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... Anika Hoff mann (2019) counted 326 self-defi ning Bürgerwehren on Facebook and documented their steady growth (in numbers as well as membership) between 2016 and 2018. However, groups with an online presence are not necessarily also active in the urban (or border) space: they may have been founded to pressure the state into undertaking action to ensure the security of citizens, and as such fulfi ll a performative function (see also Bust-Bartels 2021;Quent 2016aQuent , 2016b. ...
... Th e (mostly German language) scholarly literature on contemporary Bürgerwehren, in particular from an ethnographic perspective, is scarce. Contemporary Bürgerwehren are analyzed as violent manifestation and embodiment of the far right (Quent 2015(Quent , 2016a(Quent , 2016b or as a political tool for mobilization of the populist, anti-immigrationist far right (Koehler 2019). Matthias Quent (2016aQuent ( , 2016b emphasizes the performative function of such groups as the "staging" (Inszenierung) of a provocation towards the state, while simultaneously underlining the potential of far-right Bürgerwehren for political terrorism, inasmuch as they approve of the use of violence and form networks that can be further mobilized. ...
... Contemporary Bürgerwehren are analyzed as violent manifestation and embodiment of the far right (Quent 2015(Quent , 2016a(Quent , 2016b or as a political tool for mobilization of the populist, anti-immigrationist far right (Koehler 2019). Matthias Quent (2016aQuent ( , 2016b emphasizes the performative function of such groups as the "staging" (Inszenierung) of a provocation towards the state, while simultaneously underlining the potential of far-right Bürgerwehren for political terrorism, inasmuch as they approve of the use of violence and form networks that can be further mobilized. Bürgerwehren act from a subjective position of powerlessness facing a state that they deem unable to protect its own citizens amid growing chaos and anomie (2016b: 85). ...
Informal policing has recently been on the rise in Europe: in several countries, “concerned citizens” have mobilized for the protection of their neighborhoods. This article examines the production and mobilization of vigilance in the negotiations around practices of informal policing in Italy and Germany and analyzes the relational way in which discourses and practices of vigilantism make and unmake the state. Grounded in research on practices of informal policing in Italy and Germany, the article argues that practices of vigilance manifested in informal policing are simultaneously and ambivalently state-(un)making practices. What is obtained in the process is an ambivalent regime of vigilance.
... (Quent, 2016;2017). colleagues (2012, 2015) find proof for their hypothesis comparing the rhetorical shifts in discourses during and prior to violent and non-violent events of political protest (eg. the salt marsh vs. the 'Kristallnacht').However, it remains unclear how exactly, to what extent, and in which combination emotions are expressed in populist contents. ...
Since emotions are considered to be an important precondition for persuasion, it is almost common place knowledge nowadays, that extremists deliberately employ rhetorical strategies (e.g. metaphors, figurative language, see Boeynaems, Burgers, & Konijn, 2018) that aim at an emotionalization of their topics. The so called ACONDI model promotes the idea that a rhetoric that address a very specific combination of emotions (namely anger, contempt, and disgust) even has the power to influence social interaction so drastically as to actually mobilize people and turn feelings of dissatisfaction into violent action (Matsumoto, Hwang, & Frank, 2012; Matsumoto, Frank, & Hwang, 2015). Still, it remains unclear how exactly, to what extent, and in which combination emotions are elicited in modern radical discourses.
Dictionary-based word-count approaches from the field of cognitive linguistics have been employed in order to provide answers to such questions. However, validation tests show that these dictionaries are not domain-specific enough to reliably assess the emotionality within modern radical discourses on the internet. This paper proposes a workaround that applies supervised learning algorithms dictionaries in order to enhance them.
... Auch hier sind kategoriale Zuordnungen und pauschale inhaltliche Bewertungen erschwert. Im vorliegenden Projektbericht findet das "Reichsbürger"-Phänomen deshalb noch keine ausführliche Berücksichtigung, genauso wenig wie das Phänomen der sogenannten "Bürgerwehren" (Quent 2016d Priester 2016, Bischoff et al. 2015, Wiedemann 1996. Deshalb wurde in die nachfolgenden Analysen zum Mobilisierungspotenzial für fremdenfeindliche Parteien und Bewegungen in Thüringen bzw. ...
Projektbericht der "Topografie des Rechtsextremismus und der gruppenbezogenen Menschenfeindlichkeit in THüringen", Dezember 2018
... Auch hier sind kategoriale Zuordnungen und pauschale inhaltliche Bewertungen erschwert. Im vorliegenden Projektbericht findet das "Reichsbürger"-Phänomen deshalb noch keine ausführliche Berücksichtigung, genauso wenig wie das Phänomen der sogenannten "Bürgerwehren" (Quent 2016d Priester 2016, Bischoff et al. 2015, Wiedemann 1996. Deshalb wurde in die nachfolgenden Analysen zum Mobilisierungspotenzial für fremdenfeindliche Parteien und Bewegungen in Thüringen bzw. ...
Topografie des Rechtsextremismus und der gruppenbezogenen Menschenfeindlichkeit in Thüringen (Projektbericht 2018)
... The so called ACONDI hypothesis proposes that the presence of a very specific combination of emotions (namely anger, contempt, and disgust) has the power to actually mobilize people and turn feelings of dissatisfaction into violent action (Matsumoto, Hwang, & Frank, 2012;Matsumoto, Frank, & Hwang, 2015). In a similar way Quent (2016Quent ( , 2017 finds that an instrumentalization of 'hate' can trigger so-called 'vigilante terrorism' as a form of political protest (Quent, 2016;2017). colleagues (2012, 2015) find proof for their hypothesis comparing the rhetorical shifts in discourses during and prior to violent and non-violent events of political protest (eg. the salt marsh vs. the 'Kristallnacht'). ...
... The so called ACONDI hypothesis proposes that the presence of a very specific combination of emotions (namely anger, contempt, and disgust) has the power to actually mobilize people and turn feelings of dissatisfaction into violent action (Matsumoto, Hwang, & Frank, 2012;Matsumoto, Frank, & Hwang, 2015). In a similar way Quent (2016Quent ( , 2017 finds that an instrumentalization of 'hate' can trigger so-called 'vigilante terrorism' as a form of political protest (Quent, 2016;2017). colleagues (2012, 2015) find proof for their hypothesis comparing the rhetorical shifts in discourses during and prior to violent and non-violent events of political protest (eg. the salt marsh vs. the 'Kristallnacht'). ...
Since emotions are considered to be an important precondition for persuasion, it is almost common place knowledge nowadays, that populists deliberately employ rhetorical strategies (e.g. metaphors, figurative language, see Boeynaems, Burgers, & Konijn, 2018) that aim at an emotionalization of their topics. Schneider et al. (2018) for instance find fear of crime to be one of the predominant themes in Islamist and right-wing YouTube videos.
Moreover, there is reliable research suggesting that populist rhetoric that address a very specific combination of emotions (namely anger, contempt, and disgust, as proposed by the so called ACONDI model) have the power to actually mobilize people and turn feelings of dissatisfaction into violent action (Matsumoto, Hwang, & Frank, 2012; Matsumoto, Frank, & Hwang, 2015) or so called ‘vigilante terrorism’ by instrumentalizing ‘hate’ for political protest (Quent, 2016; 2017).
However, it remains unclear how exactly, to what extent, and in which combination emotions are elicited in populist contents.
In our current work we try to link dictionary-based approaches from the field of cognitive linguistics with machine learning techniques in order to better assess the emotionality of populist expressions on social media platforms:
We heavily rely on the famous work of James Pennebaker (and colleagues) who compiled and validated a large set of word lists (so-called ‘dictionaries’) representing psychometric features of the authors that make use of these words (including categories for the expression of anger, anxiety, and sadness) (Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010; Pennebaker, 2015; Boyd & Pennebaker, 2017). Additionally, we borrowed lists corresponding to anticipation, disgust, joy, surprise, and trust from the NRC (National Research Council Canada) emotion dictionary (Mohammad & Turney, 2013). Finally, we enhanced these pre-existing collections of words by performing supervised and unsupervised topic modelling on our data corpus – creating an algorithm that looks out for emotion expressions that are ‘domain specific’ for populist discourse. These final lists at hand, we are able to profile the emotional nature of populist discourse, trace the relation of different emotions across time, and gather support for the ACONDI hypothesis.
Zwei Jahre nach dem »Sommer der Flüchtlinge« 2015 sind viele Flüchtlinge im Alltag angekommen. Mancherorts wurde gegen die Aufnahme von Asylsuchenden Unbehagen formuliert - doch warum erfahren Flüchtlinge innerhalb ihrer Nachbarschaft oftmals Ablehnung? Die Beiträger_innen des Bandes nähern sich dieser Frage für Thüringen und beobachten dabei, wann Prozesse der gegenseitigen Annäherung, wie sie in Städten als Ort der Begegnung von Fremden üblich sind, misslingen und in Rassismus und Rechtsextremismus umschlagen. Sie bereichern den Diskurs über »Stadt und Gewalt« sowie die Forschung zur gesellschaftlichen Funktion des Denkbildes vom »guten Nachbarn«.
