Kildiş (2020) points out that social media platforms often lack restrictions on
content published online, creating an unmediated sphere where far-right individuals have the freedom to promote their extremist views across the world. 76
He contends that ‘although conspiracy theories have been around for a while
now, social media has made it possible to produce and consume them on a
massive scale. In other words, social media platforms help the globalization of
conspiracy theories’ (p.1).
In this report, I will provide an in-depth exploration of how far-right
individuals and groups (such as the Proud Boys, Patriot Prayers and QAnon)
leveraged these online spaces to disseminate their extremist ideologies, thereby
challenging the normative va lues of Habermas’ ideal open, democratic public
sphere. I intend to delve into how news outlets, and platforms such as Twitter,
Facebook, and TikTok became breeding grounds for far-right ideologies,
especially amid the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Black Lives Matter Movement,
and the Presidential Election.
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