Series Three, Episode Five: Claire Burchett

For the penultimate episode in this series, we welcome Claire Burchett for a discussion about her PhD research: Everyday victimhood on social media: the framing of Jews and anti-Semitism in the populist radical right online space in France, Germany and Austria. 

Claire's research examines three radical right political parties: the National Front in France, Alternative for Germany, and the Freedom Party of Austria, with a particular focus on posts made by the parties and party officials on social media platforms to see how they talk about Jews, anti-Semitism and Israel and if that has changed over time.

Through her research, Claire hopes to analyse the different, overt and implicit, ways in which the parties communicate anti-Semitism, including how surface-level sympathy for Jewish communities is used as a political weapon; how the reactions and comments of other social media users can result in anti-Semitic amplification, and the role of victimhood narratives within this; and how different social media platforms differ in their enablement of anti-Semitic discourse due to their regulatory and technological differences.