By Stuart Macdonald, Kamil Yilmaz, Chamin Herath, J.M. Berger, Suraj Lakhani, Lella Nouri, & Maura Conway

Focus on violent and non-violent activities and content in online spaces has yielded valuable insights into the evolution of extremist exploitation of social media and the internet. Over the past decade, much attention has been dedicated to understanding jihadist—particularly the so-called Islamic State’s—use of popular social media platforms and encrypted messaging apps to spread propaganda and entice followers. In recent years, however, attention to far-right extremist exploitation of online spaces has been growing. 1: As Conway, Scrivens, and Macnair have comprehensively documented, 2: right-wing extremist (a subset of the broader far-right) online communities have a lengthy history, transitioning from dial-up bulletin board systems; to static websites and online forums; to social media platforms, messaging and other communication “apps.” While far-right online communities were and still are largely decentralized, these communities can be considered loosely interconnected, their online interdependence tracing back to the “hot-links” page on the original Stormfront internet forum where outlinks to like-minded websites and forums were posted. Far-right, including right-wing extremist, online communities have since been described as an “ecosystem,” consisting of various types of online spaces or “entities” (e.g., websites, social media platforms). 3: Still, the actual extent to which these networks are interdependent or overlapping, as opposed to largely insulated groupings, platforms, and activities, remains to be fully interrogated. Doing so requires more localized research efforts, focused on identifying the nature of content shared and platforms used in far-right communities and ecosystems online to more fully examine interconnections between them.

Resolve Network, 2022. 48p.