‘The forum used to be mainly known as a playful and progressive place. It was an anarchic, disorganised chaos where anyone could post something’, explains Hagen. ‘4chan also differs from other forums, because users do not have to register and there is hardly any censorship. In addition, there is a high volume of posts, because they are deleted after a short time.’

The image of a progressive and playful place has been transformed since the emergence of far-right movements on the forum. Gamergate in 2015 is often seen as the starting point of this transformation, says Hagen. ‘At that time, an online smear campaign was launched against women in the gaming industry, after they spoke out about misogynistic stereotypes in video games. Many young males, who had never previously held an explicit political ideology, were united at the time by their shared aversion to criticism of ‘their’ games.'

Anthropology of the internet user

Hagen’s fascination for internet culture began at an early age. ‘I can still vividly remember that friends in the first and second years of secondary school used a lot of internet jargon in their conversations. That felt like a kind of secret language and this is how I developed an anthropological interest in the topic. In addition, you see that the topic has gained greater political significance in recent years, which makes it even more interesting. My research therefore feels more relevant.’

Hagen already began his research into the topic during his Language and Culture Studies degree at Utrecht University. ‘At that time, very little research was conducted into social media. I can remember that I was teased a bit back then’, laughs Hagen. ‘It’s funny then to see how that research field has now exploded.’

Breeding ground for the far right

In his thesis, Reactionary Rhythm, Hagen examines how 4chan has become a home for far-right posts and what holds this movement together. Moreover, he focuses in particular on /pol/, the political subforum of the website. ‘This subforum was initially set up as a containment board to keep extremist posts separate from the other subforums’, says Hagen. ‘It is now the forum’s most active place.’

Like the rest of the forum, /pol/ messages are deleted fairly quickly. ‘Because the posts on the forum are very short-lived, it is actually counterintuitive that you keep seeing the far-right movement. The high volume of posts means that the content is extremely repetitive, explains Hagen: ‘A large proportion of the content consists of memes and catchphrases. This has led to the emergence of a strong meme culture. Through various studies, I attempt to argue that such a discourse is a fertile breeding ground for far-right reactionary movements, because these ideologies often make use of a black and white worldview and stereotypes.’

In his research, Hagen saw that the form of the content was continuously changing, but that the message remained largely homogeneous. ‘We developed methods for this that analysed which words are often used in combination with each other. We subsequently applied that to the memes and this revealed that in spite of the changing form, the same groups are systematically portrayed as ‘enemies’. In this case, it often concerns jews, immigrants or women.’

Hagen hopes to develop the methods further for future research and to use them on other internet forums. ‘In doing so, we primarily want to look at the rhythmic character of internet platforms. How do you identify a rhythm of content through data research and how does that go hand in hand with certain political movements? Ideologically speaking, this deviates from my previous focus on far-right posts from 4chan, but it will also be fine not to be studying this group for a while.’