Edited by Majid KhosraviNik
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 100] 2023
► pp. 146–166
This chapter seeks to locate online counterspeech in the relatively new framework of Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (SM-CDS) by examining the discursive strategies used to counter the racist discourse beneath a YouTube video. I argue that online counterspeech – a phenomenon whereby the Internet is used as a platform to challenge another person’s speech or ideology whether race, religion, or political beliefs – is worthy of critical examination as its associated discourses are inherent in the many-to-many dynamic of bottom-up online social interaction. Innovative ways of investigation such as SM-CDS are called for on top of the traditions in CDS where existing frameworks may fall short in accounting for the techno-discursive dynamic of digital discourse and the way new environments may produce new dynamics of power and influence in discourse formation and consumption.