Project description
Beyond big tech: contentious speech on small platforms
As more online users migrate to smaller social media platforms such as Mastodon, Gab, Telegram and Bluesky due to changing content moderation rules in big tech, such small applications and platforms have become vital spaces to study political culture. The ERC-funded SMALLPLATFORMS project aims to investigate how controversial speech is influenced by these platforms through the first global study of online and on-the-ground conversations across Germany, India, Kenya and the UK. By combining anthropology with digital computational methods and policy analysis, the project will examine the ongoing tensions between global capital, technological development and speech regulation. Ultimately, the project will move beyond a narrow focus on big tech to provide policy-relevant guidelines and a new global understanding of digital communication.
Objective
In 2022, following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, users of the microblogging platform who feared a rise in far-right discourses with the new owner’s idiosyncratic free speech policies, announced their migration to Mastodon—a free, federated social networking service. In 2021, in India, following Twitter’s actions against hateful speech, religious majoritarian actors rushed to secure their spot on Koo, a new homegrown platform. In the UK, Britain First, a far-right movement known for its anti-immigration rhetoric, migrated to Gab (microblogging) and Telegram (messaging) after facing bans on Twitter and Facebook. Such emerging trends signal the growing importance of smaller social media platforms. Drawing the focus on such platforms, this project sets up small platform discourse as an object of anthropological inquiry. Grounded in anthropology and backed with policy analysis, algorithm auditing and computational natural language processing (NLP) and social network analysis (SNA), SMALLPLATFORMS will be the first study to explore small platforms in a cross-cultural framework spanning on-ground and online inquiries, and the global North (Germany, UK) and the South (Kenya, India). Using a unique conceptual model that considers the restrictive and generative sides of small platform discourse as a dialectical relation, and explicating three structural tensions among global capital, technopolitics and speech regulation that underlie this relation, the project asks whether and in what ways forms of contentious speech are bound up with practices surrounding small platforms. Through this empirical excavation with policy implications, the project will theorize digital discourse beyond the conceptual language of the centralizing Big Tech. With extensive theoretical and comparative work on online speech, the PI will drive this research using networks and knowledge about the selected sites and the profound global dimensions of digital media.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
80539 Planegg
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.