Cyber Racism and Community Resilience by Andrew Jakubowicz

Author:Andrew Jakubowicz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Theoretical Assumptions

The use of online media has made it possible for religious communities to create an active e-public sphere of discussion about issues of faith, practice and interfaith relationships. This discourse and the people who engage in it extend beyond conservative or traditional approaches and interpretations of religion . As it is based on electronic instead of face-to-face communication, contributors are able to overcome theological objections to their participation in public life because of their gender or cultural/political considerations. Jewish communities have, for example, found opportunities to address the Middle East conflict with Arab youth (Yablon 2007), though often these topics trigger “flame wars”—a lengthy, to and fro of angry and abusive messages between users of an online forum. Communities of Orthodox and Haredi Jews have been found to use the Internet in ways that spanned religious, communal, personal and educational purposes including the maintaining of websites for theological and social information, while the online presence of these communities was found to reflect the breadth of Jewish religious d iversity (Lerner 2009). The negotiated use of the Internet has also been observed among female members of ultra-Orthodox Jews for whom the medium is officially frowned upon as a carrier of secular values (Livio and Weinblatt 2007).

The Australian media’s cov erage of Islam and Muslims has been described as inherently biased and reliant on stereotypes and hysteria (Kabir 2006). The responses of Muslims to this coverage have been varied. Some Australian Muslims have called for long-term engagement with the mainstream media, while some have rejected the idea of any cooperation with an industry they view as anti-Islamic. Others support the notion of alternative or independent Muslim-run or Muslim-focused media in which alternative discourses about Islam and its role in modern Australia can be engaged in (Bahfen and Wake 2011). Aly (2007) has looked at the ways in which Australian Muslims both engage in and refute the dominant narratives related to Islam found in mainstream media. For British Muslims, the Internet quickly became an important communication tool for the expression of Islamic identity (Bunt 1999). Members of young Muslim minorities in Western, non-Muslim c ountries such as the USA use the Internet to engage in the formation of Islamic community and identity on the basis of visibility, individual choice, transnationalism and social ethics (Schmidt 2004). Young people in both Muslim majority countries and members of Muslim diasporas are adept at Internet communication and use and mediate their religion online in the process of obtaining both spiritual and material aims (Echchaibi 2009), such as using the Internet in overcoming geographical boundaries and cultural barriers when seeking a spouse (Lo and Aziz 2009). It is not yet clear what the intersection of Islamic faith communities and the Internet will produce in terms of new Muslim identities, relationships or qualitative experiences—or even if these things will be occurring at all, given that the migration of Muslims online might serve to merely reflect existing offline Islamic cultures and practices (Bunt 2004).

However, online media serve to illustrate

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