ExId: Extreme Identities: A Linguistic and Visual Analysis of European Far-Right Online Communities’ Politics of Identity

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The ExId project offers a comprehensive analysis of the European far-right online landscape. Combiningcutting-edge computational methods with in-depth qualitative analysis, the team will identify the manyonline far-right communities present in and across 7 European countries, map their relationships, andexpose how these communities, through language and visual imagery, make some socio-political issuessalient and construct particular collective identities (both in-groups such as “whites”, “Westerncivilization” or “Europe”, and out-groups such as “Muslims”, “feminists”, or “multiculturalists”). Theteam will offer a dynamic analysis of both the evolution of the European far-right online landscape, andits linguistic and visual content, exploring phenomena such as the impact of real-world events onwebsites’ content or circulation of linguistic/visual tropes across groups. Building on the specific, yetoverlapping strengths of its collaborators in Exeter, Dublin, and Copenhagen, the project draws on diversemethodologies to offer a multidisciplinary analysis of the composite and rapidly moving European farrightmovement. Through close collaboration between the three participating centres (each with a proventrack-record of research on online extremist communications), this project will result in a range ofacademic publications, two new databases, and engagement with European policymakers and stateofficials. ExId will thus significantly enhance our understanding of four of the challenges identified inNORFACE’s call: shifting identities and representation, the evolving politics of threat, thedemocratisation of information, and the changing authority of institutions.