Beam Reports is an independent media platform that enlightens and empowers audiences by producing and publishing trustworthy reports that can be relied upon through interpretive journalism. Our goal is to inspire people to actively engage in their communities, confront misinformation and rumors, and enhance their understanding of the political, social, and economic landscape in Sudan by explaining and simplifying its complexities.
As the armed conflict in Sudan, which erupted in mid-April, intensified, its impacts on society became severe, manifesting as violent reactions, with hate speech being a primary form of these reactions, primarily propagated through social media.
Before the technological revolution a few decades ago, war propaganda was solely controlled by state apparatus via traditional media. Today, how the public accesses information has drastically changed, with the public becoming part of the new media machinery. People increasingly use social media to get information about global events and sometimes rely exclusively on these digital platforms, avoiding traditional media for their information needs.
There are several benefits to using social media, such as obtaining news tailored to individual interests anytime and anywhere, and the ability to express opinions and participate in the exchange and dissemination of information. However, this digital freedom also carries significant societal risks, notably the spread of hate speech, racist content, and incitement to violence. These messages and ideas are amplified and disseminated on social media in ways that were previously impossible.
In recent years, hate speech and fake news on social media platforms have become big issues affecting both the platforms and the societies that use them. Due to the lack of effective constraints, digital media create an alternative reality that does not necessarily align with social norms, potentially harming individuals and communities. One of the most significant societal problems exacerbated by digital media is the spread and normalization of hate speech, making it a potent means of exerting social influence and inciting bias, discrimination, and violence in real life.
Methodology:
This report examines part of the social interactions with the ongoing war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 15, 2023, which may be classified as “hate speech” based on various legal and social studies definitions. It also reviews the potential impacts of this speech on Sudanese society.
Hypotheses:
The research was guided by keywords defined by hypothesizing the nature of the discourse based on legal and academic definitions of hate speech while considering Sudanese cultural and historical context as follows:
- Ethnic Speech: Targeting Sudanese individuals based on their tribal or ethnic backgrounds, as adopted by other Sudanese.
- Gender-based Speech: Inciting violence against women or using derogatory terms against them.
- International Speech: Speech from Sudanese to citizens of other countries, or vice versa, bearing hate and incitement characteristics.
Data collection
To collect data, the Beam Reports team monitored the content on Facebook and X platforms from the outbreak of war on April 15, 2023, until November of the same year.
During this period, the watchlist included 500 publications. It also monitored specific periods to study the fluctuations in the content of the speech based on certain events. A random sample consisting of 289 publications was selected from the total for comparison and deep analysis.
The data collection for the research was based on a set of keywords related to the war and terms indicating the political, ethnic, and social tensions witnessed in the Sudanese arena on Facebook and X platforms, during the aforementioned period. Among the keywords used are:
(“Arab”, “Darfur”, “Slave”, “State of 56”, “River and Sea”, “Separate/Separation”, “Chad”, “Sudanese Merchants/Al-Jalabah”, “The Strangeness”, “The Egyptians”, “Rape”).
Characteristics of the sample
The sample of the data included published content from Sudanese nationals from within and outside of Sudan, in addition to citizens of other countries whose talk about the war in Sudan included the keywords that were set for the research.
During the classification process, Beam Reports made sure to differentiate between the right to freedom to express opinions and ideas, even if they are controversial or differ from popular opinions, and content that promotes hatred or discrimination against a particular group based on factors such as race, religion, gender, or any identifying factor, in addition to considering the context and purpose of the published content.
What is hate speech?
Hate speech is an exceptional type of discourse for its ability to provoke negative emotions, fuel conflicts, and influence communities and individuals when circulated under certain circumstances.
However, despite emphasizing its harm and distinctive features, there is no single agreed-upon definition of hate speech, and the relationship between hate speech and the fuelling of conflict and violence is also disputed.
Professor of Politics and Communication Studies, Alexander Brown, argues that attempting to establish a unified definition of hate speech is futile, as the term “hate speech” is not as clear as it might initially appear or from its increasing use within and outside academic frameworks. The term is systematically ambiguous. Brown believes there is a need to understand hate speech as a heterogeneous set of expressive phenomena, meaning it includes various meanings that elude comprehensive definition attempts.
Brown believes that there is a need to adopt an understanding of hate speech as a heterogeneous set of expressive phenomena, that includes different meanings which requires the inadequacy of all attempts to formulate a comprehensive definition.
Legal academic Robert Post agrees with Brown’s point about the limitations of defining hate speech. The post suggests four bases for defining hate speech, depending on the definers’ goals and the context in which the definition will be used. These goals include: knowing the potential harm, its linguistic content and used words, its impact on individuals’ dignity and respect, and the ideas it reflects. (Anderson, Lovell, Barnes, and Michael 2023).
Researchers view that due to the broad and potentially abusive nature of hate speech, other more specific terms have emerged, such as “dangerous speech,” which speaks of a message that can incite physical violence in particular. This is measured based on five variables: the level of influence of the speaker, the grievances and concerns of the receiving audience, whether the message includes a call for violence, the social and historical context, and how the message spreads (Benes 2023).
Additionally, the term “fear speech” has also emerged. It is one of the most popular forms of hate speech on social media which may block content that may be classified as “dangerous speech”, as fear speech is usually less clear and works in provoking fear of specific groups. In the case of conflicts, it also works to link groups to acts of violence.
Background:
Before the Turkish-Egyptian colonization, most of modern Sudan consisted of the eastern and central parts of what was once called (the country of Sudan), a name given by Muslim travelers to the southern region of the Great Desert. The last of these kingdoms was the Kingdom of the Phong, also known as the Kingdom of the Blue Sultanate of Sinar.
And to the east, on the coast of the Red Sea, there are the Beja tribes, which took Sawakin as their capital city and established the kingdom of Taqali in Southern Kordofan and the kingdom of Musaba’at in the north, while the Kingdom of Fur took a location that stretched from Wadai in the west to the borders of Kordofan and borders Bahr al-Ghazal to the south, and there lived tribes in the south, most notably the Dinka, Shilluk, Nuer and Zandi.
In the nineteenth century, with the beginning of the Turkish-Egyptian invasion, the features of one political entity began to emerge from these various components, known as Sudan, and the establishment was not instantaneous but was a result of a gradual expansion of the first and second colonization that followed.
The Turkish-Egyptian and English-Egyptian colonization was accompanied by the entry of new social and cultural components that greatly affected the structures and the practices of the society, as well as the development of the educational systems and political structures that interacted with the social and cultural base of ancient Sudan and made complex layers of forms of authority (Collins, 2008 ).
In the aftermath of the First World War, as Sudan was under massive colonialism, the seeds of the newly formed national consciousness faced daunting challenges represented by the central state apparatus and the colonial structures, which worked to consolidate the commodity economy and aspects of modern life, in light of the deep-rooted tribal influence and the dominance of multiple Sufi sects.
In light of these complex facts, Sudan gained its independence in January 1956, and the young nation found itself faced with a difficult task: which is expanding the scope of the new state model and including a sprawling traditional society under one umbrella, The challenge was likened by the thinker Muhammad Abu al-Qasim Haj Hamad to a (dwarf trying to swallow an elephant ).
Boiling beneath the surface of the unified state were the accumulations of colonial policies that quickly placed the state facing a crisis of developmental disparity in the country.
The crisis has also crystallized outside the circles of governance in Sudanese society, where acute polarisation and intolerance, which is an expected result of these historical factors have become an inherent condition of Sudanese society. Exacerbating this situation with inflammatory rhetoric from the state and the parties active in periods of war may fuel incidents of societal violence in light of factors such as monopoly of resources, mismanagement of diversity, poverty, and the accumulation of historical injustices.
Research Results: Ethnic Mobilization.
The largest proportion of the content studied dealt with the ethnic and tribal components of Sudan, and the largest proportion of this content falls within the classification of (dangerous discourse), where the largest proportion included calls for exclusion and separation, which were mainly directed to the Darfur region, in which justification mechanisms of an inflammatory nature were used, including the description of ethnic groups to animals, insects, and even viruses and parasites that must be eliminated, which is a common method used to erase the humanity of the attacked group to justify violence directed towards it or incitement against the group.
Content creators also used the method of intimidation in their speech, where they accused certain tribes and ethnic groups of causing war and describing ethnic groups with fear-inducing qualities such as hatred and evil. The intimidation in the racial discourse was not limited to direct accusation but resorted to multiple and deliberate methods to influence the feelings and views of individuals, including excessive generalization, where individuals belonging to a particular ethnic group are placed into one category, described negatively, instead of talking about individuals or groups of actors, which creates a rigid perception and facilitates demonization and presents its individuals as an “existential threat” to other components.
Between (children of the river) and (children of the West)
The publishers of this content not only used direct inflammatory language but also reinforced it with narratives and historical terms intending to fuel tribal and regional tendencies. The most widespread example of this was the depiction of the current war as a conflict between the citizens of northern Sudan (children of the river) and the citizens of Darfur and Kordofan (children of the West), labels that date back to events in the era of the Mahdist state.
This narrative is directly linked to calls for the division of Sudan, with the establishment of a state that includes the northern, eastern, and central parts, and the separation of the states in Western Sudan. The call which began to appear on social media platforms in mid-2020, was adopted by several social media users during the war period.
Sudanese writer and academic Abdullah Ali Ibrahim believes that proponents of this call base their arguments on correct premises but reach “disastrous results” due to a confused historical reference. Ibrahim explains that colonialism indeed gathered a mix of historically and culturally diverse peoples and tribes, but Sudan was among the least affected by these borders in the region, as modern Sudan is historically inherited from the state of the period of Turkish rule and the Mahdist state after it, in both of which the borders were somewhat identical before British colonialism came to rule Sudan in the manner it was known for.
Sudanese development studies researcher Qusay Hammour asserts that this case unequivocally reflects long-standing and widely prevalent tendencies among groups in the center. The transitional period’s transformations have evoked heightened concerns about disrupting the entrenched concessions in Sudan, surpassing previous expectations. The emergence of new freedoms consequent to the revolutionary waves, combined with the fear of radical change and the collapse of the central region’s racist tendencies under the National Congress Party (NCP) State, has compelled certain factions to view this as their definitive opportunity to propagate their ideologies and inclinations, anticipating a resounding resonance among their counterparts.
American researcher Susan Bench provides an analysis of the impact of this discourse, noting that the most severe and inflammatory messages cannot ignite violence without the audience being ready to accept these messages, and this readiness may stem from a combination of factors such as:
Fear of threats: The presence of actual or past threats from other groups, or violent events witnessed directly by communities, makes individuals more vulnerable to hate messages that take part in this fear.
- Exposure to messages· that cause fear: Even if the messages are not explicitly inflammatory, exposure to messages of intimidation prepares the ground for easier reception of hate speech, especially if it uses the same language and previously cultivated fears.
- Economic hardships: Difficult economic conditions lead to despair and frustration, which makes individuals more susceptible to hate speech that provides them with a simple explanation of their problems, even if it is based on hatred and discrimination.
- Collective trauma: Painful experiences, both on an individual and collective level, can leave deep psychological and social scars, making individuals more likely to believe in hate speech that exploits those traumas and offers a retaliatory solution to them.
- Social norms: Culture and social legacies that place the values of deep loyalty to the tribe or group above any other value can create an environment conducive to the spread of hate speech that exploits these loyalties in favor of political or personal agendas.
These theoretical factors, which all apply to the reality in Sudan and take a more dangerous dimension in the ongoing conflict, as each party seeks to appeal to tribal loyalties and support from the leaders of some tribes and their militias to the war parties, as happened in the targeting of hundreds of civilians from the Masalit tribe by the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias in Ardmata, a suburb of El Geneina in West Darfur in November 2023
Sexual Abuse
The content also contained a speech that used sexual assault on women as a tool of terror and intimidation, by talking about the fact that women of certain groups would be or have been subjected to sexual assault or rape by another group, and this was in the context of creating fear of certain tribal groups and inciting against them.
This discourse was also used to threaten tribal groups to rape women belonging to them. This discourse has a high ability to provoke fear and panic, especially in times of war where conflict-related sexual violence is a common phenomenon where armed actors use concepts related to maintaining honor associated with women’s bodies. Rape is used as a tool to weaken and control societies, intimidate them, and force them to move elsewhere.
These metaphors which focus on the shame of the victim, can act as a barrier to victims of sexual abuse getting the help they need. They also contribute to the cycle of violence and worsen its effects on the victims. Feminist studies show the impact of these metaphors on different levels. At the individual level, the victim may feel ashamed and be afraid to speak out due to the fear of being accused and stigmatized, which can prevent them from seeking the psychological and legal support they require.
At the institutional level, these metaphors enhance the tolerant view of sexual violence and weaken the response of institutions concerned with victim protection and justice.
Targeting feminists
The research also monitored the targeting of feminists with accusations of working on behalf of others to incite hatred and violence against them. The targeting of feminists and human rights activists in general is not new, however, some content creators exploited the hostile reality created by the war on social media to raise suspicion about the intentions of feminists and link them to external parties with the aim of defamation and isolation of feminists from society and branding them as traitors, which makes it easier to dismiss their demands and undermine their credibility.
The journalist and human rights activist Malath Emad highlighted that the violent and exclusionary language used during wartime has the most significant impact on women. Hostile speech hinders feminist efforts, which are already disrupted by war.
Emad emphasizes the impact of this type of communication, noting the common use of aggressive and discriminatory language that specifically targets women. This harmful language poses a threat to the physical and psychological well-being of women, especially during a time when it is challenging to provide them with adequate support.
Cross-Border
The research also monitored the targeting of feminists with accusations of working on behalf of others to incite hatred and violence aga
The content studied showed a significant rise in tensions between the citizens of Egypt and the Sudanese who were displaced by the war, in which racist and degrading titles were used on both sides.
The dynamics of this situation are significantly influenced by the social and economic pressures faced by both parties. Egyptian citizens are grappling with mounting economic challenges, leading to heightened concerns about resources and job opportunities.
These pressures may in turn contribute to negative perceptions of Sudanese refugees among some members of the Egyptian community.
On the other hand, Sudanese refugees often experience displacement trauma, which can make them more susceptible to emotional reactions when faced with provocation or feelings of marginalization.
Egypt is a host to more than 6 million migrants from different countries, notably Syria, Sudan, Yemen, South Sudan, and Eritrea. Since 2022, the ongoing conflicts have led to tens of thousands of people being displaced into the country annually. Egypt serves as a nearby and easily accessible destination, as well as a transit point for those attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe.
Since the war broke out on April 15, an estimated 464,827 Sudanese people have sought refuge in Egypt, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
ainst them. The targeting of feminists and human rights activists in general is not new, however, some content creators exploited the hostile reality created by the war on social media to raise suspicion about the intentions of feminists and link them to external parties with the aim of defamation and isolation of feminists from society and branding them as traitors, which makes it easier to dismiss their demands and undermine their credibility.
The journalist and human rights activist Malath Emad highlighted that the violent and exclusionary language used during wartime has the most significant impact on women. Hostile speech hinders feminist efforts, which are already disrupted by war.
Emad emphasizes the impact of this type of communication, noting the common use of aggressive and discriminatory language that specifically targets women. This harmful language poses a threat to the physical and psychological well-being of women, especially during a time when it is challenging to provide them with adequate support.
Going beyond condemnation
Building a peaceful and secure future for Sudan requires a sustained commitment to dismantling the very foundations on which hate speech is built.
It is crucial to condemn such speeches, but this is only the first step. It is essential to take a multifaceted approach, addressing historical injustices, revealing truth, promoting national reconciliation and confidence-building, consolidating the principles of justice and equal citizenship, and ensuring equitable access to opportunities It is crucial to condemn such speeches, but this is only the first step. It is essential to take a multifaceted approach, addressing historical injustices, revealing truth, promoting national reconciliation and confidence-building, consolidating the principles of justice and equal citizenship, and ensuring equitable access to opportunities in education, employment, and public services. This approach aims to isolate and counter calls for violence that arise from feelings of marginalization.
Moreover, combatting hate speech necessitates bolstering a cohesive national identity that surpasses narrow sectarian divisions. It also entails acknowledging and honoring Sudan’s inherent diversity, which cultivates a collective commitment to shaping a brighter future.
