The Trap of Tracking: Digital Methods, Surveillance, and the Far Right

Abstract

Computational methods and network analysis are vital means for understanding how digital platforms are employed by political extremists. Western democracies focused on the security threat of jihadi extremism have been comparatively slow to recognise the threat of the far-right extremism (see Crosby 2021 and Rostami and Askanius 2021). Understandably, scholars have reacted to the knowledge gap about far-right extremists by practicing what we call “surveillance-as-method,” or the use of computational methods to gather data on far-right activities on digital media platforms, typically in order to track keywords or phrases or to map network connections. As we suggest here, the limits of surveillance-as-method include reproducing problems associated with state surveillance (van Dijck 2014) and underestimating the messiness (Pink, Lanzeni, and Horst 2018) of digital culture. Those limits need to be appreciated and approaches combined if we are to understand online politics. In this dialogue, we urge greater caution and reflexivity in reproducing surveillant methods, and greater attention to the historical, ideological context of far-right politics.