An Analysis of Interactions Within and Between Extreme Right Communities in Social Media

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the activity and interactions of extreme right groups on Twitter, revealing international connections, stable communities, and associated ideological topics through network and content analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive network and topic analysis of extreme right groups on social media, highlighting international links and community structures.

Findings

Identification of international relationships between groups

Discovery of stable local communities with identifiable ideology

Analysis of topics associated with different communities

Abstract

Many extreme right groups have had an online presence for some time through the use of dedicated websites. This has been accompanied by increased activity in social media platforms in recent years, enabling the dissemination of extreme right content to a wider audience. In this paper, we present an analysis of the activity of a selection of such groups on Twitter, using network representations based on reciprocal follower and interaction relationships, while also analyzing topics found in their corresponding tweets. International relationships between certain extreme right groups across geopolitical boundaries are initially identified. Furthermore, we also discover stable communities of accounts within local interaction networks, in addition to associated topics, where the underlying extreme right ideology of these communities is often identifiable.