How the Far-Right Polarises Twitter: 'Highjacking' Hashtags in Times of COVID-19

10 Pages Posted: 13 Oct 2020 Last revised: 27 Nov 2020

See all articles by Philipp Darius

Philipp Darius

Hertie School - Centre for Digital Governance

Fabian Stephany

University of Oxford - Oxford Internet Institute; Bruegel; Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society

Date Written: October 12, 2020

Abstract

Twitter influences political debates. Phenomena like fake news and hate speech show that political discourse on micro-blogging can become strongly polarised by algorithmic enforcement of selective perception. Some political actors actively employ strategies to facilitate polarisation on Twitter, as past contributions show, via strategies of 'hashjacking'; the use of someone else’s hashtag in order to promote one's own social media agenda. For the example of COVID-19 related hashtags and their retweet networks, we examine the case of partisan accounts of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and their potential use of 'hashjacking' in May 2020. Our findings indicate that polarisation of political party hashtags has not changed significantly in the last two years. We see that right-wing partisans are actively and effectively polarising the discourse by 'hashjacking' COVID-19 related hashtags, like #CoronaVirusDE or #FlattenTheCurve. This polarisation strategy is dominated by the activity of a limited set of heavy users. The results underline the necessity to understand the dynamics of discourse polarisation, as an active political communication strategy of the far-right, by only a handful of very active accounts.

Keywords: COVID-19, Twitter, Hashtag, Polarisation, Networks, Political Communication

JEL Classification: D70

Suggested Citation

Darius, Philipp and Stephany, Fabian, How the Far-Right Polarises Twitter: 'Highjacking' Hashtags in Times of COVID-19 (October 12, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3709988 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3709988

Philipp Darius

Hertie School - Centre for Digital Governance ( email )

Friedrichstr. 180
Berlin, 10117
Germany

Fabian Stephany (Contact Author)

University of Oxford - Oxford Internet Institute ( email )

1 St. Giles
University of Oxford
Oxford OX1 3PG Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire OX1 3JS
United Kingdom

Bruegel ( email )

Rue de la Charité 33
B-1210 Brussels Belgium, 1210
Belgium

Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society ( email )

Bebelplatz 1 | 10099
Berlin
Germany

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