Platformed Mainstreaming: How and for What Does the Online Far Right Use Hyperlinks?

In this chapter, we explore how the German far right strategically uses hyperlinks on Facebook and what functions they serve. For this purpose, after gathering a sample of public Facebook pages of far-right actors from the German context (n = 100), we collected their posts dated between 2017 and 2020 (n = 120,370) using CrowdTangle and conducted a hyperlink network analysis. Our results show that the German far right on Facebook comprises a sparse unidirectional network, in line with the restrictions imposed by the platform logic of Facebook and the role far-right actors have assigned to the platform. Hyperlinks on Facebook are used generally to maintain the far-right network online, where a limited group of actors are responsible for most of the hyperlink shares. Other functions of hyperlink sharing include self-promotion and attempts to mainstream their marginalised images in society. Thus, we observe a high rate of links shared from traditional media outlets instead of alternative media sources. Future research is needed to assess the content of the shared third-party links and the user interactions with these on Facebook to determine the reception and “success” of the strategies used by far-right actors from the German context on Facebook.