For @VOX_Pol, my latest research is out today, examining at the online networks of the alt-right. A quick thread about the top-line findings ensues.
voxpol.eu/new-research-r…
voxpol.eu/new-research-r…
For me, the most important conclusion found from examining the content of nearly 30,000 alt-right Twitter accounts is that the alt-right is better understood as an extremist political bloc than as an ideological movement.
Under the alt-right umbrella we find a fragmented landscape of very disparate beliefs, focuses and influencers. For instance, the overwhelming majority of YouTube content was shared only a handful of times by the network, rather than going viral.
The overwhelmingly dominant ideological element in the network revolved around white supremacy, but even here there were competing and disconnected strains, as well as some subsets of the network not *overtly* concerned with that issue at all.
Some top influencers in the network were people who have repudiated the alt-right label altogether, including some who did so specifically to repudiate its white nationalist aspect. Reasonable people may find those repudiations suspect, of course.
One thing overwhelmingly united the network and accounted for most of its cohesion, and that was support for U.S. President Donald Trump. Pro-Trump content crossed all sub-cultural lines and exponentially drowned out virtually all other content.
Absent support for Trump, it is highly debatable whether this network would be able to hold together as a bloc. Numerically, it's the defining trait of the network. The most-common word by far in user profiles was MAGA, the most-common word pair was "Trump supporter."
This report provides an overview of the activity as a network. In a follow-up article within the next week or two, I will write more about the factions within the alt-right, the competition among them, and which ones are winning. Stay tuned! voxpol.eu/new-research-r…
For more about how all this works, check out my new book, Extremism. If you find work like the Alt-Right Twitter Census helpful, supporting the book is the best way to support the work. And thanks! amzn.to/2MhXwgQ
