The Affordances of Replacement Narratives How the White Genocide and Great Replacement Theories Converge in Poorly Moderated Online Milieus

This chapter takes a media studies approach to answering the question of how reactionary political opinions “meet” and converge in poorly moderated milieus, such as either entire forums, like the anonymous message board 4chan, or as specific locations of otherwise moderately moderated platforms, like the YouTube comment section. Two ideologically distinct narratives – namely, the French “great replacement” and American “white genocide” theories – and their circulation on 4chan/pol and the YouTube comment sections from 2013 to late 2018 are taken as case studies. The chapter argues that, in spite of their distinctions, they begin to merge ideologically by virtue of circulating in the same milieus. This is demonstrated with NLP and network analyses of 4chan/pol posts and YouTube comments aiming to measure ideological convergence over time.