EXTREMISMStudy Links Hard-Right Social Media with Incidents of Civil Unrest

Published 11 April 2023

An increase in social media activity on “hard-right” platforms — those that purport to represent viewpoints not welcome on “mainstream” platforms — contributes to rightwing civil unrest in the United States, according to a new study. A new Yale-led study finds evidence that social media activity on hard-right platforms contributes to political unrest offline. “The magnitude of the effect we found is modest but two characteristics of social media and civil unrest caution against dismissing it,” said Yale sociologist Daniel Karell.

An increase in social media activity on “hard-right” platforms — those that purport to represent viewpoints not welcome on “mainstream” platforms — contributes to rightwing civil unrest in the United States, according to a new study led by Yalesociologist Daniel Karell.

In an analysis of data from hard-right social media activity and incidents of civil unrest that occurred “offline” nationally between January 2020 and January 2021, the researchers found that a 10% increase in hard-right social media activity predicts a .04% increase in the number of hard-right civil unrest events during the following month.

“The magnitude of the effect we found is modest but two characteristics of social media and civil unrest caution against dismissing it,” said Karell, assistant professor of sociology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the study’s lead author. “First, hard-right social media platforms are easy to join, increasingly popular, and attracting more than a billion dollars in investment, meaning activity on them could grow rapidly. Second, as demonstrated by the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, a single incident of hard-right civil unrest can be very consequential.”

A secondary analysis showed evidence that activity on hard-right social media shifts users’ perceptions of social norms in a way that aligns with their previously held views, especially when users see their own speech being echoed in the rhetoric of hard-right “elites” on social media — prominent pundits, celebrities, and politicians whose content is amplified by the platforms. This change in understanding of social norms makes users more likely to engage in contentious activity once considered taboo.

The study, published in the journal American Sociological Review, was coauthored by Andrew Linke of the University of Utah, Edward Holland of the University of Arkansas, and Edward Hendrickson, who served as Karell’s research assistant at Yale.

The researchers define “hard-right social media” similarly to platforms and websites commonly known as “alt-tech.” Like alt-tech platforms, hard-right social media platforms claim to support viewpoints unwelcome on mainstream platforms or within the corporations that operate them. But they differ from other alt-tech platforms in two ways. First, while they often describe themselves as open forums dedicated to free speech, they are all but exclusively used by political conservatives, the researchers explained. Second, they have a strong focus on financial gain and profit, whereas a lot of alt-tech — at least in its early generation — eschewed profit-making.