Window-Shopping the Far-Right: A Comparative Homepage Analysis of Fringe Social Media Spaces

A new wave of websites, known as alternative technology (alt-tech), with far-right-centric content and interactions as their foundation, are proliferating across the internet. The study investigates the recruitment practices of four of these far-right sites, Gab, MeWe, Truth Social, and Gettr, by providing an explanatory examination of their homepages. In outlining the popularisation of the selected fringe social media spaces, the article offers two related research questions: what common discursive themes do fringe media platforms employ to attract and engage their prospective audiences? And why does the far-right need different social media platforms which offer similar affordances? The former outlines the trending topics captivating the international userbase, while the latter delineates the distinct and individualised technocultures generated and promoted within each platform. Consequently, the theoretical foci technoculture – the combinational approach to researching the mix between technology and culture – serves as this study’s framework for better understanding the alt-tech movement. Centering around this blended approach, I provide a novel method to investigate far-right fringe media, combining research on technological structures with user’s online communal experiences. Subsequently, the holistic framework is paired with an immersive methodological technique (netnography) to best capture the platforms’ technocultures. The resulting findings are separated into two interrelated sections: (1) establishing the narrational commonalities, differences, and mechanisms of attraction prompting userbase growth in these far-right spaces; and (2) showcasing that although visual appeal, content types, and specific influencers may differ for each online fringe space, linking these platforms is their interconnected ethos to establish a novel ecosystem of far-right communications. Therefore, I conceptualise alt-tech social media platforms as a cohesive wave of counter-mainstream technoculture, offering different opportunities, values, and narratives for users to form pseudo-societal connections and communities online.