MAFNET · From Keyboard Warrior to Digital Army: Mapping Far-Right Networked Publics

From Keyboard Warrior to Digital Army: Mapping Far-Right Networked Publics

In an era marked by online extremism and increasing levels of social polarization, there is resounding interest within public debate on the appropriate role that technology companies should take to address harmful activity. Companies have developed content moderation tools that include deplatforming, demonetization, algorithmic changes, and search result manipulation. However, content moderation measures have been applied disproportionately and often unsystematically with regard to far-right content. Partly this is due to lack of definitional and legal consensus, with policies and community guidelines varying across platforms. On the other hand, hate and hate speech is dealt with as a separate category from (violent) extremism and terrorism, despite ideological overlap in content. Increasingly, platforms’ content policies and content moderation tools face difficulty addressing harmful content that may be deemed ‘borderline’ (i.e., lawful but awful), falling short of violating terms of service if not explicitly illegal. Another pressing challenge is that far-right users of technology are especially well adept at circumventing regulation of their activity, through tactics like coded language and visual manipulation, or adapting to community norms. The emergence of far-right networked publics, or a public sphere structured by networked technologies, constitutes an imagined community of far-right users who engage and interact with each other due to their shared exploitative practices of technology infrastructure. Looking beyond the behaviour of individual users (i.e., keyboard warriors) towards the collective action of users (i.e., digital army), we can understand the ways in which far-right networked publics develop and consolidate in reaction to content policy and moderation measures of tech companies. The objectives of the MAFNET project were to examine the decision making processes surrounding social media platforms’ content policies on extremism and terrorism, with particular focus on measures targeting far-right content and users. By drawing attention to various stages of content policy such as development, implementation, and enforcement, combined with a focus on content that presents specific challenges with regards to legality and user circumvention, this project explored the challenges of platform governance on far-right content. To assess the dynamics of digital regulation, the MAFNET project conducted qualitative interviews and fieldwork with tech company employees who oversee content policies on extremism and terrorism in Europe and North America. The project found that governance of online extremism and terrorism must be situated within a broader ecosystem of tech companies engaging with stakeholders across government, security services, industry, and civil society.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union