White supremacists anonymous: how digital media emotionally energize far-right movements
Journal article, 2023

Digital media platforms have been implicated in the recent rise of far-right extremism. This study proposes that these platforms afford emotional processes that lie at the core of far-right movements. Drawing on Randall Collins’ interactional framework and the literature on cultural trauma, we investigate the emotional processes triggered by traumatic experiences within far-right online communities. As a case, we examine how the white supremacist community Stormfront responded to the 2008 election of Barack Obama, by analyzing the complete datasets of discussion on the forum through a combination of computational methods and qualitative analysis. Our findings suggest that the community functioned as a “emotional refuge”, where members collectively interpreted and transformed their emotional reactions, thereby shaping an emotionally energized collective with a focused target of collective action.

online hate

Far-right online

emotional processes

Stormfront

cultural trauma

interaction ritual chains

Author

Anton Törnberg

University of Gothenburg

Petter Törnberg

University of Amsterdam

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Physical Resource Theory

Journal of Information Technology and Politics

1933-1681 (ISSN) 1933-169X (eISSN)

Vol. In Press

Subject Categories

Sociology (excluding Social work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)

Law and Society

DOI

10.1080/19331681.2023.2262459

More information

Latest update

10/19/2023