"White girl summer": Far-right women influencers and online radicalization

This presentation is based on three years of digital ethnographic research into the world of far-right women influencers on Instagram and YouTube who engage in metapolitical activism to recruit, radicalize, and propagandize far-right ideology. It analyzes how these influencers strategically employ qualities of authenticity, accessibility, relatability, and responsiveness on social media for a legitimizing and normalizing effect of their ideology towards mainstream appeal. Compared to their male counterparts, these women enjoy an almost unrestricted presence on mainstream social media platforms given their "apolitical" content creation focused on issues of femininity, motherhood, and health and wellness, despite serving as extremely politicized content when situated within their broader role as wives and mothers of the movement. By partaking in coded language embedded into lifestyle content, these far-right women influencers advance extreme views while reaching new followers and audiences. Although the study focuses on North American women, it explores transnational connections with far-right female activists in Europe. Accordingly, it argues that these influencers showcase a 'transnational sisterhood' manifested through acts of global far-right activism such as rallies, demonstrations, conferences, and online 'collabs'. These displays of solidarity and female friendship reflect a cultivated social media performance that ultimately fosters gendered narratives of in-group identity and community building within the far right.