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The far right is increasingly relying on visual and less extreme online communication, for instance by using memes, to strategically mainstream their ideology. The use of humor in particular renders their communication more relatable to a mainstream audience. However, little is known about the actual impacts of the different content characteristics they employ to become more appealing, in particular on less moderated platforms that function as safe online spaces for extremist ideology and contents. To fill this gap, we conducted a manual quantitative content analysis of 1,200 memes distributed within German-language far-right Telegram channels in 2020 and 2021, concentrating on humor and several content-related factors to analyze their impact on meme reach. The results demonstrate that memes with extreme far-right narratives and memes with humor received fewer views than others, but that memes with both far-right narratives and humor had a significantly increased reach. The findings highlight the mainstreaming potential of humor, particularly when used to mask extreme content that would otherwise be less appealing.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol is pleased to share the latest online workshop on “Borderline Online Content” which took place in June 2024. The workshop is hosted by Brigitte Naderer, Senior Researcher at the Medical University of Vienna, Heidi Schulze Research Associate at LMU Munich, and Diana Rieger, Professor at LMU Munich. The presenters will speak on topics around borderline, ‘hard to regulate’, content in the following four talks:

Heidi Schulze & Simon Greipl “A Little Less Hate, But a Lot More Harm – Fear Speech as Strategic Borderline Communication”

Hannah Rose: “Hybridised Online Hate and Extremism in the Israel/Gaza Conflict”

Ursula Schmid “Legitimizing hostility through humor: Perceptions and effects of humorous hate speech on social media”

Broderick McDonald “Lawful but Awful: Borderline Content and Human Rights”