Patterns of Elite Radicalisation through Right-Wing ‘News’ Sites

The first panel session at the ECREA PolCom 2023 conference that I’m attending starts with a presentation by Curd Knüpfer, on elite radicalisation. The context for this is the pattern of elite-level radicalisation especially on the political right in a number of countries: this leads to a form of asymmetric polarisation, where the right drifts far further to the extremes than the left, in part through the influence of right-wing “alternative” “news” sites (the abundance of share quotes here is quite deliberate, Curd says).

This also follows a reconceptualisation of communication flows, to match the hybrid media systems that we now find ourselves. The flow of communication between media, policy-makers, and the public within these systems is being affected by this new category of right-wing media. What is the role of these sites in establishing highly partisan agendas, and what are the directionalities of information flows between them and the rest of the media system?

The project builds on data from 2017 to 2021, covering congressional newsletters, Congress members’ Twitter accounts, and right-wing news sites in the US. It explores a number of case studies on specific topics: the first of these, and the focus of this presentation, is Critical Race Theory as a floating signifier amongst the right, and its uptake by Republican Congress members as well as right-wing news sites like Daily Caller, Fox News, and Breitbart; right-wing news sites in particular appear to be in lockstep on this issue, and the tweeting activities of Republican members of Congress are closely interrelated too. Tweeting patterns also reflect networks of members (e.g. the ‘freedom caucus’ and other groupings).

Further analysis of additional cases is needed to explore whether these patterns hold across topics, however.