Far-Right Political Participation and Digital Media

Abstract

This panel is jointly organized by Section 20 on Current Research and Challenges on Political Participation and Mobilization and Section 55, on Populism, Radicalism and Extremism: At the Margins and into the Mainstream. Radical and extreme right groups and individuals have gained significant traction across the web in recent years. From being early adopters of the internet through bulletin-boards and forums to professionalized YouTube channels, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts, the far-right has a presence spanning mainstream platforms and fringe corners of the web. The far-right has utilized these online spaces as an effective tool of political communication to mobilize and incentivize action offline, such as the ‘Defend Europe’ campaign in the wake of the refugee crisis and the Charlottesville protests in 2017. These incidents have sparked much media and scholarly attention into the role of the internet as a site of radicalization. Often overlooked, however, is how these online spaces are defined by a community and culture as a basis of appeal. This panel brings together research exploring the self-presentation of far-right actors across several platforms in order to situate the affective dimensions of belonging. It engages with the simultaneous emotive and visual aspects of the far-right online through (1) the technological affordances of Gab.com for the far right; (2) female alt-right influencers on YouTube and Instagram; (3) social media architectures and their effect on mobilization; (4) online meta politics; and (5) far-right campaigning strategies and media practices. Consequently, this panel seeks to coalesce different case studies that highlight how online spaces are characterized by formations of community that appeal to emotional registers. It foregrounds the ways in which these processes of collectivism lead to the mainstreaming of radical and extreme right ideas and narratives into political and public discourse.

Title	Details
'Make Europe Great Again': Transnational Diffusion of a Far-Right Social Movement	View Paper Details
The Problem with Studying Far-Right Metapolitics: Rallying Online Support Via Emotive Ideology and Collective Identity	View Paper Details
The Technological Affordances of ‘Alt-Tech’: Uses and Users of Gab.com	View Paper Details
Becoming a TradWife: Female Alt-Right Influencers Online	View Paper Details
“Becoming the Media”: Narratives, Networks and Media Practices and of the German Far-Right Counterpublic	View Paper Details