How are far-right online communities using X/Twitter Spaces? Discourse, communication, sharing

Abstract

This paper presents the first scholarly study of the use of X/Twitter Spaces by far-right online communities. Spaces — X/Twitter’s live audio-based platform — has become an increasingly prominent tool in the far-right’s digital communication ecosystem in recent years. The popularity of Spaces with far-right users has increased in the wake of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022 which signalled a marked rightward shift in the platform’s governance, particularly its techno-libertarian, ‘free speech absolutist’ approach to content moderation. Through a netnography and critical discourse analysis of (n = 41) Spaces sessions from January to July 2024, this paper critically examines how online far-right communities are using the voice-mediated affordance. In particular, this research explores the discursive practices and sharing strategies employed by individuals to propagate extreme and radical ideas, as well as to cultivate group membership, collective identity, and intersubjectivity. The findings demonstrate that Spaces are being used by a diverse range of far-right online communities and subcultures to promulgate conspiracy theories and radical and extreme ideological content. However, the findings also revealed a high degree of apolitical, non-ideological, and more everyday sharing practices. This paper broadens our empirical understanding of how Spaces are being instrumentalised by reactionary communities, and the role of voice-mediated affordances in the amplification, socialisation, recruitment, and radicalisation of far-right ideas globally.