Patterns of Radicalisation on Gab in Relation to Vaccine Discourses

The next speakers at AoIR 2022 are my QUT colleagues Ashwin Nagappa and Ehsan Dehghan, whose research focusses on alternative social media platforms like Gab: how does radicalisation take place there? The present project investigates this especially in relation to vaccine discourses during the COVID-19 pandemic, and also takes into account the flows of information between Gab and other platforms.

The project drew on the Gab API to gather gabs both on the generic keyword ‘music’ and on ‘vaccination’, and in doing so found that gab is being used both for generic social media discussions and for more distinct, far-right-aligned discourses. For the latter, the lack of opposing discourses, and the constant amplification of resonant discourses and sources, can lead to radicalisation on topics and discourses.

As a Mastodon-based platform, Gab sits awkwardly besides the Mastodon-enabled Fediverse, from which it is largely excluded. But it does participate in a larger alternative ecosystem of alternative sites that include the video sharing platform BitChute, the messaging platform Telegram, and Odysee, from which content is being shared on Gab and which themselves share Gab content. This is not platform-driven platformisation as it exists in the mainstream social media sphere, and which is largely intended to commercially exploit user data, but much more driven by the users themselves.

So the user community itself is extending their ideological networks and discourses across these platforms, and alternative economics and logics enable users to participate on platforms across such decentralised networks. More research is required to explore these decentralised cross-platform processes more fully, for both far-right discourses and more generic social media uses.