Turning economic into political power: Social media companies and the European far-right

Since the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2025, the convergence between digital platform CEOs and the far right has become increasingly apparent. Meta’s revised content policies, which now permit discriminatory expressions based on gender and immigration status; Elon Musk’s symbolic and financial support for far-right actors in Europe; and the broader tendency to portray platform revenue models as embodiments of “free speech”—together, these developments illustrate how social media companies have shifted from presenting themselves as inclusive, democratic spaces to positioning themselves as bulwarks against the so-called “woke, green left.” Political science has been comparatively slow to conceptualise the political impact of social media companies and to examine how these firms translate their economic power over digital discourse into political influence. While substantial attention has been devoted to platform content - particularly on online hate speech and far-right narratives in European public spheres (e.g., Galpin 2021) and the risks of disinformation for democracy (e.g., Miller & Vaccari 2020) - the broader, structural political powers of social media companies has received far less scrutiny (Farkas & Mondon 2025; Srivastava 2023). Crucially, this power is especially visible in relation to the far right, with US actors now increasingly directing their efforts at Europe, expanding their reach. This paper develops a conceptual framework for understanding how social media companies convert economic capital into political power in the context of the rise of the European far-right. Drawing on political economy, communication studies, and democratic theory, it offers an interdisciplinary account of the political influence these companies wield, contributing to a topic that remains understudied in political science. In particular, the paper examines how platform–user relationships are gradually reshaping state–citizen relations, as the tech sector is now the most trusted business sector (Edelman Trust Barometer), while people’s trust in European governments and the EU is on a steady decline. It then explores how this form of political power is transforming the public sphere, destabilising previously accepted norms of political discourse and democratic practice across Europe amid rising political volatility and the proliferation of right-wing conspiracy narratives. Together, the paper argues that this emergent political power is rooted in platforms’ advertising-based revenue and business model, which structurally favours and amplifies far-right agendas—often under the guise of libertarianism and free-market ideology.