Mainstreaming white supremacy: a twitter analysis of the American ‘Alt-Right’

Gallaher, Carolyn

doi:10.1080/0966369x.2019.1710472

Cited by 15 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Furthermore, research on the Alt-Right in Europe found that members are often distrustful of traditional media and rely on social media as their primary news source [123]. The central topics of this social media discourse include those social issues found here to be mitigated by trust in conservative media: discrimination against Whites, Islamic terrorism, government corruption, and climate change [117,119]. The mitigating effect of lower trust in conservative media may be explained by the Alt-Right's reliance on this online media environment rather than traditional conservative news sources, wherein specific social issues are emphasized resulting in the interaction effects observed here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…The US has a particularly large and active right-wing digital news infrastructure, which has been associated with increasing distrust in traditional news media [114,115]. Within this broader architecture, the Alt-Right has an expansive online media environment encompassing a variety of platforms and content creators, including dedicated Alt-Right news sites, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, memes, and social media [115][116][117][118][119][120][121]. Furthermore, Alt-Right adjacent communities on YouTube, the Alt-Light, and Intellectual Dark Web, have served as entry points to the more extremist content of the movement [120,122].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right

et al. 2021

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Racial and ethnic division is a mainstay of the American social structure, and today these strains are exacerbated by political binaries. Moreover, the media has become increasingly polarized whereby certain media outlets intensify perceived differences between racial and ethnic groups, political alignments, and religious affiliations. Using data from a recent psychological study of the Alt-Right, we assess the associations between perceptions of social issues, feelings of status threat, trust in conservative media, and affiliation with the Alt-Right among White Americans. We find concern over more conservative social issues along with trust in conservative media explain a large portion of the variation in feelings of status threat among White Americans. Furthermore, more conservative social issues plus feeling of status threat significantly increase the odds of Alt-Right affiliation. Most surprisingly, however, trust in conservative media mitigated, instead of amplified, these associations. Implications and calls for future research are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right

et al. 2021

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“…Participants indicated their level of agreement to this statement using a 1-7 Likert-scale from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree" (M = 1.98, SD = 1.59). Note that although we referred to this identity as "alt-right identity, " we later discovered this is a common term used by white nationalists to make their identity and ideology seem more palatable (Gallaher, 2020). As the definition presented to participants was explicitly framed as an endorsement of white nationalism, we will refer to it as that throughout the rest of the paper.…”

Section: White Nationalist Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Not just a game: Identity fusion and extremism in gaming cultures

Kowert¹,

Martel

Swann

2022

Front. Commun.

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Extremist ideologies have clearly become increasingly prevalent in the world of video games. What is less clear, however, is the mechanism through which these ideologies make their way into the psyches of gamers. Here we focus on the potential role of identity fusion in the radicalization of video gamers. In three studies, we show that fusion with gaming culture is uniquely predictive of a host of socially pernicious outcomes, including racism, sexism, and endorsement of extreme behaviors. We also show that specific personality attributes (e.g., insecure attachment, loneliness) may interact with fusion with gaming culture to further amplify support for extreme behavior, and that specific gaming communities (e.g., Call of Duty) may serve as catalysts that encourage strongly fused gamers to embrace antisocial attitudes and behaviors. These findings contribute to a theoretical understanding of the psychological processes that foment radicalization and guide the development of strategies for discouraging extremist ideologies in gaming spaces.

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“…Terror attacks facilitate hostility against outgroupseven amongst non-radicalised, ordinary individuals -and thus render radicalised content more tolerable (Fischer-Preßler et al, 2019). Linked to ideological radicalism, this effect is also referred to as mainstreaming (Gallaher, 2020). The aim of mainstreaming is to silently shift the public discourse towards more radical positions without being perceived as doing so.…”

Section: Far-right Discourse and Behaviour In Digital Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From solidarity to blame game: A computational approach to comparing far-right and general public Twitter discourse in the aftermath of the Hanau terror attack

Hohner¹,

Schulze²,

Greipl³

et al. 2022

SCM

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Terror attacks are followed by public shock and disorientation. Previous research has found that people use social media to collectively negotiate responses, interpretations, and sense-making in the aftermath of terror attacks. However, the role of ideologically motivated discussions and their relevance to the overall discourse have not been studied. This paper addresses this gap and focuses specifically on the far-right discourse, comparing it to the general public Twitter discourse following the terror attack in Hanau in 2020. A multi-method approach combines network analysis and structural topic modelling to analyse 237,000 tweets. We find responsibility attribution to be one of the central themes: The general discourse primarily voiced sympathy with the victims and attributed responsibility for the attack to farright terror or activism. In contrast, the far right - in an attempt to reshape the general narrative - raised a plethora of arguments to shift the attribution of responsibility from far-right activism towards the (political) elite and the personal circumstances of the shooter. In terms of information sharing and seeking, we demonstrate that new information was contextualised differentially depending on the ideological stance. The results are situated in the scientific discourse concerning differences in social media communication ensuing terrorist attacks.

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Mainstreaming white supremacy: a twitter analysis of the American ‘Alt-Right’

Cited by 15 publications

References 21 publications

Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right

Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right

Not just a game: Identity fusion and extremism in gaming cultures

From solidarity to blame game: A computational approach to comparing far-right and general public Twitter discourse in the aftermath of the Hanau terror attack

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