Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

There has been a shift in research on extremism in recent years to include white, right-wing extremism and a corresponding increase in anti-hate and anti-extremism policies on social media platforms. This has resulted in the removal of users, groups, and pages expressing far-right and extremist ideologies. This poses an interesting conundrum for ethnographers who study right-wing extremism online: How do we maintain access to our interlocutors and ethnographic spaces in the midst of anti-racist censorship? In this paper, I consider this question through three specific examples from my doctoral research on far-right groups online: 1) the movement from Twitter to Gab due to the so-called ‘shadowbans’, 2) the pre-emptive relocation from Gab to other far-right sites following the Tree of Life shooting and shutdown of Gab, and 3) the removal of far-right groups on Facebook following the Christchurch mosque attacks. Each instance of censorship prompted an ethnographic disruption. While ethnographic methods are particularly vulnerable to censorship practices due to an emphasis on place-based participant-observation, I argue that ethnography allows scholars to more easily track where extremists will relocate to. Moreover, it provides insight into their experiences of and responses to censorship, and thus the effectiveness of censorship policies.