The Alt-Right and Global Information Warfare
This work addresses the issue of disinformation and extremism for researchers and policymakers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing literature and serves as a preliminary step.
This study tackled the problem of understanding the Alt-Right's disinformation campaigns and their spread using social media data mining, providing a preliminary analysis to guide future research on the movement's strategies and associations.
The Alt-Right is a neo-fascist white supremacist movement that is involved in violent extremism and shows signs of engagement in extensive disinformation campaigns. Using social media data mining, this study develops a deeper understanding of such targeted disinformation campaigns and the ways they spread. It also adds to the available literature on the endogenous and exogenous influences within the US far right, as well as motivating factors that drive disinformation campaigns, such as geopolitical strategy. This study is to be taken as a preliminary analysis to indicate future methods and follow-on research that will help develop an integrated approach to understanding the strategies and associations of the modern fascist movement.