Research

The voice of the people continued...

Professor van Zoonen and her researchers were struck by the desire of the posters to connect. Most displayed an open and cosmopolitan attitude, and rarely were the videos violent or antagonistic. Many ‘cut and mix’ videos were used as a means for satire and parody.

Professor van Zoonen said: “What I found interesting was the creativity and the sense of humour that sprung from many of these videos, which made the whole thing a bit lighter. The public debate about these matters is very often dark and black. You see some of that repeated of course, but you also see a lot of mockery and irony. I thought that was quite liberating.”

In conclusion, the research team noted that the great majority of communications surrounding Fitna (some 85 percent), consisted of reactions without interactions. They were one-off ‘acts of citizenship’, of people getting things ‘off their chest’. They were not followed up by subsequent discussion or other videos.

Professor van Zoonen said: “What YouTube offers is a kind of ‘big square’ or arena, for people to demonstrate on. That space for demonstration is an incredibly important one, especially since it’s a global space. But we found that very few take the opportunity to expand this platform into dialogue. The different positions don’t interact or exchange their views, for the most part. It was a case of, ‘Here are my views, you can take it or leave it, but at least I’m out there.’”

She added: “We showed the Fitna film to different groups of Dutch young people and the consensus was that the more informed about the debate viewers were, the less susceptible they were to Fitna’s Islamophobic message, suggesting that silence around Islamophobia is counterproductive.”