Influence Without Metrics: Analyzing the Impact of Far-Right Users in an Online Discussion Forum

Abstract

The study presented in this article explores the processes through which influence takes shape in eclectic online forums with few vanity metrics. Using a dataset of 7.5 million posts in the large Swedish online discussion forum Flashback, it explores who becomes influential, their strategies for appealing to the community, and others’ support of them. While it has been known that Flashback hosts far-right users and content, the current study shows that these sentiments are not fringe or obscure, but instead seemingly widely supported and influential in the forum. It illustrates that the influential users—those who are supported and acknowledged by others as important—exclusively and continuously expressed far-right ideas and displayed an embeddedness within the far-right, as well as in the forum’s culture. The study finds that despite few visible markers, many users learned to recognize influential users and their far-right content as worthy of support. In the absence of built-in functions, some users engaged in manual “liking” and “sharing” of influential users’ content via their replies, acknowledging it as a way to legitimize them. At the same time, the analysis showcased how a lack of vanity metrics countered potential echo chamber effects in the forum as disliked users—advocating progressive gender and immigration ideas—were unintentionally amplified by those who attempted to silence them. The article also discusses the role of Flashback as a platform in the proliferation of hate.

Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change

“…As of 3 August, 2023, the website claims to have over 1.5 million members and almost 80 million posts. Flashback support anonymity of users, which enables discussion of controversial topics and expression of controversial opinions, including discrimi-nation and racism (Åkerlund, 2021;Blomberg and Stier, 2019;Malmqvist, 2015). While threats and hate speech are not allowed by the rules of Flashback, the website clearly contains offensive language.…”

Political dogwhistles and community divergence in semantic change

“…In this work, we address the role of community in semantic change by studying the semantic change of DWEs in two online communities (Åkerlund, 2022;Bhat and Klein, 2020): Flashback, which is a discussion forum that is known for hosting controversial topics of discussion and for expression of controversial societal opinions (Åkerlund, 2021;Blomberg and Stier, 2019;Malmqvist, 2015); and Familjeliv ("family life" in English), which is a discussion forum that is expected to be very different from Flashback, with its focus on topics of parenting and family life, but also include discussions on politics and society (Hanell and Salö, 2017). We test the isolated change of DWEs hypothesis, i.e., that meaning change of dog-whistles is community-dependent.…”