Description

Since 2018, several more terror attacks have taken place, connected to actors who were inspired by far-right beliefs. The contemporary far-right—united in the belief of an impending ‘white extinction’—depend on social media and online platforms to connect, recruit, and stabilise themselves as movements, as well as disseminate harmful ideologies and propaganda (Bhatt, 2021; Munn, 2021; Scrivens & Amarasingam, 2020).

PhD student Angus Lindsay's research will interrogate the ways in which these socially destructive beliefs travel by examining how the technological affordances of digital spaces shape social fields. Angus will examine how algorithmic and architectural features of social media platforms continuously (re)structure the Far-Right social field (Aral, 2020; Zuboff, 2019). Angus will also conduct a longitudinal study of New Zealand’s far-right websites and forums and adapt Asquith’s (2013) Verbal Textual Hostilities measure and Bourdieu’s Practice Theory to analyse the language, narratives and beliefs that are prevalent in the New Zealand far-right field.

This will build on existing literature to show links between global far-right ideologies and reveal insights into how far-right social fields respond to and are (re)structured through digital-technologies (Bhatt, 2021; Bourdieu, 1977; Copsey, 2021).