Transnational Tactics Employed by Digital Networks on the Far-Right and the Case of the #120db Campaign

As digital information providers increasingly aim to offer their content irrespective of geological location of their respective audiences, transnational, horizontal data flows become an important factor in explaining the proliferation of political information. When news stories spread, interpretative communities gather around them and engage in the dissemination and re-framing of specific events. While national audiences throughout western democracies become more fragmented, knowledge stocks come to diverge strongly based on selective reception and interpretation of events. Increasingly, however, transnational communities appear to hold views that might be more akin to comparable groups in other national contexts. This transnational spread and exchange of cultural memes and political discourses creates new possibilities for political ideologies and interests to mobilize and coordinate their efforts, all the while circumventing the traditional gatekeeping mechanisms of any particular national media regime. In recent years, this trend has been particularly apparent on the political right, where new parties and online communities have established pan-European and transatlantic networks through which anti-immigrant rhetoric, EU-skepticism and anti-liberal sentiments are reinforced. The paper presented will carve out some of the conceptual underpinnings needed to address these dynamics, while presenting data on a specific case study through which they might be observed. The example will focus on the transnational tactics and coordination behind the “120 decibels” campaign, launched by German far-right activists in early 2018. This case presents a combination of specific strategies heralded by US-based websites, which latches on to the transnational cultural discussion initially spawned by the politically progressive #metoo campaign.