Mapping Far-Right Networks in Germany across Platforms

The next paper in this ECREA 2022 session is Azade Kakavand, whose study compares far-right networks across multiple platforms. Far-right here means a broad grouping that also includes the radical and extreme right, as well as both electoral and non-electoral groups. The networks between these actors may be affected by the different affordances that the various social media platforms offer.

The literature so far tells us that Facebook appears to be used especially for international connections between different political actors, and for sharing mainstream and alternative news; on Twitter there are denser networks within countries or language spaces, which are also used to produce trending topics and create influence; YouTube provides connections via commenting on alternative, far-right media spaces, but the lack of subscription requirements means that networks can be looser; on Telegram there are multiple groups and channels, and people frequently move to new channels if they feel that their existing channels have been flagged or reported; on Instagram, trolls and users work together to attack opponents, and there is a coordination of attacks against enemies, with actors also deleting their content again in order to avoid deplatforming.

The present study compared networks based on the on-sharing of messages (except for YouTube, where channel subscriptions were used), and identified these networks with a 3.5-iteration snowball sample based on a seed list of German far-right actors. 40 seeds were used for each platforms; on Facebook this produced 4,500 pages, YouTube had 1,400 channels in the network.

The Facebook network was dominated by an AfD cluster centred around official AfD pages as well as an anti-Greens election campaign page, but various other clusters also appeared: this included a cluster around mainstream news in Germany (but also connected with the fascist NPD), for example. On YouTube, the network was more modular, with a broader range of clusters: a key cluster is around gaming culture (and thus perhaps related to gamergate); another is both against COVID-19 and against migration, but also connects with Bild and Der Spiegel; another is centred around the conspiracy theorist chef Attila Hildmann; and another contains far-right alternative media.

Further platforms will be included in this analysis at a later stage, and the distinct nature of network on YouTube needs to be further theorised. Also, the Facebook network does not contain groups so far, which also don’t appear much in the page data.