r/The_Donald Had a Forum: How Socialization in Far-Right Social Media Communities Shapes Identity and Spreads Extreme Rhetoric

• Published date: 01 July 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X241240429
• Author: Vivian Ferrillo
• Date: 01 July 2024

Article

American Politics Research

2024, Vol. 52(4) 432–450

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X241240429

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r/The_Donald Had a Forum: How

Socialization in Far-Right Social Media

Communities Shapes Identity and Spreads

Extreme Rhetoric

Vivian Ferrillo

1

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Abstract

Can engagement with far-right social media communities socialize users into a new political identity? This study addresses

concerns about the spread of far-right groups on mainstream social media platforms by examining how newcomers are affected

by their engagement with these groups. I theorize that changes in social identity expression indicative of socialization will be

measurable in the language users use to express themselves on social media, and that the magnitude of this linguistic change will

intensify with more frequent far-right engagement. I develop a custom dictionary of far-right-relevant terms sourced from

communities like The Daily Stormer and Stormfront. Using an original dataset of Reddit user posting histories from2015–2017, I

test for increases in the frequency of this far-right vocabulary. I find that users whoengage often with a far-right community like

r/The_Donald begin to sound more like white nationalists within three months. Socialized users also use far-right vocabulary

more frequently in other spaces on their platform, contributing to the spread and normalization of far-right rhetoric.

Keywords

alternative right, reddit, far-right communities, political socialization, social media

Introduction

How much influence do far-right groups on social media exert

over their members’identities? Concerns about the strong

hold social media communities might have on members have

grown since 2016, when a far-right digital movement calling

itself the “alternative right”(or, “alt-right”) broke out of

cyberspace and onto the national stage. The alt-right chal-

lenged preconceptions of American political identity and

digital mobilization by demonstrating that fringe groups with

relatively few members can significantly change the narrative

of a US presidential election, influence the rhetoric of

prominent politicians, and shift policy debates.

The alt-right is one of many concerning far-right move-

ments propagating their ideas on major social media plat-

forms like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. Of course, far-right

groups do not only influence the rhetoric and narratives of

“in-real-life”(IRL) politics; they can also inculcate civil

unrest and violence. Social media communities like these

have repeatedly enabled acts of mass violence against reli-

gious and ethnic minorities. These communities provide

radicalizing misinformation, peer validation, and in some

cases a literal audience for these acts. For example, in May

2022, ten Black Americans were killed in a racially motivated

mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New

York. The shooter, Payton Gendron, had spent months

learning about racist conspiracy theories in far-right com-

munities on 4chan and Discord. Gendron posted a seven-

hundred-page diary to social media detailing his plan to

commit this act in the city with the highest concentration of

Black people within driving distance of his house. He then

livestreamed parts of the attack to members of a private

Discord community he belonged to (Frosch et al., 2022).

Gendron’s attack serves as a stark reminder that interactions

with racist or conspiratorial communities on social media

have likely played a role in deadly attacks on racial, ethnic,

and religious minorities (e.g. Collins, 2017;Kirkpatrick,

2019).

Acts of domestic terror are the most visible symptoms of

far-right community influence, but they represent only the tip

of a much larger iceberg. The proliferation of white

1

College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Vivian Ferrillo, Department of Government, College of William & Mary,

P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795, USA.

Email: vferrillo@wm.edu

nationalist and conspiratorial communities on major social

media platforms has garnered a number of normative con-

cerns about larger sociopolitical effects: the promotion of

white nationalism (Romano, 2016), the normalization of hate

speech against minorities and women (Southern Poverty Law,

2018;Ward, 2018), and the spread of misinformation and

conspiracy theories (Klein and Dunn, 2019;Zadrozny &

Collins, 2018), to name just a few. All of the above con-

cerns are grounded in the assumption that social media users

are at risk of being influenced by these groups and their

content. Recent works have made inroads into understanding

the characteristics of far-right audience members (e.g.

Schulze, 2020;Klein et al., 2019), but what the initial rad-

icalization process might look like—and whether it affects all

viewers or just the predisposed—remains more mysterious.

We also struggle to measure the short-term effects of these

encounters on social identity expression.

To address these gaps, I extend theories of political so-

cialization into the digital context, asking if online com-

munities are providing political socialization experiences

similar to those found in traditional civic groups. This paper

focuses on three major questions: (1) Do digital communities

socialize members in similar ways as churches or labor

unions?; (2) If so, can they socialize newcomers into a social

identity well outside of the political mainstream?; and (3) Do

socialized individuals proceed to spread far-right notions

outside of far-right spaces?

Using social media conversation and activity data from the

period in which far-right social media communities became

salient, 2015–2017, I find that users who have never inter-

acted with far-right social media communities on the platform

before “sound”more like white nationalists within a few

months of engagement. When users interact with far-right

social media communities full of racist, sexist, and conspiracy

theory-laden content, they rapidly adopt terms that reference

that content in order to signal their assimilation into the group

identity. They make more references to anti-Semitic con-

spiracy theories, Islamophobic memes, and racial slurs. And

in a result suggestive of socialization, the most active users

become more willing to use far-right language outside of far-

right spaces. I conclude that far-right social media commu-

nities teach members important markers of social identity

such as group-specific language, and that socialized users

contribute to the spread and normalization of far-right rheto ric

elsewhere on the platform.

The Digitization of Political Socialization

Group membership is central to our understanding of political

identity and socialization (Campbell et al., 1960). Party

identification is best understood as a set of overlapping group

or social identities initially transmitted from our families and

early social context and later refined, as individuals sort

themselves into parties based on group stereotypes (Green

et al., 2002;Jennings et al., 2009;Layman & Carsey, 2002;

Mason, 2018). Social-psychological perspectives on parti-

sanship treat political identity like other central and emo-

tionally loaded social identities (e.g. religious identity). The

perceptual screen that forms between a strongly politically

identified person and their information environment struc-

tures political behavior, attitudes toward the out-party, and

ability to update opinions based on new information (Green

et al., 2002;Lippmann, 1922). Recent theories of partisan

megaidentities suggest that the perceptual screen is becoming

ever more influential (Mason, 2018). Today, a change in an

individual’s political identity may also induce changes in the

many zones of their life currently structured by politics,

including behavior on social media platforms, media selec-

tion, and elements of identity expression like rhetoric.

It is through a process of political socialization that young

Americans acquire in- and out-group attitudes that shape

other political attitudes in adulthood. Traditionally, sociali-

zation is understood as a process of top-down intergenera-

tional transmission of political knowledge and norms from

older adults to youths, occuring primarily in the home and

traditional civil society. Youthslearn aboutpolitical and civic

participation from their parents and early social context

(Andolina et al., 2003;Verba et al., 1995,2005). They also

learn about politically relevant group attitudes such as par-

tisan animosity (Tyler & Iyengar, 2022), ethnic and racial

identity and prejudice (Sears & Levy, 2003), and gender

attitudes (Cunningham, 2001).

More recent work questions the uniform fit of the social or

family transmission models and suggests that socialization is

a more contextually dependent and dynamic process than

previously conceptualized. Community group involvement

can take a more central role where political socialization in

the home is weak (Jennings et al., 2009), or where partici-

pation in a civic organization is particularly meaningful

(Frisco et al., 2004). Immigration, socioeconomic, or class

status also affect the manner and site of political socialization.

For example, the children of immigrants are less likely to

learn about politics in the home than their third-generation

peers (Humphries et al., 2013), and the children of working-

class parents may learn more about the structural disad-

vantages they will experience in the political system than

their middle-class peers (Lareau, 2018). Young people can

learn about political behaviors and attitudes from perceived

socially integrated peers in their social networks, suggesting

that young people are socialized in peer contexts as well as

family and community contexts (Settle et al., 2011). And

finally, socialization may be a dynamic and recurrent process.

Political identities can change in response to a change in

social context or new attitude toward one’s group after the

influence of early childhood fades, into our twenties or thirties

(Franklin, 1984;Lewis-Beck et al., 2008;Niemi & Jennings,

1991). Even group attitudes like racial attitudes that were

previously long understood as causally prior to political

identity, have become more dynamic in recent years; for

example, Americans increasingly demonstrate a willingness

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