Spaces of Unmoderated Hate? The Legitimization of Anti-Immigration Narratives on Right-Wing Alternative Media

In a digital context characterized by declining content moderation, radical right-wing anti-immigration narratives abound and often get legitimized by political elites. To date, however, we know little about how anti-immigration discourse in a global context is constructed by right-wing alternative media, and how such platforms legitimize radical viewpoints through alternative truth claims and disinformation. Against this background, we rely on an extensive qualitative content analysis of X-messages posted by right-wing alternative media (N = 325) and responses to such posts by ordinary citizens (N = 200). Main findings indicate that the sampled alternative media often legitimize hostile views towards immigrants by interpreting isolated events as evidence for the collective exclusion of immigrants. By decontextualizing or falsely interpreting authentic visual materials, these platforms rely on disinformation techniques that contribute to the legitimization of out-group hate and negative stereotyping, a pattern that was amplified by the analysis of hostile responses to disinformation constructed by alternative media.