephone Number: +31626353619 / +35621521953 Email address: mail@rebeccacachia.com

Name of Supervisor: Prof. Richard Rogers Name of Second Reader: Dr. Bernhard Rieder

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Richard Rogers, for instilling in me the enthusiasm and confidence to explore the topic of this thesis beyond the imaginary boundaries I had initially set myself. Without your inspired advice, I would not have been able to reach the depths of analysis that this thesis ultimately took me to.

A special thank you to Erik Borra and Emile den Tex from the Digital Methods Initiative, who developed the Disqus Comment Scraper. This tool was crucial to my research. Without the Scraper having been developed during the course of this thesis, I would not have been able to explore the news comments it extracted with such flexibility or within the time frame available.

Finally, thanks to my parents, Anton and Bunty, and to Jens for your constant support, words of encouragement and unending patience when I went on and on about ‘news comments this and news comments that’.

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Abstract

This thesis develops a new methodological approach to the study of the production of race and racism in the news comments space. Traditional views of race and racism in terms of biological or cultural determinism are re-imagined in order to acknowledge their technicity when produced in the online space. This is reflected through a medium-specific and digital methods approach to the research conducted. The study analyses commenters and their comments extracted from timesofmalta.com as a case study, and targets the Disqus commenting plugin in particular. The thesis is successful in developing a new methodological approach to the research of race and racism in the comment space, showing that the commenting medium is instrumental in shaping race and racism online. This is due to the centrality of the medium’s technological infrastructure in moulding the modes of production of race and racism. In turn, this production of race and racism has a profound effect on the landscape of the medium itself. This thesis is the first research study conducted using the Digital Methods Initiative’s Disqus Comment Scraper and the value of the tool is central to the findings uncovered and the methodological approach developed.

Keywords

Race online; racism online; digital methods; Disqus; issue mapping; actor-network theory, news comments; Malta; irregular migration.

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Chapter!9:!Conclusion!...!102! List!of!commenters!referenced!...!104! Bibliography!...!111! Appendix!A:!Comment!spaces!in!news!websites!...!120! Appendix!B:!Initial!data!set!of!list!of!relevant!articles!(URLs)!...!123! Appendix!C:!Overview!of!Commenters!...!138! Appendix!D:!Commenter!Networks!...!164! Appendix!E:!Triangulated!Commenters!...!167! Appendix!F:!Analysis!of!Comments!...!170!

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List of Tables

Table 1 - Arrivals by boat of irregular migrants & applications for asylum in Malta: 2002 to 2007. ... 18! Table 2 –The most common features of the comment space on news publication

websites.. ... 30! Table 3 - Summary of the post-scrape data set following the collection of relevant

articles (from October 2013 to April 2014) in a search for [migrant] on

timesofmalta.com. ... 57! Table 4 - The 23 issues that were extracted from the comments analysed. ... 80! Table 5 –An overview of the production of race in the Disqus comment space on

timesofmalta.com, in terms of three avenues of production: Culpability, Creation of otherness, and Visibility. ... 82! Table 6 - An overview of the production of racism through direct references to race

and racism in the Disqus comment space on timesofmalta.com. ... 86! Table 7 - An overview of the production of racism through direct references to

language and political correctness in the Disqus comment space on

timesofmalta.com. ... 88! Table 8 - An overview of the production of racism through direct references to

multiculturalism and fears of integration in the Disqus comment space on

timesofmalta.com.. ... 89! Table 9 - An overview of the production of racism through direct references to

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List of Figures

Figure 1 - Cartoon by Peter Steiner, reproduced from Volume 69 No. 20 of The New Yorker (1993). ... 13! Figure 2 - The geographical location of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea. ... 17! Figure 3 - Arrivals by boat of irregular migrants & applications for asylum in Malta:

2002 to 2007. ... 18! Figure 4 - The early days of the comment space on the news site. ... 47! Figure 5 - The image shows that in the early days of commenting on the news site,

discussions were established by commenters mentioning other commenters within their comments.. ... 48! Figure 6 - This image shows the commenter information that is immediately available

to any profile viewer upon clicking on the commenter's name in the Disqus comment thread. ... 49! Figure 7 - This image highlights different features of the comment space including the

disclaimer at the top, the different registration and sign in options, the need to sign in to down-vote, and the opportunity to share the discussion on social networking sites. ... 49! Figure 8 - The image shows that even when comments have been deleted, it is still

possible to view the commenter’s name if that comment was part of Disqus’ nested discussion structure. ... 51! Figure 9 - A general overview of key data used from the data set in this analysis,

namely the number of comments posted, and the number of up and down votes received by comments per month from October 2013 to April 2014 (in numbers of comments and numbers of votes).. ... 65! Figure 10 - A general overview of key data used from the data set in this analysis,

namely the number of comments posted, and the number of up and down votes received by comments per month from October 2013 to April 2014 (in numbers of comments and numbers of votes). This graph is further annotated to explain that the discrepancy between up votes and down votes/comments denotes the required Disqus log in in order to use the lesser-used features. ... 67! Figure 11 - An overview of the commenters extracted from the data set by number of

comments posted, number of up votes received and number of down votes received. ... 69!

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7 Figure 12 - The number of commenters extracted from the dataset (1166 commenters

in total) divided by, firstly, the language(s) used in their comments and, secondly, their gender (as determined through their usernames). ... 70! Figure 13 - The overall commenter network (base map) shows that the comment

landscape on timesofmalta.com consists of three layers: a hub of major

commenters (at the centre), a middle ground of commenters (branching out from the centre), and a distinct periphery of commenters. ... 72! Figure 14 - The periphery of the network of commenters. ... 74! Figure 15 - A comparison of the major and middle ground provokers and reactors in

the timesofmalta.com's comment space. ... 75! Figure 16 – A comparison of those commenters who perform as provokers and

reactors in and across the comment space. ... 79! Figure 17 – The most up-voted and down-voted comments in each layer of analysis:

major, middle ground and periphery commenters; provokers and reactors; and most up-, down- and commented commenters. ... 93!

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List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

AD Alternattiva Demokratika (‘Democratic Alternative’ / Green Party) DMI Digital Methods Initiative

EC European Commission

ECRI European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance ENAR European Network Against Racism

EU European Union id Identification

JRS Jesuit Refugee Service

NGO Non-governmental organisation PL Partit Laburista (Malta Labour Party)

PN Partit Nazzjonalista (Christian Democrat Party / Nationalist Party) RSS Rich Site Summary (‘really simple syndication’)

SNS Social networking site UK United Kingdom

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Glossary of terms

The following definitions are lifted directly from Amnesty International’s 2012 report entitled “S.O.S. Europe: Human Rights and Migration Control” (2) and are deemed useful for a base understanding of the area of irregular migration as referred to in this thesis:

refugee A person who has fled from their own country because their

human rights have been abused. This means that their fundamental freedoms have been taken away, they have been discriminated against or they have suffered violence because of who they are, their beliefs or their opinions, and their

government cannot or will not protect them.

asylum procedures Processes designed to determine whether someone meets the

legal definition of a refugee or not.

international protection When a country recognizes someone as a refugee, it gives them

international protection as a substitute for the protection of their country of origin.

asylum seeker Someone who has left their country seeking protection but has

yet to be recognized as a refugee. During the time that an asylum claim is being examined, asylum-seekers cannot be forced to return to their country of origin.

migrant Someone who leaves their country to live in another country

for work, study, or family reasons.

regular migrant A migrant who is authorized to stay in a country, for example

by having a valid visa or residency permit.

irregular migrant Someone who is not authorized to stay by the authorities of the

country.

refoulement The forcible return of an individual to a country where they

would be at risk of serious human rights violations.

non-refoulement It is prohibited by international law to return refugees and

asylum-seekers to the country they fled. This principle also applies to other people who risk serious human rights violations such as torture and the death penalty, but do meet the legal definition of a refugee.

collective deportation / collective expulsion

The deportation of a group of people (migrant, asylum-seekers and/or refugees) without looking at each case individually and considering the individual circumstances of each person separately. It is prohibited under international law.

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Giorgio Casha: There shall come a time when all Maltese would have to unite and fight the invaders like they did many years ago, otherwise we are going to lose our little islands soon. Although I sympathize with genuine immigrants and hope they still get all the help we can give them one has to be realistic and say that we just cannot take any more of them in. Full stop.

Marcel Dingli: Mr Casha if you like fight them off yourself (sic). Those who have been warning us have been labelled as racist and called insane, and have suffered more than anyone else in this country.

Mark Grima: So you don’t want to defend your country because you are afraid to be called racist?

An exchange from the news comment space of “More than 800,000 African immigrants headed for Europe” on timesofmalta.com (29 April 2014).

Lillian Smith: The White elite hate the White lower classes and would rather replace them with the more malleable and what they consider ‘inferior races’ as they can control them easily. Plus the elite want to be the only Whites around and wear their Whiteness as a badge of superiority. The latter was told to me by a Black man who has it all figured out too. Kudos to him.

A comment made in the news comment space of “More than 800,000 African immigrants headed for Europe” on timesofmalta.com

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Chapter 1: Introduction

What started off as a stirring way of attracting increased online readership and active reader participation has over the years descended into an online space characterised by aggression, poor quality of language and extremist content. The news comment space is the blessing and curse of many a news website. With constant direct access to the Internet being the default rather than the exception, news readers’ need for rapid sharing of opinions and commentary has manifested itself in that small space reserved for comments below most online news articles. In spite of the increased appearance of practices of comment moderation, the comment space has become notorious for the spread of extremist views and racist content; it is this notoriety, which treads the line of the raced and the extreme, that this thesis targets. The news comment space on timesofmalta.com, the online version of The Times of Malta, has not escaped this penchant for racial content that has evolved together with the news commenting medium. As a direct response to the rise in irregular migration of people into Malta, having departed from the north African coast, racism is on the rise in Malta. Popular belief is that the effect of this change in Maltese society is particularly evident in the timesofmalta.com comment space.

Through research conducted into the news comment space, particularly with a mindfulness of the medium-specific features of the space’s Disqus commenting plugin, this thesis makes a contribution to the growing body of theorisation and research that strives to understand the production of race and racism online. As an online space that has developed into a fertile ground for the spread of racist content, the news comment space lends itself well to an appreciation of the view that forms of production of race and racism online may differ from those associated with the offline. Consequently, methods of research need to reflect an awareness of this specificity of production. This thesis develops a new methodological approach to the production of race and racism in the news comment space that has been absent from such studies so far. Calling on the theorisation of race and racism through the work of Wendy Chun in particular, with the help of theories on the social and risk mapping of issues through the work of Bruno Latour and Ulrich Beck, with particular guidance from a digital methods approach to research, this thesis unravels the ways in which the production of race and racism online is specific to the online and methods of research must reflect this. Therefore, through empirical research into the study of the news comment space as

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12 well as that of the production of race and racism in that space, this thesis answers the research question:

To what extent could it be said that the news comment space may be employed to uncover the production of race and racism in the online news sphere, specifically on timesofmalta.com, in Malta?

And, specifically:

1. How do the medium-specific features of the Disqus commenting plugin on timesofmalta.com contribute to the production of race and racism?

2. How is the comment space in turn affected by the production of race and racism?

This thesis is divided into seven main sections. Following this introductory chapter, I discuss the production of race and racism online by turning to key theories in this regard that take on a materialist perspective of race. Race is understood more so through its instrumentality as a functioning system of understanding than through definitions of biology or culture (Chun). This is also where I provide a concise overview of the development of racism in the Maltese context in terms of its relation to the increased arrival of irregular migrants from Africa. In the third chapter, I trace the development of the comment space in terms of participatory journalism, leading into the development of a medium-specific perspective of the news comment space. In the fourth chapter, I go on to discuss studies into the news comment space that have thus far been undertaken in order to highlight certain gaps, particularly in the method of research, that this thesis targets. In doing so, I take on an issue mapping and digital methods approach to the news comment space through the work of French sociologist Bruno Latour, German sociologist Ulrich Beck and Web epistemologist Richard Rogers. This is further explicated in my analytical framework in Chapter Five. In Chapter Six, I track the method developed and used in my research to then report the findings of my research in Chapter 7. Finally, before moving on to my conclusion, I discuss how my findings are telling of the siginificance of adopting an issue mapping and digital methods approach to studying the production of race and racism in the online news space.

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Figure 1 - Cartoon by Peter Steiner, reproduced from Volume 69 No. 20 of The New Yorker (1993).1

1_{This cartoon by Peter Steiner has been reproduced from Volume 69 No. 20 of The New Yorker}

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Chapter 2: Race Online and Race in Malta

2.1 The functioning systems of race and racism

Peter Steiner’s cartoon, originally printed in the New York Times on 5 July 1993, is a much-reproduced image playing on the essence of supposed anonymity associated with Internet use. It is a veil of digital freedom2_{behind which Internet users navigate the}

Web by clicking on images, following links and so forth with a sense of protected aloneness. However, the semblance of digital freedom, arising with the increased abundance of online communication platforms, has also facilitated the proliferation of – rather than freedom from – extremist and raced content (Chun). The digital bubble and the guise of freedom it encloses has, to some extent, burst into a continually revised online landscape on which the production of racism is evolving and being performed.

In Lisa Nakamura and Peter A. Chow-White’s 2012 edited collection of essays entitled Race After the Internet, they claim that “[r]ace has itself become a digital medium” and, as a result, scholarship that investigates race and how race works in society must henceforth extend to include digital media (5). As a key part of literature in the area of race online, Race After the Internet develops an interdisciplinary view of the relationship between racism and digital media by acknowledging the materiality of the medium as well as that of race. Of particular relevance to this thesis is the chapter on “Race and/as Technology or How to Do Things to Race” by new media theorist Wendy Chun. Through questioning the extent to which race and technology are intertwined, Chun advocates for a scholarly discussion of race as technology rather than as being distinct from technology or as being studied as race and technology. Regarding race as technology moves beyond the notion of race as a static representation of biology or culture. Rather, Chun refers to varying understandings and uses of race over time – as, for example, a set of genetic characteristics or as a tool for subjugation – to designate the continuing function of race as opposed to its definition. The essence of race as seen in terms of biology or culture is, from the perspective of technology, less the defining characteristic of race than it is a unit of negotiation brought about through the

2_{The term ‘digital freedom’ largely refers to the radical advancement of online freedom enabled by new}

technologies. However, the term has also come to connote a fight for the preservation of online privacy: to be free from digital surveillance and to respect an individual’s autonomy and privacy rights in the digital sphere (Electronic Frontier Foundation).

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15 functioning system of race itself (Chun 40-41). As American literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. notes,

Race has become a trope of ultimate, irreducible difference between cultures, linguistic groups or adherents of specific belief systems […] because it is so arbitrary in its difference. The biological criteria used to determine “difference” in sex simply do not hold when applied to “race”. Yet we carelessly use language in such a way as to will this sense of natural difference into our formulations. (quoted in Chun 42)

Race is a process of organising what are perceived as different social categories; it is a method of viewing and understanding the world we inhabit (Chun 43). Referring to American literary scholar Samira Kawash, Chun goes on to explain that visible cues of the racialised body come to be perceived as markers of difference, but then varying understandings of difference create gaps between what is outwardly visible and what is understood as the inner essential qualities of the self (Chun 43). These gaps are where racism flourishes (Chun); they are malleable spaces of constructed knowledge where the mind seeks to explain what the visual conclusively cannot. Regarding race as technology, therefore, imbues the principle with an element of instrumentality that raises it above popular explanations of biology or culture. It rather favours an appreciation of race as a medium through which processes such as creativity (in expression or media representation, for example), and categorisation and/or subjugation (of people, for example) take place (Chun).

Following the trajectory set by Chun (as well as other thinkers in Nakamura and Chow-White’s edited collection), Sanjay Sharma’s article entitled “Black Twitter? Racial hashtags, networks and contagion” foregrounds research into rethinking the way in which race functions online or how online spaces become racialised.3_{Sharma posits}

that technocultural assemblages,4_{including algorithms, digital networks and software}

platforms, materialise online racialised identities through the very technologies functioning in the assemblage. Following Sharma, social media sites (such as Facebook

3_{This article was unprinted at the time of writing (June 2014), but is set to published in New Formations.} 4_{Associated with the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the term}

‘assemblage’ connotes a collection of parts of a whole and focuses on “the process of arranging, organizing, fitting together… a whole of some sort that expresses some identity and claims a territory” (Wise 77). A technocultural assemblage, therefore, is the combining of social influences with a medium’s material infrastructure.

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16 and Youtube) have become online spaces for the production and proliferation of modalities of race in the shape of racist comments, images and videos. As yet, academic research has struggled to understand the meaning and consequences of these racialised online spaces (Sharma 3). Therefore, Sharma uses the phenomenon of Black Twitter to investigate Blacktags as “racialised digital objects” (5) that represent how race is manifested online (30).5_{What is particularly relevant to this thesis is the centrality of}

the digital medium within Sharma’s analysis of race online. In this way, not only can one posit that the digital medium is utilised for the performance of racism or the spread of racist content, but it is indeed repurposed for those very reasons. It is the features of the particular digital medium that lend themselves to being used to a varying degree of ends. The performance of racism online is, therefore, dependent on the medium and scholarship into race online benefits from acknowledging the centrality of the medium, a key tenet that will be returned to in the proceeding chapters of this thesis.

In the same way as Sharma’s pivotal research into Black Twitter, this thesis contributes to the growing body of research into understanding the complexity of the production of race and racism online through online news comments, with a focus on a news website in Malta (timesofmalta.com) as a case study. Therefore, the following part of the thesis outlines the emergence of racism in Malta as well as the research conducted in this regard in order to set the sociopolitical scene in which news comments in the online space in Malta are produced.

5_{Hashtags on Twitter, such as #obama, are messages circulated by users affording a semblance of order}

to the chaotic circulation of tweets, thereby relating thousands of individual messages into trending topics (Sharma 7). Blacktags are a certain kind of hashtag that is characterised by content connoting everyday racialised issues and “black vernacular expression”, such as #onlyintheghetto (Sharma 9). A further discussion of Race Online using Sharma’s article is provided in Chapter 4.2.2.

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2.2 Background to racism in Malta

Figure 2 - The geographical location of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea (The Economist).

A southern European island country, Malta lies 93 kilometres south of Sicily, 290 kilometres east of Tunisia and 290 kilometres north of Libya.6_{Malta’s location in the}

middle of the Mediterranean Sea has made it a regular transition point for movement across the Mediterranean, having been occupied by a number of nations throughout the centuries. As the last country to acquire possession of Malta, Great Britain ruled the island from 1814 until Malta gained independence in 1964. It then became a member of the European Union (EU) in May 2004 (Central Intelligence Agency). With a land territory of only 316 square kilometres and a population of 412,655, Malta is one of the smallest member states of the EU with one of the highest population densities (Central Intelligence Agency; ECRI). Furthermore, the Maltese are a relatively homogeneous population with 96 per cent of the population having Phoenician, Arab, Italian, and British roots (Camilleri-Cassar 194), and a high 98 per cent of the population identifying themselves as Roman Catholics (Central Intelligence Agency).

Following a pattern of migration similar to other southern European countries, Malta was historically a country of emigration rather than immigration (Lutterbeck). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, limited land territory and scarce natural resources long served as a push factor, motivating Maltese citizens to explore the lure of good fortune elsewhere, particularly in the United Kingdom (UK) and other ex-British colonies, such as Canada and Australia (Lutterbeck). The start of the twenty-first century, however, marked a turning point in Malta’s pattern of migration. Since about 2002, Malta has experienced unprecendented rates of immigration, particularly

6_{This information is taken from the entry on Malta from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed on 21}

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18 the arrival by boat of irregular and undocumented migrants who are predominantly from the Horn of Africa and who set sail from the Libyan coast in the direction of Europe. More often than not, however, the boats run into trouble in Maltese and Italian maritime territory and are then saved by the respective search and rescue forces (Calleya and Lutterbeck; Camilleri-Cassar).

Figure 3 – General overview: arrivals by boat of irregular migrants & applications for asylum in Malta: 2002 to 2007.

Year Arrivals of Irregular Migrants Applications for Asylum

2002 1686 350 2003 520 737 2004 1388 997 2005 1822 1166 2006 1780 1272 2007 1702 1672 2008 2775 3518 2009 1475 3212 2010 47 306 2011 1579 2526 2012 1890 2154 2013 2008 2204

Table 1 - Arrivals by boat of irregular migrants & applications for asylum in Malta: 2002 to 2007.

Source: Data were retrieved from the United Nations Commissioner for Refugess (UNHCR), Malta,7

and the UNHCR Population Statistics.8

7_{Statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Malta. Accessed on}

21 March 2014. < http://www.unhcr.org.mt/statistics> No . o f a rr iv als / a pp lic at io ns 0 300 600 900 1200 1500 1800 2100 2400 2700 3000 3300 3600 Date 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

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19 While in 2000 and 2001 a total of 81 irregular migrants arrived by boat, the figure increased to 1,686 in 2002 and has more or less steadily risen since then, along with the subsequent number of applications for asylum (Figure 3 and Table 1). Relative to population size, this rate of immigration equates to roughly 1.72 million arrivals in the UK or 2.35 million in Germany. On a per capita basis, the influx of irregular immigrants into Malta is one of the largest among EU nations (Calleya and Lutterbeck). As a consequence, irregular immigration – often popularly referred to as ‘illegal immigration’ in spite of Malta having decriminalised entrance without leave to its territory in 2002 – is one of the country’s top national policy and humanitarian priorities. Furthermore, irregular immigration is central to Malta’s EU policy debates as it calls for increased burden-sharing mechanisms and support from other EU countries (Calleya and Lutterbeck; DeBono).

2.3 The emergence of racism in Malta

As is the case in other European countries that have experienced a rise in irregular migration, the increase in the number of migrant arrivals in Malta has come with a subsequent rise in the emergence of anti-immigrant and racist movements. While the scale of anti-immigrant activity is low in comparison with other European countries, overtly xenophobic rhetoric is relatively new to the Maltese context (Lutterbeck 140). Malta’s bipartisan political system has historically left little room for the emergence of smaller political movements. The two main political parties are the Malta Labour Party (PL), and the Christian-Democrat Nationalist Party (PN). The Green Party – the

Alternattiva Demokratika (AD) – is a weak third participant in comparison with the two

prevalent parties. That said, the pluralisation of the media in the 1990s, in addition to the rise in new technologies of communication, has made it increasingly possible for smaller movements to emerge and engage in Malta’s polarised political landscape (Falzon and Micallef 393). The rise in far right and anti-immigrant movements has occurred against this political backdrop and largely in direct response to the steep rise in the irregular immigration of African migrants over the last decade (Falzon and Micallef; Lutterbeck; DeBono). The most extreme of these far right groups is Imperium 8_{Statistics form the UNHCR Population Statistics. Accessed on 21 March 2014.}

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Europa, whose figurehead – eccentric banker Norman Lowell – is known for his white

supremacist, anti-semitic and anti-immigrant views. In fact, Lowell became the first person in Malta to be given a jail sentence (of two years, suspended for four), for the incitement of racial hatred (Lutterbeck 140; Falzon and Micallef 395).

Mapping the spread of racist and anti-immigration sentiment among the Maltese public, however, has been difficult. Every so often the media publishes reports on acts committed against irregular migrants or against individuals and organisations who support the rights of irregular migrants and asylum seekers. For example, in 2006 the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) and some journalists were the victims of a series of arson attacks because of their support for the rights of migrants (Falzon and Micallef 398). In June 2008, a Sudanese immigrant was allegedly beaten by police officers while being handcuffed because of refusing to show his documents (Lutterbeck 141). And, in July 2012, two officers and three soldiers from the Armed Forces were arrested in connection with the death of a Malian immigrant, who also died after having been beaten (Borg). As a result, local and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as the JRS, Integra Foundation, Moviment Graffiti (Graffiti Movement), Amnesty International and other organisations, that form part of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), often attest to the traditional characteristics of Maltese generosity and hospitability having been displaced in the wake of the arrival of irregular migrants. A marked sector of Maltese society has refused to accept irregular migrants on the basis of skin colour, religion and/or nationality (ENAR Malta).

While the European Commission (EC) and NGOs have output regular reports on irregular migration into Malta, in addition to raising concerns over the spread of xenophobia, academic research and discourse on the topic has been scarce. Reports published by organisations are largely written from a humanitarian perspective, focusing on the rights of irregular migrants and asylum seekers, and the responsibilities the Maltese state holds in this regard. As a result, concern is raised over the Maltese government’s insistence on a stringent detention policy (for new arrivals of irregular migrants), its poor integration policies, and its occasional failure to meet rescue obligations.9_{Amnesty International’s 2012 report, entitled “S.O.S. Europe: Human}

Rights and Migration Control”, criticised the policy of externalisation of border control

9_{Malta is the industrialised country with the most asylum seekers per capita. Its policy of mandatory}

detention of irregular migrants and asylum seekers means that migrants are detained for up to 18 months in prison-like detention centres (Fernandez). Information retrieved on 26 June 2014.

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21 activities in the Mediterranean, particularly with reference to migration agreements between Italy and Libya. In this regard, Malta is criticised for refusing to rescue migrants in distress at sea so as to avoid taking responsibility for the migrants and refugees. Occurrences of this kind have resulted in the loss of many lives, as was the case on 6 April 2011 when some 200 people Somalis and Eritreans drowned en route to Europe from Libya after their boat capsized in Malta’s search and rescue area. Malta failed to respond to the distress call claiming Italy should take responsibility. Furthermore, rescue does not always mean safety as in some cases those rescued have found themselves victims of threats of collective deportation. This was the case in July 2013 when the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg was forced to intervene when the Maltese government was in the process of deporting two planeloads of Somali migrants (Dalli).

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), an independent human rights monitoring body, has also conducted reports on Malta after in-country monitoring of national efforts to tackle racism and intolerance, particularly with regards to irregular migrants. Their last report on Malta was published in October 2013, praising the Maltese government for the enacting of a criminal law provision against racism whereby a Code of Ethics requires public authorities to be placed under a statutory duty to avoid racial discrimination. Furthermore, positive developments through training initiatives, the creation of a Migrant Health Unit and abiding by the principle of non-refoulement (see Glossary) are now provided for under Maltese law. However, the report also raises concern over the exploitation of irregular migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees in the workforce, and additional institutional discrimination. Of particular importance within the scope of this thesis, the ECRI 2013 report on Malta as well as the ENAR 2011-2012 shadow report on racism in Malta are the first official documents to make reference to racist comments made on online news articles, with both reports calling for such comments to no longer go unpunished.

Academic research into irregular migration and racism in Malta has been slight and located in the areas of human rights, political science, european studies, and gender studies, focussing on: the history of irregular immigration into Malta (Lutterbeck); Malta’s disregard for the human rights of irregular migrants (DeBono); the plight of female irregular migrants (Camilleri-Cassar); and, the rise of anti-immigrant movements in Malta (Falzon and Micallef). While the article by Falzon and Micallef provides a more detailed discussion of far-right and anti-immigrant movements in Malta,

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22 Lutterbeck warns of the dire effects of xenophobic attitudes among the Maltese population. He refers to a survey, conducted in 2005 by Allied Malta Newspapers Ltd., that showed that 95 per cent of respondents would gladly live next to a European neighbour, while almost equally as high numbers would be unwilling to live next to Arabs (93 per cent), Africans (90 per cent), or Jews (89 per cent). Additionally, 75 per cent of respondents would refuse to provide shelter to refugees (Lutterbeck 142-43). These figures are backed up by reports such as: the EC’s report on “Multiple Discrimination in the EU in 2009” which revealed that 66 per cent of Maltese respondents believe that racial discrimination is becoming increasingly widespread (65); and, ENAR’s 2011 report on “Racism and related discriminatory practices in Malta”, which claimed that African asylum seekers are most vulnerable to racism in Malta (9). Furthermore, ENAR’s follow up report in 2012 showed that ‘race’, ethnicity and skin colour have become signifiers of migratory status within popular and political discourse in Malta, and the term ‘immigrant’ has become identical to the term ‘African illegal immigrant’, regardless of actual legal status (5).

Despite the lack of scholarly literature into online racism in the Maltese context, the reports from organisations (raising the issue of racist comments on online news articles) in addition to the academic literature warning of the development of xenophobia in Malta make a strong case for more research to be conducted into the point where racism in Malta meets the production of racism online in the Maltese sphere. This is the point of research this thesis targets. The next part of this thesis continues with setting the foundational groundwork on which the later research will build. It discusses the development of the news comment space thus far and establishes the news commenting medium in terms of the thesis of medium specificity.

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23

Chapter 3: The News Comment Space

“The persistent – and intentional – use of such terminology [“illegal immigrant” and other derogatory language], and often the misuse of information also serve to reinforce fear and fuel racist discourse. This is perhaps most evident in some newspapers’ ‘user comments’ sections; spaces that have become an almost ‘free for all’ for racists, xenophobes and Islamophobes.” (Gauci and Pisani 36)

The Times (or The Times of Malta) is a national daily newspaper in Malta. Founded in 1935, The Times is Malta’s oldest newspaper still in circulation.10_{The online arm of}

The Times – timesofmalta.com – has followed in the successful footsteps of its analogue sibling; the news site is Malta’s most accessed news website as well as the fifth most accessed website locally.11_{The online comment space on timesofmalta.com has}

become an active platform enabling readers of the Times to traverse the line from being passive consumers of news to active participants in the construction of content on the news website. Along with the democratising nature of the commenting medium in enabling the news audience to have a voice on topics directly related to the news being reported, however, the comment space on timesofmalta.com has also been criticised for developing into a fecund ground for racism and the spread of anti-immigrant sentiment in Malta (Gauci and Pisani; ECRI). In order to ground the study of racism in news comments on timesofmalta.com later in this thesis, this section tracks the development of the news comment space in terms of its evolution through Web 2.0 technology. Furthermore, the news comment space is framed in terms of its specific features as a medium for communication on news sites.

10_{Information retrieved on 26 June 2014.}

<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Times_(Malta)&oldid=594812921>

11_{Alexa is a company that provides web traffic data, offering ranking of most accessed websites per}

country. On 20 February 2014, timesofmalta.com ranked at number five on Alexa’s list of the most accessed websites in Malta, making it the most accessed news site.

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24

3.1 The development of the news comment space

By 2004, nascent online participatory technologies enabled many newspapers to open up their online presence for comments from readers (Hermida; Hughey and Daniels), thereby dipping their toes into the realm of direct public participation and establishing comments as a staple instalment on news websites. The popularity of the comment space enabled a “new public sphere” for citizen journalists (Hughey and Daniels 332) in which readers have a semblance of consent to openly voice opinions online, seemingly shaping democratic discourse around news content (Perlmutter; Hughey and Daniels). In his chapter entitled “Mechanism of Participation: How audience options shape the conversation” from Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online

Newspapers, Alfred Hermida explains how, through the advent of participatory or citizen

journalism and developments in participatory technologies, news corporations and journalists have opened up the once tightly controlled spaces of media institutions to the audience (16). In doing so, Hermida calls on Bowman and Willis’ definition of citizen journalism and user-generated content as “the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information” (Bowman and Willis in Hermida 15). And, while outlining different forms of participatory journalism, such as citizen blogs, forums, polls and social networking, Hermida asserts that the greatest options for users to participate in online news content comes from the interpretation stage of the news-generating process rather than the preparation or production stage (which is still a strictly editorial process) (24). This is where the readers’ comment space comes in, as a tool for the audience to interpret and to have their say as and when news reports are published online.

The trajectory of audience participation in news content via a system of commenting, however, is not unprecedented. Glancing back to newspapers in eighteenth-century England reveals that whole pages of printed newspapers were often left blank for readers to note down their observations and opinions as related to the content published in the newspaper (Wiles). Consequently, the readers had the freedom to add comments – complete with grammatical mistakes, incorrect facts or arbitrary statements – before passing the newspaper on to family and friends (Hermida 13). The professionalisation of journalism eventually abolished this experimentation with unedited public participation in news content. Audience participation became limited to

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25 formal letters to the editor, subject to the journalistic process of inclusion in and exclusion from the final printed product (Hermida 14). The advent of participatory technologies on the Web, however, has re-opened a metaphorical ‘blank page’ for reader participation, once again re-invigorating the agency of the passive audience. Keeping in mind that it is still determined by the news publication and enabled by its technological infrastructure, the comment space enables to interact with the news and each other with a semblance of freedom and sometimes even anonymity.

3.2 The comment space as Web 2.0 and Journalism 2.0

Readers’ comments began appearing on the websites of newspapers during a period of time now associated with the rise and rise of Web 2.0 technologies. The term Web 2.0 is strongly linked to Tim O’Reilly, who coined the term in 2004 and has long since witnessed the popularisation of the term in academic and popular culture (O'Reilly, “What Is Web 2.0”).

Web 2.0 is the network as platform spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an “architecture of participation,” and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences. (O'Reilly, “Web 2.0: Compact Definition”)

Web 2.0 is essentially a meme that has taken a hold as the go-to term when referring to interactive technologies and/or online platforms12_{that facilitate user participation and}

engagement, as opposed to the unidirectionality associated with the Web prior to Web 2.0 (Web 1.0 in retrospect). Web 2.0 technologies include blogs, wikis and social networking sites that have spurred the growth of commercial and popular success

12_{It is not within the scope of this thesis to delve into discussions of ‘platforms’ as found in platform}

studies. However, it is important to note that the notion of ‘platforms’ is central to Web 2.0, essentially referring to only digital spaces through which users interact that have developed since the burst of the dotcom bubble in 2000. For a deeper discussion of platforms see Gillespie; Langlois et al.; and, Gerlitz and Helmond (full references in the Bibliography).

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26 stories, such as Wikipedia and Facebook. In his research into online comments on Al Jazeera Arabic, Muhammad M. Abdul-Mageed linked the ascendance of Web 2.0 with the consequent rise of Journalism 2.0 (61). The latter refers to the news sphere’s adoption of opportunities presented through the development of interactive technologies; it features such opportunities as user-to-user interaction and the incorporation of open source software into the online versions of news publications (Abdul-Mageed 61). In his book Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive, Mark Briggs further discusses how Journalism 2.0 developed through the integration of e-mailing, instant messaging (IM), and really simple syndication (RSS) within news websites (Briggs). Furthermore, social sharing buttons linking news websites to social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook and Twitter, or social bookmarking sites, such as del.icio.us and Pinterest, have expedited audience engagement with news content in ways unprecedented prior to the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies.

The online news comment space has emerged in this context as a “new public sphere” in which the public, rather than the news publications, shapes online democratic discourse through direct interaction with news content as well as with other members of the news audience (Hughey and Daniels 333). Eilika Freund catches on to this potential for a new public sphere through her discussion of the reconfiguration of the asymmetrical relationship between news publications and their audience (2-3). Freund refers to comment spaces as “hybrid constructs”, positing that the space is effectively a medium that allows for interactivity between both the user and the article, and the user and other users (4). Consequently, the longstanding unidirectionality of news provision by news media is challenged by users posting comments directly linked to online news articles, thereby re-imagining user-to-article interactivity while also enabling user-to-user communication.

The term ‘interactivity’ is, however, abstruse in spite of it consistently appearing in discussions of the comment space (Bucy; Chung; Freund). The ambiguity and appeal of the term ‘interactivity’ derive from its double-layered meaning as referring to both the interaction between people (human interactivity) as well as between people and technology (medium interactivity) (Bucy; Stromer-Galley; Chung). It has subsequently developed into a buzzword popularly used in reference to new media and Web 2.0 technologies. However, it is not the aim of this thesis to delve into discussions on perspectives and interpretations of interactivity. What is relevant is that the opportunity for online participation offered through technologies for commenting in the news

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27 sphere is empowering. It endows the news website user with the option to partake in participation as well as to not partake in participation. Moreover, the user’s choice to abstain from participation should not be confused with passivity, as the choice to be passive is a legitimate right the user possesses (Fortunati et al. 418), or is rather bequeathed. This is so because engagement in the comment space still takes place within parameters set by media organisations and the participatory technologies embedded in the online news site. For all its opportunities for interaction, audience engagement and participation, and promises of online democratic discourse, the comment space is ultimately but a tool, a tool in the hands of commenters as well as under the control of site operators.

3.3 The news comment space and its medium specificity

Throughout history technologies have facilitated the engagement and communication of people with each other, with the content being transmitted and with the medium of transmission; the Internet and Web 2.0’s participatory technologies have, therefore, further expanded this mediascape of engagement. To this end, transmitted content and methods of engagement have always been dependent on the materiality of the medium, its essential characteristics and the purposes to which the medium is put by the user. In other words, a medium’s specific elements – its medium specificity – are beneficial, if not essential, to understanding that a medium is a tool for interaction. Moreover, a materialist understanding of new media moves beyond notions of human-human or human-medium interactivity (as discussed by Freund) to recognising that the medium, its specific features and technological infrastructure are what lead methods of user engagement.

Over time and across areas of media studies, theorists have engaged with varying understandings of both ‘medium’ and ‘medium specificity’ to different ends. In the context of this thesis, ‘medium’ is understood from a materialist perspective as “any material carrier of objects and relations that function as signs conveying information and meaning” (Lanzara 1372). The thesis of medium specificity, as explained by Web epistemologist Richard Rogers, is thus not limited to the sub-division of media disciplines, such as film, radio, television, and so forth. It rather emphasises an appreciation for the “ontological distinctiveness” of each specific medium (Rogers 6). Hence, the concept appreciates that different media have unique characteristics that

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28 determine what the medium can do, and how it can and should be used (Maras and Sutton). While it is beyond the scope of this thesis to tread back into the origins of medium specificity, it is still important to highlight some key thinkers in this regard to note that a medium specific perspective considers the medium itself to be central to the very construction of its content as well as in the interactions between and among the users and technologies in question.13

Marshall McLuhan, a literary scholar and media theorist concerned with the interplay between media and culture, claimed that it is the very nature of a medium that determines the power of media to impact the interaction between people and society (Bernstein). “The medium is the message”, coined by McLuhan in his 1964 book

Understanding Media, has become a staple part of the rhetoric of media studies and a

descriptor of emergent media technologies. Following McLuhan, then, a medium’s content is itself another medium and it is in fact the societal impact of the medium that is the “message” rather than the content itself (Bernstein). In his 1974 book Television:

Technology and Cultural Form as well as in his 1977 Marxist critique of the arts and culture

called Marxism and Literature, cultural theorist Raymond Williams calls for an approach to medium specificity that acknowledges the embeddedness of media in the specific social or cultural contexts in which they are practiced. Williams explains that media are specific in how they are formed as they are moulded by specific people or actors to serve specific interests. In other words, as explained by Rogers, to Williams media are not presupposed to be different but are instead actively made to be distinct from one another by actors and interests involved (6).

N. Katherine Hayles, postmodern literary critic, deepens the notion of medium specificity by further explicating media in terms of their materiality.

The temptation to think of text on screen as essentially identical to text on a printed page, simply because the words are the same, is all the more seductive because the computer is the most successful simulation machine ever created. It is crucially important, however, to recognize that the computer can simulate so successfully only because it differs profoundly from print in its physical properties and dynamic processes […] [M]ateriality should be understood as existing in complex dynamic interplay with content, coming into focus or

13_{The origins of medium specificity are understood here as the differentiation of fine art techniques,}

such as painting and sculpture, associated with figures such as art critics Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried (Bernstein).

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29 fading into the background, depending on what performances the work enacts. (Hayles 71)

From Hayles’ perspective, overlaps occur between and among media in terms of certain material characteristics, such as hypertext in digital media, appearing in or being simulated by other media, such as printed text (Rogers). Working from this point of overlap, when considering the specificity of media in relation to pre-digital media, Lev Manovich promotes an understanding of the “softwarization” of media – a notion denoting that computer media incorporate prior forms of media not necessarily in content but more so as metamedia (Manovich 204). Following Hayles and Manovich, the commenting medium has incorporated prior forms of media within itself as it is indeed reminiscent of bulletin boards, online discussion fora or even printed text. However, to say that the news comment space is simply an instance of old wine in new bottles is underestimating the centrality of the medium’s evolving features that guide the flow of interaction. It is akin to claiming that a bottle does not shape the liquid inside it; the bottle does not necessarily determine what the liquid is, but it does determine its physical contours. It is therefore, for example, up to the user to decide on the text to contribute to the comment space, but it is the features of that space that provide shape to that content. By choosing to contribute text to the space, and therefore content to the discussion, not only is the user participating within the contours of the medium but s/he is also interacting through those same contours. It is then the traversing of meaning, rather than content, outside the comment space that attributes a certain porous-like consistency to the walls of the commenting medium.

In its essence, though, the comment space is in a constant state of flux; it is an ever-changing medium balancing a structure that is both reminiscent of classic black-on-white text commenting in fora but also stretching its tendrils out across the Web through sharing and linking with social networking and social bookmarking sites. Some essential characteristics of the news commenting medium include (Table 2):

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Feature Description Frequency

Time The time when a comment was posted. E.g. 12.04.2014 12:01 or

“two days ago” Always

Username Corresponds to the chosen name of the commenter. (Sometimes the username is ‘Guest’ or ‘Anonymous’ depends on the Terms of that publication.)

Always Verified user The appearance of a badge or icon next to a username that indicates

that the user has been ‘verified’ the publication (e.g. responsible commenting / frequent commenter) and can post unmoderated comments or has simply reached the status of ‘top commenter’.

Sometimes

Link to user

profile A hyperlinked username that links to the profile of that user, i.e. the profile within the publication’s same website or an external profile should the commenting system be an external plugin, e.g. Disqus.

Sometimes Avatar A thumbnail-sized image appearing next to the username. Often

this will be linked to a service such as Gravatar.14 Sometimes

Order The comments appear in chronological order. Always

Discussion format While the root comments always appear in chronological order, many commenting spaces have incorporated nested or hierarchical discussions using a ‘reply to’ function and this has served to break the space up into sub-discussions.

Sometimes

Voting Little ‘up’ or ‘down’ arrows, normally located in the top or bottom right of a comment, that allow users to vote for a comment. Sometimes this features also bumps up or down comments in the space.

Sometimes

Sharing In connection with social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, a share button has also been included as a newer development in the comment space.

Sometimes Text The core element of a comments space: the textual content of the

comment. Always

Dynamic loading

content Some comment spaces only show a certain number of comments and then automatically load more comments when the user scrolls down. Other spaces require the users to click a ‘see more

comments’ button.

Sometimes

Comment count A number referring to the total number of comments in the thread

of comments. Always

People count The number of people contributing to the comment space or to a

particular sub-discussion taking part in the space. Sometimes Recommend Another form of ‘liking’ a comment: a ‘recommend’ button that

contributes to a recommend count. Another type of recommending comes from the publication sometimes adding a ‘publication’s favourite’ badge to comments.

Sometimes

Register / Log in A log in link as a lot of comment spaces require the users to register

/ log in so as to be able to post. Sometimes

Comment box *This is either available immediately (if anonymous and guest posting is allowed) or after logging in / registering with the publication.

Always* Terms of use The terms and conditions set by the publication that a user agrees

to when commenting (these are often accessed through a link in the comment section).

Always

Table 2 – An overview of the most common features (both interactive and non-interactive) of the comment space on news publication websites. This information was compiled by the researcher of this thesis.

14_{Gravatar, or Globally Recognized Avatar, is an avatar service for websites. If a website is}

Gravatar-enabled then when a user leaves a comment (through an email address registered on Gravatar), the commenting space pulls the user’s avatar from Gravatar and the picture is then shown automatically next to the comment or username.

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31 The evolving characteristics of the news comment space have both contributed to and been a result of the medium’s instability. In addition to a lack of universally and temporally consistent features due to the different software on different news websites, it is also the publication’s prerogative to place their comment space in any part of the website deemed appropriate. While comments are generally posted below news articles, enabling the news audience to directly comment on the article’s content, some news websites do not follow this convention. The New York Times, for example, has a small speech bubble at the top right of the article containing the number of comments. Users must click on the icon in order to access the comment space, which then opens up on the right side of the screen. Another example is the BBC News website, which does not locate its comment space below every article. Rather, it has a completely separate section of the website (“Have Your Say”) and it is only articles located in that section that users are allowed to comment on (and then the space is located below the article in question).

The action taken by some publications to seemingly make the comment space less accessible or limited to certain articles is an interesting move but also problematic when perceived through the context of supposedly enhanced freedom of readers’ participation in news content. Furthermore, almost ten years after first opening up their websites to comments, many news publications are now no longer allowing user commenting on their online articles (Hughey and Daniels 332). The promise of a new public sphere for democratic discourse through direct participation (Perlmutter in Hughey and Daniels) in news content has hardly served as what Hughey and Daniels refer to as a “democratic digital utopia” (333). On the contrary, a key characteristic of the comment space – on news websites and beyond – has been the appearance and prevalence of racist commenting (Hughey and Daniels 333). To some extent, the comment space can be defined as having developed into a landscape teeming with extremist content. In spite of the impetuses for the incorporation of commenting systems on news websites – as “vehicles for accomplishing deliberative ideals”, to represent a “diversity of views” (Reich 102), or to simply increase traffic to the news website (Reich 104) – successful user interaction has come with a high frequency of slander, abusive content, racist sentiment and forms of hate speech (Reich; Jones; Hughey and Daniels; Singer and Ashman). Howard Rheingold, a critic and writer on the cultural and social implications of digital communication media, has gone so far as to explain the comment space as an area in which “flamers, bullies, bigots, charlatans,

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32 know-nothings and nuts in online discourse take advantage of open access to other people’s attention” (121).

For although the advent of the commenting medium has indeed opened up news websites for increased user engagement with news content, the medium still functions in a wider social, cultural and political context. The porous walls of the medium are not immune to wider societal influences, but rather define the commenting medium as a technosocial space. To claim that it is a space set apart from the social or cultural nuances that define its users is shortsighted, as the key element of the medium – the users’ comments – is steeped in expressions of society, culture and politics. This wider context is understood as “hypertext” by Manuel Castells in his book The Internet

Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society:

Our minds – not our machines – process culture, on the basis of our existence. Human culture exists in and by human minds, usually connected to human bodies. Therefore, if our minds have the material capability to access the whole realm of cultural expressions – select them, recombine them – we do have a hypertext: the hypertext is inside us. (202)

Through Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights, Jessie Daniels explains how Internet technologies function in a wider context of social, cultural and racial tensions. They have been customised in clever and cunning ways because, whereas racist rhetoric in print was easy to dismiss as lunatic rantings, “racist vitriol” is easy to locate online and increasingly pervasive (5). As an outlet for such diverse opinions, from its inception the commenting medium opened itself up to all kinds of content, from neutral to extremist and anything in between. It is this unpredictability with regards to the forms of expression user content takes that has also contributed to the instability of the news commenting medium. Furthermore, in addition to having to cope with comments that are obsessive, offensive or vitriolic in nature, many comments are also of low quality, having been badly written and therefore potentially harmful to the reputation of the news publication in question (Hermida; Jones; Reich).

To combat comments of this nature, many news websites have now abandoned the commenting system (Hughey and Daniels), despite its advantages in terms of user interaction and driving website traffic. Methods of gatekeeping and moderation have

Let's Disqus Racism: News Commenting in Malta and the Production of Race Online