Ambivalent rituals of belonging: (Re)theorising hybrid, violent media events

As discussed above, the theory of hybrid, violent media events starts with the simple premise that it is impossible to think about such events and related ritual constructions of belonging without emphasising the multiple actors who create and shape them (Sumiala et al., 2018). Moreover, to recognise the multiplicity of actors and their contributions to creating and orchestrating today’s hybrid, violent media events, the idea of an actor as belonging solely to a human order needs reconsideration. Inspired by Bruno Latour (2005), we include non-human constellations in our analysis of agency in hybrid, violent media events. Following Latour (2005: 71), we consider that “anything that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference, is an actor”. In hybrid, violent media events, this includes not only human actors but also non-human agents, ranging from technologies, such as algorithms of digital platforms, to elements of institutional practices, such as the production routines of news on terrorism (see Uusitalo & Valaskivi, 2020). The formation of rituals of belonging through interactions that cut across platforms and geographical locations, and the involvement of a multiplicity of actors – both human and non-human – means that hybrid, violent media events are highly complex phenomena. They involve manifold actors with diverse functioning logics and conflicting motivations, intentions, and desired outcomes resulting in various social implications.

The multiplicity of media forms that participated in generating the hybrid, violent media event of the Christchurch attacks is an instructive example: In addition to professional news outlets (such as CNN, BBC, and Aljazeera English) and corporate algorithmic social media platforms (such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter), image boards and other fringe social media outlets, including 8chan and 4chan, played significant roles in the development of this violent media event as a hybrid phenomenon and in the related ritual constructions of belonging.

In terms of human actors in the context of Christchurch attacks, two individuals came to the fore. The first was the perpetrator, Brenton Tarrant, who triggered the event, and the second was Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who responded publicly to the attacks. Tarrant planned the attacks to invite public attention and aimed to spread information about the event across the digital media environment (Munn, 2019). Before committing the attack, he uploaded his “manifesto” on several file-sharing sites and emailed it to Ardern, the opposition leader, the speaker of parliament, and over 70 media outlets.

Tarrant also gave indications about his plan on 8chan and Twitter, as well as Facebook, on which he then livestreamed the massacre. In line with his plan, his first-person shooter broadcast of the attack and the manifesto were disseminated almost immediately via diverse media platforms, underlining, in a macabre manner, the perpetrator’s intentions and agency in the attacks (Macklin, 2019). As a counteraction, Ardern, the leading political decision-maker in her country, took an active role in communicating and performing rituals of belonging in which the Muslim victims of the tragedy were afforded a central role. On the day of the attacks, she participated in a press conference, issued a statement on Twitter, and gave a public speech in which she claimed ownership of the national political publicity (Manhire, 2019). As part of her communication strategy, Ardern exercised clarity, expressing emotion and using symbols to address her fellow citizens and international audiences. She also used the politics of naming – or, more precisely, the politics of not naming – by refusing to mention the perpetrator’s name (Wahlquist, 2019) and focusing on the Muslim victims instead. The aim of this communication strategy was to exclude the perpetrator from the national community and render him nameless.

The contesting strategies of communication of the perpetrator and Ardern strengthened two opposing senses of belonging. The perpetrator invited media users to participate in circulating the violent material he produced and, thus, to support his white-supremacist agenda, while Ardern explicitly excluded the perpetrator from the national collective, emphasising the victims and their inclusion in the narrative of solidarity and togetherness (see Valaskivi & Sumiala, 2022). The contrast between the actors and related rituals of belonging was sharp, and their mutual existence in the hybrid, violent media event made belonging a highly ambivalent and contested matter.

Hybrid, violent media events are both made possible and conditioned by the digital communication infrastructure. The concept of affordances, as an element of the theorisation of hybrid, violent media events and related ritual belongings, provides a theoretical connection between media events (created by various human and non-human actors) as contexts for social formation and belonging, and the technological infrastructure available for communicating such belongings and bringing them into social existence in a particular manner. In other words, the ways of implementing and adopting technology for social uses constitute a field of possibilities in hybrid, violent media events. At the same time, however, these possibilities are constrained by the very properties of the technology and by established social practices. The concept of affordances, thus, enables us to look beyond the division between actor and structure (Faraj & Azad, 2012) when theorising rituals of belonging in hybrid, violent media events.

It is important to acknowledge that different users might employ these affordances differently and in transgressive ways. For example, in the case of the Christchurch attacks, the possibility of livestreaming afforded by Facebook was used differently by Tarrant, whose motive was that of a terrorist, and the media user, who used the same technological properties to stream a mourning video of a Haka ritual (a ceremonial Māori dance) to pay their respects to the victims of the attack and demonstrate their belonging to a national unity.

A detailed examination of the element of affordances shows that the livestreaming of the massacre by the perpetrator had a significant impact on shaping and creating the event (see also Mortensen, 2021). Judging by his public actions, we can say that Tarrant utilised the affordances offered by digital media to livestream his crime. He disseminated his messages of misanthropy, Islamophobia, and racism to create a sense of togetherness and belonging around these ideas through mediatised violence. However, the affordances of digital media not only served the social and political purposes of the killer, but also facilitated the formation of a mourning community around the material provided in the video. The video shows Tarrant’s view as he walked into Al-Noor Mosque, where he was greeted at the door with the welcoming words “Hello, brother”. These were the last words of the first victim of the massacre, Haji Douad Nabi, recorded on the video. They were appropriated by a social media user, and the greeting quickly became the hashtag #hellobrother. This hashtag circulated within the hybrid media environment, where it became a symbol of solidarity with the Muslim community violated in the attacks (Harju & Huhtamäki, 2021). We consider this one example of how the technological affordance of a hashtag can be adopted during a hybrid, violent media event to enable people to express their grief for the deceased and show their support for the community, thereby establishing a sense of belonging through such ritual mourning practices (Sumiala, 2021).

As noted above, in our initial formulation of the five A’s, actors and affordances were seen as tools to analyse the environment or networks and conditions where the hybrid, violent media event and related rituals of belonging take place. Here, we propose adding the first auxiliary element, assemblage, to deepen our understanding of this environment and its consequences for the construction of ambivalent rituals of belonging in hybrid, violent media events.

In an assemblage, two or more actors come together to interact or form a system. A part of an assemblage can belong to several assemblages and have different roles in each. An actor can also be part of several assemblages at the same time (DeLanda, 2006; Deleuze & Guattari, 1980). Action takes place in the context of affordances that provide conditions where certain conducts, actions, and reactions become plausible and others are rendered unlikely or even impossible (DeLanda, 2006; Latour, 2005). A hybrid, violent media event brings together media institutions, social practices, genres, and modes of communication, as well as technological applications and their complex repertoires of action, to form different assemblages depending on the intricate webs of actors, affordances, and their interactions.

It is the particular assemblages of human action and non-human objects and elements in interaction that shape the hybrid, violent media event, giving it its form. This form also varies slightly depending on the angle from which it is seen and the platforms, locations, and cultural settings included in the research setting.

The ambivalence of the rituals of belonging that form part of hybrid, violent media events is accentuated by the countless ways in which the actors and affordances can assemble in such events. At the same time, the assemblage of hybrid, violent media events plays out in the commodified communication environment, which influences how, where, and for whom the elements of hybrid, violent media events can constitute rituals of belonging and with what consequences. The tool reversibility (Couldry & Hepp, 2016) of the digital media environment – where human actors use the technologies while the technologies also “use” their users by collecting data on their actions and prioritising “popular” content – significantly impacts the tone and social consequences of hybrid, violent media events and the possible sets of belonging available.

For instance, the most vocal criticism of Facebook in the aftermath of the Christchurch attacks was directed at the affordance of “indifference”, that is, the platform’s claim to be “neutral”, with no interest in what its users produce and disseminate. Ardern referred to this principle when she stated in her speech to the New Zealand Parliament that Facebook was “not just the postman”. Since then, with whistleblower Francis Haugen’s leak, it has become apparent that despite its claims of neutrality, Facebook has for years prioritised transgressive and provocative content in order to incite more reactions from users and thus earn profit for the company in terms of both revenue and data (The Wall Street Journal, 2021). Thus, the discussion on Facebook’s role was both significant in the assemblage of the Christchurch attack media event and part of the ongoing global struggle over the organisation principles of media infrastructures and their significance in the rituals of belonging (solidarity for the victims) and exclusion (the perpetrator, hate towards the victims).

The third original element of hybrid, violent media events, attention, is, in our view, a prerequisite for a media event to take place. For an event to be an event, it must draw the attention not only of participants but also of a wider public and generate a (constructed) sense that “the whole world is watching” (Dayan & Katz, 1992). Here, we discuss attention along with the second auxiliary element, amplification.

We argue that hybrid, violent media events are associated with attention in particular ways. During these events, media outlets and social media platforms amplify related content and messages. At the same time, however, attention is dispersed and ambivalent in both temporal and spatial terms. Amplification, then, can be considered a process that is aimed at and often results in the expansion of attention.

Furthermore, we argue that amplification is often consciously performed, not only through marketing and promotion but also via other means, such as trolling, lying, or spreading propaganda (see, e.g., Lindgren, 2020; Phillips & Milner, 2017). At the same time, amplification to draw attention during hybrid, violent media events may be considered unintentional insofar as it is a consequence of the intertwined processes of social media and news journalism, which naturally result in increased circulation of content related to a violent attack.

Prominent theories of the attention economy (Davenport & Beck, 2001) or the marketplace of attention (Webster, 2014) have emphasised the fact that the business logic of the digital media environment is based on attention as a scarce resource that is measured by the reactions of users. Reactions produce data and revenue for social media platforms – and also increasingly for news media platforms. The algorithms used by social media platforms are aimed at maximising user reactions, thereby creating a feedback loop that further amplifies attention (see, e.g., Aral, 2020).

Thus, it can be argued that the attention economy also has a significant impact on rituals of belonging, how they are produced during hybrid, violent media events, and the consequences of these social processes. In this context, it must be considered that attention is not just essential to the economic logic of our contemporary media environment but is, first and foremost, constitutive of our social reality (Citton, 2017). While attention is necessary for an occurrence to become an event, hybrid, violent media events can also be regarded for focusing attention. In other words, they are highly influential in constructing rituals of belonging through the circulation of content and the repetitive practices typical of the intensified media-immersed participation that immediately follows a violent attack.

Regarding attention in the case of Christchurch, we argue that the sociotechnical affordances of the digital media environment connected to platform-specific cultural phenomena were integral to the attacks and served the perpetrator’s desire for attention. An empirical detail helps to illustrate our argument here: Prior to walking from his car to the Al-Noor Mosque, Tarrant advised viewers of his livestream, “Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie”. This is a reference to online gaming culture and to Felix Kjellberg, a popular online personality who was competing at the time of the attacks for the title of the most subscribed-to YouTube channel. By mentioning PewDiePie in his livestream, Tarrant forced YouTuber Kjellberg, who had a massive following on YouTube and Twitter, to take a public stance on the attacks. On the same day, Kjellberg tweeted, “Just heard news of the devastating reports from New Zealand Christchurch. I feel absolutely sickened having my name uttered by this person. My heart and thoughts go out to the victims, families and everyone affected by this tragedy”. This message attracted the attention of other popular YouTubers who tweeted their support for Kjellberg. On that Friday afternoon, PewDiePie became a trending topic on Twitter (Perez, 2019). This demonstrates how Tarrant strategically targeted an online celebrity and used PewDiePie’s fame to direct attention to his own acts of hatred.

We can consider this an example of a terrorist seeking to manipulate the media for attention and his exploitation of the social relationship and sense of community that exists between Kjellberg and his virtual followers. Historically, this type of manipulation has typically been documented regarding the relationship between terrorism and journalism. In fact, journalist organisations and newsrooms have developed practices to identify and manage such manipulation attempts (see, e.g., Uusitalo & Valaskivi, 2020; Uusitalo et al., 2021). However, in contemporary hybrid, violent media events, the manufacturing of these types of apparently random and irrelevant connections between an act of violence and an extremely popular phenomenon has become increasingly common (Vainikka, 2020). This type of attention-seeking tactic resonates with the image-board culture of 4chan and 8chan, where trolling, “shitposting”, and memefying current events in various – usually transgressive – ways are means of amassing social capital and prestige within the community (see, e.g., Zelenkauskaite et al., 2021). Such attention-seeking tactics can be considered examples of ambivalent ritual practices at play in hybrid, violent media events, as the attention attracted by acts of violence can be appropriated by various actors. For instance, hashtags associated with an event are often “hijacked” for the purpose of gaining commercial, political, or cultural capital (Evans, 2018) and can result in a polarised understanding of belonging (Sumiala et al., 2018).

To elaborate even further on the theory of hybrid, violent media events and related rituals of belonging, we need to examine in more detail how attention is assembled in such media events and what type of messages, actors, and platforms are most likely to result in such assemblages. We work from the premise that in a hybrid, violent media event, certain content, actors, and modes of communication accumulate more attention than others. The kind of content that is particularly likely to attract attention is content that incites affect in users. Affective content both increases the amount of activity on platforms and generates collective feelings related to the event. For instance, a previous study that focused on the image board 4chan demonstrated how the terror attacks on a Pittsburgh synagogue and the Christchurch mosques visibly increased the circulation of conspiracy narratives and hate speech associated with the two media events (Zelenkauskaite et al., 2021). The affective hate speech was used to support and strengthen the sense of belonging among the board users in relation to imagined enemies in these spaces of religious practice. That said, we need to analyse in more detail the relationship between our third auxiliary element, accumulation (of attention), and the fourth A, affect.

The work of Sara Ahmed (2004) is particularly insightful in this context. Ahmed views affect and emotions as social and cultural practices rather than individual psychological states. According to her, affects are not properties of signs or commodities; instead, they are produced during the (mediated) circulation of signs or commodities. Affects are also “sticky” insofar as certain affects stick to certain signs or bodies. Ahmed’s illuminating example is the persistent metonymic connections between fear, hate, and the Muslim body (Sumiala et al., 2018). Affect, then, can be seen as a means of accumulating attention and amplifying the role of certain actors associated with particular meanings. Ahmed’s discussion of hate as an affective economy is particularly relevant to our analysis of hybrid, violent media events, as she points out that “emotions do not positively inhabit anybody or anything, meaning that ‘the subject’ is simply one nodal point in the economy, rather than its origin and destination” (Ahmed, 2004: 46). In the circulation of hate, sticky affective expressions and metonymic connections are particularly potent. In a commodified communication environment, in particular, these expressions tend to be amplified through the circulatory meaning-making processes that follow a violent attack. What is more, the circulation and the accumulation of attention to sticky affects (and the drawing of attention away from other matters) gathers speed in hybrid, violent media events, spreading both geographically and across a multiplicity of digital media channels and platforms. This circulatory amplification of particular affects connected to certain bodies, actors, and meanings takes repetitive, ritual forms that profoundly impact how belonging and non-belonging are constructed in contemporary violent media events (Sumiala et al., 2018).

The accumulation of attention towards affective content in the livestreaming of the killing by the terrorist in Christchurch exemplifies our argument on the meaning and significance of affect in hybrid, violent media events. The livestream of the attack served as a magnet for attention in the hybrid media environment, resulting in a broad array of emotional reactions, ranging from expressions of horror, fear, and disgust to celebration of violence and simple curiosity about the spectacle. According to Facebook, the original video was seen live by fewer than 200 users and was viewed approximately 4,000 times in total before being removed from Facebook (Porter, 2019). However, the atrocious visuality of the video later engaged the attention of countless social media users, whose emotional responses and motivations were diverse. News media also published clips of the video and wide discussions of the livestreaming. The video was downloaded and copied by many social media users, who rapidly uploaded various versions of it on a wide range of platforms. The pace with which the copies were added was too fast for the automated moderation systems of social media companies. Although Facebook Newsroom (2019) stated on Twitter that the company removed 1.5 million copies of the video in the first 24 hours after the attacks, and YouTube tweeted that it “removed tens of thousands of videos and terminated hundreds of accounts created to promote or glorify the shooter” (YouTubeInsider, 2019), the video continued to surface in response to searches conducted after the attacks. This was due not only to the speed of the new uploads but also to the creativity of the social media users whose aim was to disseminate the video of the massacre. The automated moderation systems of social media companies are generally effective in spotting single copies of a certain video but cannot cope with hundreds, if not thousands, of videos altered in order to evade detection. We argue that the extraordinary speed with which the video was circulated was related to the affective stickiness of the hateful material, which was particularly suited to the social media affordances. This resulted in an accumulation of attention to the video and created highly ambivalent and emotionally laden expressions of belonging related to the violent event and its perpetrator.

The previously discussed elements of the hybrid, violent media event surrounding the Christchurch attacks indicate that speed is a key factor to consider when theorising such events. The element of speed relates to both the temporal acceleration and spatial dispersion of hybrid, violent media events, where messages, photographs, news, videos, and memes disseminate immediately from actors, platforms, and devices to others, crossing geographical and cultural borders at increasing speed. To draw on Urry (2007), in hybrid, violent media events, there is no stasis, but instead dynamic and often unstable processes of movement and transformation that we can call acceleration (Hassan, 2009; Rosa, 2003). Acceleration is also key to the creation and maintenance of current media events and associated rituals of belonging. The social norms of the digital media environment require people to connect faster, share quicker, and participate ceaselessly (see also van Dijck, 2013). These requirements of liveness, immediacy, and constant availability through digital media platforms also affect how newsrooms report acts of terrorist violence (Uusitalo & Valaskivi, 2020). In addition, such acceleration shapes how rituals of belonging are created and experienced in hybrid, violent media events. They become fast-paced, unstable, and consequently, ambivalent (see also Sumiala, 2021). The accelerated temporal movement of information and its spatial dispersion in hybrid, violent media events shape violent conflicts in profound ways, affecting their internal and external formations and their consequences and aftermaths (see, e.g., Cottle, 2014; Eskjær et al., 2015). In a digital world, the consequences of acceleration are felt at all levels, from the global to the individual.

Issues of speed, acceleration, and liveness were instrumental in turning the Christchurch attacks into a hybrid, violent media event. While we have already discussed the role of the livestreamed video, there is still another viewpoint to explore. Some of those who saw the video assumed the role of online detective and immediately set about verifying the video’s authenticity by looking for digital evidence. For example, immediately after the attacks, one user posted a collection of images on Twitter that included a screenshot from the perpetrator’s video in front of the Al-Noor Mosque and an image captured from Google Street View showing the entrance to the very same mosque. The user also published screen-shots from the shooter’s Twitter account showing the same gun that he had in the video. In posting these pairs of images, the user sought to verify the location of the massacre and the digital personality of the attacker. By aggregating diverse traces of digital data, online detectives can trace perpetrators and shed light on their actions. Although the amateur digital forensics were accurate in this case, this practice has also had unwanted consequences during hybrid, violent media events. The Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 is a case in point here. In this hybrid, violent event the accelerated public crowdsourcing of images in search of evidence concerning the perpetrators resulted in the publication of photographs of and public blaming of innocent people (see Allan, 2014; Mortensen, 2015). What follows, this type of accelerated interpretation and meaning-making also contributes to the ambivalence of hybrid, violent media events and often heavily impacts the direction, salience, and social consequences of a violent media event as a site of ritual social formation.