From Conspiracies to Insults: A Case Study of Radicalisation in Social Media Discourse

Abstract

Online radicalisation is often linked to discourses on social media. In this context, the question arises how populist online discourses radicalise in social media platforms. With a quantitative content analysis of supporters of the German party “Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)” and their contributions on Facebook between March 2014 and May 2017, this preliminary analysis illustrates how the discourse shifts from a dominantly neutral debate to insult-driven and dis-criminatory contributions. It provides insights into the dynamic of political social media dis-courses and shows a tendency of correlating language style and topics that can be further studied in Social Media Analytics.