Enemies of the radical right: the role of online discursive opportunities in shaping far-right’s othering language

Research on online political mobilization often generalizes the results of single social media platform (SMP) studies to all social media. This is problematic, as the architecture of SMPs vary, which affects how these platforms can be employed for political communication. This study transfers the concept of discursive opportunities into the online sphere, in order to account for variations in hateful language used across different social media platforms. A cross-platform comparative approach of posts by European far-right party leaders on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram shows how far-right politicians adapt their content to the digital architectural features of social media platforms. The findings of the paper state that populist radical right discourse takes on different forms across different media. Variations of such discursive practices can be linked to changes of platforms over time, both in their technical aspects and the broadening of their audiences. The paper provides thus novel insights in how technological opportunity structures shape modern-day political communication of the far-right.