Biopolitical Reassessment of Far-Right Social Media Phenomena

Right-wing extremists exploit mass outreach offered by social media differently than moderate political actors. This has been shown in many empirical studies including from our group. In this sub-project, we examine whether the recent rise of political extremism relies not only on innovation in the technological realm but also in the political one, especially where technology can turbocharge the use of age-old political tactics like acclamation and biopolitics.

We aim to build a novel theoretical framework to understand and empirically measure online political extremism.

We will start with a theoretical analysis of the recent rise of right-wing extremism and its reliance on technologies like social media and artificial intelligence. For this, we will rely on the works of political theorists such as Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Gramsci, and Michel Foucault among others.

Second, we aim to connect our theoretical analysis to inherent features of social media in a way that makes it possible to test these ideas empirically. We will examine whether the chief political innovation employed by modern right-wing extremists really lies in dusting off old political ideas of acclamation, biopolitics, organicism, state of exception etc. and make them fit for the age of social media and AI. We will employ this lens to measure online extremism in Bavarian politics.

Third, we aim to develop practical suggestions and counterstrategies for policy makers to make technologies like social media and AI less susceptible to misuse by political extremists.