From 4-Chan to the Capitol: A text-as-data analysis of QAnon posts

The far-right QAnon conspiracy made national headlines as Trump supporters—including many self-professed QAnon believers—stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Although the Capitol siege thrust QAnon into the national spotlight, the conspiracy theory has been linked with numerous violent attacks since the first “Q drop” in 2017, including murder, bomb threats, kidnapping, and attacks on public infrastructure. In May 2019, over a year before the Capitol attacks, an FBI bulletin described the growing threat of “fringe conspiracy theory” driven “domestic extremists,” specifically citing QAnon as a group of concern. This bulletin highlighted that “certain conspiracy theory narratives tacitly support or legitimize violent action,” motivating their adherents to commit violent acts. This text analysis project aims to better understand QAnon narratives, particularly the way that those narratives have changed over time as QAnon was pushed to increasingly fringe platforms.

Mass Surveillance is Not the Answer to the Coronavirus

Published in Columbia Public Policy Review

In the battle against the coronavirus, the Chinese government’s high-tech response seemed like something out of a science fiction novel. Robots disinfected hospitals, police wore thermo-sensitive goggles to detect fevers, and opaque algorithms determined who could leave home or ride the bus.

In a society already accustomed to widespread surveillance, investment into facial recognition technologies is booming as companies rush to develop new tools to monitor infected individuals. The Chinese government claims that the heightened surveillance is temporary, but human rights advocates predict that this will become the new status quo. As intrusive measures are normalized to combat the coronavirus, they will feel more acceptable in the face of other perceived threats — like women’s rights or organized religion.

Could this happen in the United States? It’s easy to dismiss China’s invasive measures as unthinkable for Western democracies. Yet as the virus spreads, borders have closed and previously unimaginable quarantines have been instituted — not only in China, but in the United States and Western Europe. 

In times of crisis, it’s tempting to give in to fear and prioritize safety over civil liberties. The Israeli government announced plans to deploy counter-terrorism technology to monitor its population and contain the virus. After the September 11 attacks, the Patriot Act eliminated critical checks on government surveillance, enabling the bulk collection of metadata on the phone calls of millions of Americans, in violation of fourth amendment protections on search and seizure. Almost twenty years later, activists are still trying to repeal these invasive surveillance measures. 

There’s Nothing “Pro-life” about alabama’s sweeping abortion bans

Published in Ms. Magazine Blog

Alabama’s sweeping abortion ban compares abortion to the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, as though the termination of a fetus is morally equivalent to the willful annihilation of a people. But it is abortion bans, not the women who seek them, that put lives at risk every day.

Legislation that criminalizes abortion access and provision does not prevent abortions—it just makes them more dangerous. The World Health Organization reports that about 25 million unsafe abortions are performed annually, primarily in regions with heavily restrictive abortion laws. Women who have unsafe abortions face serious and even fatal medical complications like heavy blood loss, infection and damage to internal organs. Unsafe abortions are even a leading cause of maternal mortality: 68,000 women die from them every year around the world.

The deadly impact of restrictive abortion policies is so well documented that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnes Callamard, once declared that total abortion bans “amount to a gender-based arbitrary killing, only suffered by women, as a result of discrimination enshrined in law.” 

When Reporting on Rape Stands in the Way of Justice

Published in Ms. Magazine Blog

As hundreds of thousands of Rohingya survivors fled to Bangladesh over the past two years, the abuse they suffered in Burma has made headlines.

Their stories are horrific—recounting brutal episodes of torture, murder and sexual violence, often committed in public and in front of family and community members. In different ways, so are their experiences with the press.

Some Rohingya survivors of sexual violence have reportedly been interviewed as many as 70 times each by media outlets, UN bodies and non-governmental organizations—posing serious challenges to the health and safety of survivors and to future justice efforts.

At first glance, the idea that sexual violence can be over-documented may seem counterintuitive. Don’t we want as much evidence as possible to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes? In practice, however, uncoordinated and overzealous documentation harms both accountability efforts and the well-being of survivors.

The adage that “sex sells” is true in advertising and seems equally true in reporting, even in the coverage of atrocity and human rights abuse. As journalists and advocates cover stories of sexual violence in conflict, we must make sure not to sensationalize or exploit survivors’ suffering in order to make an impact.

Atrocities against Yazidis are instrumental in understanding role of gender in genocide

Published in Women Under Siege

Ekhlas was 14 years old when Islamic State militants attacked the northern Iraqi city of Sinjar in August 2014. Her family tried to flee to nearby Mount Sinjar, but they never made it.  

“They killed my father in front of my own eyes,” she told BBC in July. “I saw his blood on their hands.”  

Like many of the Yazidi women in Sinjar, Ekhlas was captured by Islamic State militants and sold into slavery. “He picked me out of 150 girls by drawing lots,” she recalled. “I was so frightened I couldn’t look at him. Every day for six months he raped me. I tried to kill myself.”  

Nearly 7,000 Yazidis—most of them women and children—were captured by Islamic State after the August 2014 attack on Sinjar, according to Iraqi Member of Parliament Vian Dakhil. Ekhlas managed to escape after six months, but thousands of other Yazidi women and girls are still enslaved. Today, three years later, the United Nations estimates that around 3,200 Yazidi women and children remain in captivity.  

The Genocide of Yazidis is Not Over

Published in Fair Observer

On August 3, 2014, Islamic State (IS) fighters attacked the Yazidi community in Sinjar, Iraq. Since then, the Yazidis have been the target of an explicit and ongoing genocidal campaign to destroy their people and their culture. Despite recognition from the international community that genocide is occurring, there has not been a concerted effort to halt this ethnic cleansing and save the thousands of Yazidi women and girls still held captive by IS.

As part of its offensive three years ago, IS attacked and massacred thousands of Yazidis in the town of Sinjar. “For those Yazidi who didn’t make it to [safety] and who weren’t close enough to the Kurdish regions to flee, they found themselves encircled by [IS],” says Sareta Ashraph, the former chief analyst of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria. “And the crimes that were committed against them and in many cases are still being committed against them depended primarily on the sex of the victim, the gender of the victim and secondarily the age of the victim. For that reason the Yazidi genocide is instrumental in understanding the role gender plays in the crime of genocide.”

Growing Consensus in International Community that US Must Lift Abortion Ban

Published by Global Justice Center

Denying women raped in war zones access to abortions is a violation of their fundamental human rights—yet the US continues to do so in the face of growing international criticism. Under the Geneva Conventions, women raped in war zones fall under the category of the “wounded and sick,” meaning that they are entitled to all necessary medical care to treat their condition. Failing to provide abortion access to these women not only violates their rights under International Humanitarian Law, it subjects them to further trauma, as they are again stripped of control over their bodies.  These women, forced to carry the children of their rapists, face additional pain, suffering, and stigma.

The Helms Amendment, enacted in 1973, prohibits US humanitarian assistance funds from being used to pay for abortions “as a method of family planning.” Since then, the law has been incorrectly interpreted as a blanket ban on abortion services, even in cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment.  By denying women and girls raped in war zones access to this necessary medical procedure, the US is violating the “principle of adverse distinction” under the Geneva Conventions, which stipulates that IHL cannot be implemented in ways that are less favorable for women than for men. Men and women wounded in war must be provided with all necessary forms of medical care. For women raped in was zones, this includes access to abortion services.