Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009) is the first book to explore the way racism is translated from the print-only era to the cyber era. In this highly readable volume, author Jessie Daniels examines how white supremacist organizations have translated their printed publications onto the Internet. Through an innovative, mixed method study - from qualitative analysis of the posts at the "Ladies Only" forum at Stormfront.org (online portal of "White Pride World Wide") where women renegotiate white supremacy through a feminist lens to the "cloaked" sites which disguise white supremacy sources as legitimate civil rights websites -- Daniels takes the reader through a devastatingly informative tour of white supremacy online.
Theoretically engaged yet accessible to a wide audience beyond the specialist, Cyber Racism includes interviews with a small sample of teenagers as they surf the web, encounter cloaked sites and attempt to make sense of them, mostly unsuccessfully. The result is a first-rate analysis of the emerging social phenomenon of cyber racism within the global information age and a groundbreaking study of social movement discourse on either side of the Internet revolution. Despite the common assumptions that the Internet is an inherently democratizing technology or that white supremacists are using the Internet to "recruit," Daniels debunks these notions and offers a nuanced, challenging analysis that urges readers to rethink ways of knowing about racial equality, civil rights and the Internet.
"Jessie Daniels' Cyber Racism is a well-written, insightful, and exhaustive examination of white supremacy online.
I recommend this book to anyone who seeks to understand how hatemongers can have so much influence on our society in the digital era."
-Jack Levin, Co-director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University and author of The Violence of Hate
"In Cyber Racism, Jessie Daniels provides a powerful corrective to rosy accounts of the World Wide Web as inherently progressive
or liberatory. By carefully tracking both overt and cloaked hate activities on the web, Daniels reveals the dark underbelly of
cyberspace: far-reaching white supremacist organizations that are utilizing the web to spread racism, hatred, and violence. The book
convincingly tracks the global dimensions of white supremacy, while also illustrating the myriad ways in which racism intersects with
issues of nationalism, gender, and literacy."
-Tara McPherson, Associate Professor of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California and author of Reconstructing Dixie
"Pathbreaking look into new avenues for white supremacy in a digital age."
-Kathleen M. Blee, University of Pittsburgh
"White supremacy never sleeps, as pathbreaking sociologist Jessie Daniels again demonstrates. We see how cyber racism spreads like a
sprawling cancerous growth across the Internet, as old white-racist groups get reinvigorated and new groups form and thrive all in the
interest of aggressively spreading supremacist doctrines to yet more millions across the globe."
-Joe Feagin, Texas A & M University
"I've known Jessie Daniels (for nearly a decade) to be a thoughtful and well-informed observer of the social nuances of online behavior.
She's been carefully tracking one of the dark sides of life online, and Cyber Racism promises to be a landmark."
-Howard Rheingold, Stanford University
Chapter Outline
Part I. Introduction
Chapter 1: White Supremacy in the Digital Era
Chapter 2: Theorizing White Supremacy Online
Part II. White Supremacy in Global Context
Chapter 3: White Supremacy, Globalization, and the Internet
Chapter 4: White Supremacist Social Movements Online & in Global Context
Part III. White Supremacy & the Internet
Chapter 5: Gender, White Supremacy & the Internet in Global Context
Chapter 6: White Supremacist Discourse: In Print and Online
Chapter 7: Cyber Lies: Cloaked Websites
Chapter 8: Searching for Civil Rights, Finding White Supremacy: Adolescents Making Sense of Cloaked Websites
Part IV. Fighting White Supremacy in the Digital Era
Chapter 9: Global Efforts to Combat White Supremacy Online
Chapter 10: Conclusion: Racial Justice and CIvic Engagement in the Digital Era
Appendix: Notes Toward a Qualitative Sociology of the Web