Dr. Paul
Reilly is Senior Lecturer in Social Media & Digital Society at the
University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the use of social media by
citizens to share acts of sousveillance, as well as how digital media can be
utilised to promote better community relations in divided societies such as Northern
Ireland. His work has been published in
a number of journals including First Monday, Information, Communication &
Society, New Media & Society, Policy and Internet and Urban Studies. He is
currently completing his second monograph on Social media and contentious
politics in Northern Ireland (contracted with Manchester University Press). @PaulJReilly
The
rerouting of a contentious Orange Order parade away from the Ardoyne shops in
North Belfast would lead to four
consecutive nights of “animalistic” violence by loyalist protesters in July
2013. Despite the seeming inevitability of further violence, both the Orangemen
and the Ardoyne residents were widely praised for the parade passing off
without incident in July 2014. However, the 2015 parade would again be marred
by violence, as loyalists faced off against PSNI officers who prevented the
march from returning home via its traditional route. Having praised the
behaviour of the Orange Order and residents a year earlier, Secretary of State
Teresa Villiers described the attacks on police as disgraceful
and accused the rioters of ‘damaging’ Northern Ireland.
Figure 1: Tweets mentioning Ardoyne, 12th July 2014 and 13th July 2015
Rumours and disinformation appeared to have a very short life span in both corpora. This was particularly evident in the 2014 corpus, where there was some evidence to suggest that both loyalists and republicans were checking the veracity of claims made by each other on the microblogging site. Loyalists were accused of digitally altering pictures in order to portray the nationalist residents in a negative light. A picture of one of the protesters that had gathered outside the Ardoyne shops began to circulate on Twitter shortly after 7.30pm on 12th July. The placard they held aloft contained a mock-up road sign indicating that the Orange Order was not welcome in the area. One tweeter suggested that this was evidence of the intolerance of republicans and highlighted the ‘unlawful’ nature of the protests against the march. Twitter users immediately appeared sceptical of the authenticity of this image. Visual evidence suggesting that this was a photoshopped image was shared on Twitter within a few minutes. The original image showed the protester at a peaceful Christian protest at the shop fronts with his placard proclaiming “Love Thy Neighbour”, rather than the anti-Orange Order slogan that had featured in the doctored image. This was corroborated by an image of the same scene, taken and shared on Twitter by BBC NI journalist Kevin Sharkey a few hours earlier. Many tweeters accused the loyalist responsible for sharing the photoshopped image of spreading lies about what was happening on the ground at Ardoyne.
A similar theme emerged in relation to the Ardoyne
parade and counter-demonstrations in July 2015. Images taken from many
different vantage points were used to support claims and counter-claims about
the incident in which an Orangeman drove his vehicle into a crowd of
nationalist residents, seriously injuring a 16 year old girl. West
Belfast UPRG was one of several accounts to share reports that the
republicans had attacked a car, with no reference to the attempted murder of
the residents in attendance (see Figure 2). It should be noted that one of
these tweeters had been responsible for the photoshopped image of the ‘Love Thy
Neighbour’ placard the previous year. Elsewhere, there was much speculation about
whether the victim had been in or was trapped under the vehicle. The coverage
of the incident by the Belfast Telegraph was questioned for its headline
referring to a ‘crash’ rather than an incident of attempted murder of the
injured teenager. Within a few minutes
of the incident, first reported by reporters such as the BBC’s Chris Buckler at
7.43pm, the PSNI
confirmed that the girl had been injured and that the driver had been
arrested at the scene. It would be a further two hours before local MLAs such
as Gerry Kelly and the PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton would confirm that
her injuries were not life threatening.
Figure 2: Loyalist
counter-narrative about teenage girl hit by car in Ardoyne, 13 July 2015.
There was one incident in particular that
illustrated how citizens were using Twitter to prevent the spread of rumours
and misinformation that might incite violence during the contentious North
Belfast parade. One user tweeted a rumour that he had heard from an acquaintance,
suggesting that a deal had been put in place that would see the return leg of
the parade proceed via its traditional route past the Ardoyne shops. This
tweet, shared a few days before the Twelfth, was only shared three times but
clearly had the potential to raise tensions in Ardoyne. The same user would
acknowledge that this information was untrue and apologise for spreading false
information in a tweet posted on the morning of the 13th July 2015.
Clearly it is difficult to tell how many tweeters may have seen the original
tweet, or how they responded to this false information.
Twitter as tool to empower citizens to counter mis-
and disinformation?
Twitter did not appear to provide the shared space
that is required for reconciling the differences between loyalists and the
nationalist residents’ groups in Ardoyne. The same
group of highly engaged users dominated both of these Twitter streams, with
tweets from the news media the most retweeted and the most likely to reach
users across the sectarian divide. There were no signs of the rational
debate and deliberation that would appear to be needed in order to resolve the
Ardoyne parade dispute. However, Twitter might not be the most appropriate
platform to facilitate intergroup contact and discussions about polarising
issues such as parades and related protests. The complexities of such issues
are unlikely to be explored through the exchange of messages that are
restricted to just 140 characters. A related concern would be the
representativeness of the Twitter users who engage in such online debates.
Recent research has suggested that social media perpetuates the
“spiral of silence,” whereby people only speak in public about certain
policy issues if they believe that their views are shared by others.
Nevertheless, Twitter’s most significant contribution to peacebuilding in
Northern Ireland might lie in its empowerment of citizens to correct rumours
and disinformation. The relatively short lifespan of these rumours, not to
mention the lack of mainstream media coverage they received, illustrated how
effectively tweeters corrected disinformation during this period. It is
reasonable to presume that this activity helped calm some tensions between
these antagonistic groups, particularly in light of the negative
impact upon community relations that rumours spread on social media had
during the 2013 union flag protests. However, the violence seen in 2015 clearly
demonstrates how the use of Twitter to correct rumours, mis- and disinformation
may be insufficient to prevent the outbreak of violence in interface areas.
