Abstract
In recent years, the reach and influence of far-right ideologies have been extended through online communities with devastating effects in the real world. In this research, we examine how far-right online communities can be empowered by socio-political events that are significant to them. Using over 14 years of data extracted from an Australian national sub-forum of a global online white supremacist community, we investigate whether the group cohesion of the community is affected by local race riots. Our analysis shows that the online community, not only became more cohesive after the riots, but was also reinvigorated by highly active new members who joined during the week of the riots or soon after. These changes were maintained over the longer-term, highlighting pervasive ramifications of the local socio-political context for this white supremacist community. Pre-registered analyses of data extracted from other white supremacist online communities (in South Africa and the United Kingdom) show similar effects on some of the indicators of group cohesion, but of reduced magnitude, and not as enduring as the effects found in the context of the Australian far-right online community.
Highlights
Far-right political groups have been entering the mainstream of politics in many Western nations, arguably aided by a political climate dominated by mistrust, intergroup tensions, and increasing authoritarian attitudes [1,2,3,4]
Because the number of posts was significantly greater over the period immediately before and after the riots than at any other time in the forum’s history, we used the riots as the reference point to assess changes in group cohesion of the online community
Our findings provide evidence on how significant socio-political events ‘in real life’ can unite and reinvigorate particular white supremacist online communities
Summary
Far-right political groups have been entering the mainstream of politics in many Western nations, arguably aided by a political climate dominated by mistrust, intergroup tensions, and increasing authoritarian attitudes [1,2,3,4]. More general support for the far-right movement, has been boosted by online communities of activists. Such communities are dangerous, because they undermine trust, create division, and increase intergroup tensions in society, and because they provide isolated extremists with virtual communities of support. Given the growing influence that online far-right communities can wield in a technologically networked world [9, 10], we seek to investigate how such groups might become more cohesive, and more influential in society. We focus on examining how the internal cohesion of particular far-right online communities may be affected by offline socio-political events of significance to these communities
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