A fringe mainstreamed, or tracing antagonistic slang between 4chan and Breitbart before and after Trump

Abstract

We studied whether the vernaculars of the extremely vitriolic, “politically incorrect” sub-forum of 4chan/pol/ have crossed over to the comment section of Breitbart News, a right-wing news website that was found in earlier research to have played a significant “agenda-setting” role in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. We study if crossover exists around both the 2016 and 2020 elections. In our analysis, we find evidence suggestive of such crossover, centered around the presence first on 4chan and later Breitbart of a series of racist, antagonistic and otherwise extreme terms. This crossover of 4chan/ pol/’s vitriolic vernacular marks an expansion of hyper-antagonistic “altright” politics to Breitbart’s more mainstream right-wing populist audience.