Discursive Toolkits of Anti-Muslim Disinformation on Twitter

In this article, we investigate the socio-technical ecology of Twitter, including thetechnological affordances of the platform and the user-generated discursive strategiesused to create and circulate anti-Muslim disinformation online. During thefirst waveof Covid-19, right-wing followers claimed that Muslims were spreading the virus toperform Jihad. We analyzed a sample of 7000 tweets using Critical DiscourseAnalysis to examine how the online disinformation accusing Muslims in India was ini-tiated and sustained. We identify three critical discourse strategies used on Twitter tospread and sustain the anti-Muslim (dis)information: (1) creating mediatized hate sol-idarities, (2) appropriating instruments of legitimacy, and (3) practicing Internet Hinduvigilantism. Each strategy consists of a subset of discursive toolkits, highlighting thecentral routes of discursive engagement to produce disinformation online. Weargue that understanding how the technical affordances of Social Networking Sitesare leveraged in quotidian online practices to produce and sustain the phenomenonof online disinformation will prove to be a novel contribution to thefield of disinfor-mation studies and Internet research.