Social media, misinformation, and the distortion of the public sphere by the far right

Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed the growing political relevance of the far right. Part of the reasons for the rise of this new wave of the far right is related to its ability to use social media. By aligning disinformation strategies with the information production and mediation modes of social media platforms, extremist movements have impacted public discourse while their ideas gain notoriety. In this context, it is understood that social media serve as instruments through which the far right employs disinformation to manipulate and influence the public sphere. Thus, this study, through a theoretical discussion based on the concept of information regimes, aims to analyze and discuss how the instrumentalization of social media by far-right groups influences and distorts the public sphere in their favor. The study leads to conclusions about how the infrastructures of social media, by providing a personalized and algorithmically constructed information regime for each user, are exploited by the far right. These infrastructures, aligned with disinformation strategies, influence the ways knowledge is created, which in turn affects the development of formative actions that impact the "way of life." In this sense, the instrumentalization of social media platforms has allowed the far right to channel (mis)informational power to create distortions and crises aimed at affecting the deliberative processes of the public sphere.