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ABSTRACT
Victimhood remains under analysed in the Critical Terrorism Studies literature, including the abilities of Muslim victims of terror attacks to blurring social boundaries and possibly de-securitise Muslims in Europe. This is of specific importance in France, which has not only suffered the most terror incidents in Europe in the past five years but also is a country where Muslims have been securitised for decades. This paper uses a mixed methods approach to analyse twitter data for the #jesuisahmed hashtag used to commemorate the Muslim police officer killed in the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and the le monde online memorials created in the wake of the Paris and Nice terror attacks. This analysis demonstrates French Muslim victimhood attacks blur Muslim social boundaries, influences the way that terror events are constructed and also present opportunities for the de-securitisation of Muslims in France. Muslim victimhood does this through three key themes – Muslims being situated as defenders of European values on twitter, Muslim biographies demonstrating “banality” in the le monde online memories and visual nuances of group identity through victim photos included in the le monde memorial. However, these narratives also can re-enforce a problematic good/bad Muslim dichotomy.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Jacqueline Ménoret, LSE MSc Human Rights graduate for her invaluable help with coding the victim profiles and her inspiring conversations about French politics and society. I would also like to thank Dr Jennifer Jackson-Preece of the LSE’s European Institute without whose input I would not think about security in the same way.
This article owes a significant debt to Jacqueline Stein (LSE MSc Human rights 2016) who not only undertook significant coding work for the article but was also important in forming the coding categories and also provided many inspirational conversations about French politics and society during her time at LSE.
The study is also greatly indebted to Stu Schulman, CEO of Texifter and Discovertext without whose support obtaining and analysing the twitter data used in this study would not have been possible. Dr Wasim Ahmed of Northumbria University also provided valuable insights and support regarding social media access and analysis
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. For example the Nice attacker, Mohamed Bouhlel was previously unknown to authorities as a radical. His death during the attack means that it is not possible to ascertain post-facto narratives from him about his motivations to commit mass murder.
2. While there were 216 victims in total for the Paris and Nice attacks, Le Monde was only able to secure the permission of the families of 160 of the victims for use in its online memorials.
3. Code book available on request.
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Joseph Downing
Dr Joseph Downing is LSE Fellow nationalism where he teaches courses on global security, migration policy, minority rights and qualitative research methods. He was previously Marie-Curie fellow at the CNRS, Marseille and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where he conducted a project on the discourses created about British and French Muslims on Twitter. Joseph also received the Arts and Humanities Research Council European Languages and Culture PhD Scholarship at the LSE's European Institute from 2009-2013 for a PhD thesis on comparative urban policy in French cities.
