Part of the project as a fellow: “Messaging Apps, Encryption and the Enticement of Extreme Speech”

I will be in Munich for a month in January 2024 to be part of this project:

Below the Radar? Messaging Apps, Encryption and the Enticement of Extreme Speech
The new CAS Research Group led by communication scientist Sahana Udupa Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München started yesterday.

Online extreme speech and disinformation have emerged as a major problem for democratic and transitional societies worldwide. Evidence has shown that vested interest groups, as well as disparate actors, have engaged the affordances of Internet-enabled networks to aim for vulnerable communities, including immigrants, women, ethnic groups, religious minorities, and advocates of inclusive societies. These developments have threatened the values of tolerance and diversity, endangering the basic foundations of human rights and dignity. Encrypted instant messaging services constitute a unique constellation in the complex mix of factors that shape extreme speech ecosystems. While encryption is commonly held accountable for conditions of evasion, its potentiality to inspire intimacy and trust is no less significant, and so are the ways it works in tandem with closed communication architecture of messaging services to enable intrusive human networks around extreme speech.
The Research Group will examine this important type of Internet-enabled communication closer, with the goal of developing a first-of-its-kind global critical inquiry into entanglements between encryption and extreme speech: Anmol Alphonso, Sérgio Barbosa, Cayley Clifford, Kiran Garimella, Elonnai Hickok, Martin Riedl, Erkan Saka, Herman Wasserman.