Abstract
This article sheds light on mechanisms by which online social interactions contribute to instigating far-right political violence. It presents an analysis of how violence against ethnic and religious minorities is motivated and legitimized in social media, as well as the situational conditions for such violent rhetoric. Online violent rhetoric in a Swedish public far-right social media discussion group was studied using a combination of machine-learning tools and qualitative analysis. The analysis shows that violent rhetoric primarily occurs in the context of narratives about criminals and crimes with (imagined) immigrant perpetrators and often particularly vulnerable victims, linked to a social problem definition of a corrupt and failing state as well as the alleged need to deport immigrants. The use of dehumanizing and infrahumanizing expressions both legitimizes political violence and spurs negative emotions that may increase motivation for violent action.
Highlights
We have argued that online media – and in particular, social media – provide a central context for far-right violence
Whereas other contemporary studies have demonstrated correlations between social media activity and political violence, this study contributes to understanding why these correlations appear
We argue that the character, distribution and reach of explicitly violent and dehumanizing rhetoric is key to understanding the more direct causal role of social media activity for political violence
Summary
This trend is visible in electoral successes of parliamentary parties, changes in popular discourse and emerging protest mobilizations. A better understanding of the impact of social media requires identifying and analysing statements that motivate violence, legitimize/support violence and/or express the intention of using violence for political purposes, as well as the situational context in which they tend to occur. By studying such micro-dynamics, we aim to unpack mechanisms behind correlations between the social media activity and violent actions demonstrated by authors such as Müller and Schwarz (2020)
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