An analysis of social media content shared by right-wing extremist groups in the United States, the Great Britain and Australia

Abstract

The extreme right movements have increasingly appeared on social media, especially on Twitter and Facebook, coinciding with the 2019 New Zealand attack, the 2019 El Paso incident, and Britain's exit from the European Union in 2020. This study examines the content and the form of extreme right-wing activities on Facebook and Twitter to promote their ideologies. A qualitative content analysis was conducted on posts shared by extreme-right groups on public Facebook and Twitter accounts in Great Britain, the United States and Australia. The sample spans from March 15, 2019 to February 5, 2020. The posts were coded according to a coding instrument developed based on the existing literature spreading extremist ideologies on social media. The coding instrument consisted of categories and subcategories such as 'the protection of western values', 'anti-LGBT activism', 'anti-feminism', 'anti-Islam', 'anti-immigrant sentiments', 'fostering the white race', and 'anti-elitist populism'. Findings suggest that the most prevalent extremist ideologies on Facebook and Twitter posts were 'anti-elitist populism' and 'the protection of western values'. Also, extremist groups heavily shared posts that combined texts and images to spread their ideologies on social media.