Shifting Narratives of Threat Within Great Replacement Conspiracy Rhetoric: A Study of Twitter (X) and 4chan in the Wake of Charlottesville

The Great Replacement Conspiracy (GRC) has gained widespread traction on social media in recent years. While existing scholarship has effectively examined how GRC rhetoric on social media has radicalized far-right actors to mobilize in offline contexts, little attention has been allocated to the discursive impacts of these offline events. As GRC-inspired hate speech is rising on both fringe and mainstream social media platforms, a comprehensive understanding of the GRC and its susceptibility to offline influences is crucial for anti-radicalization efforts. In this study, I explore how GRC rhetoric on 4chan and Twitter (X) has evolved following the 2017 Charlottesville riots. Specifically, I apply Natural Language Processing (NLP) models to textual data sourced from the /pol/ board on 4chan and conduct digital ethnographic interviews with Charlottesville counter-protestors on Twitter (X) to investigate temporal shifts in threat narratives. Findings suggest that while the Charlottesville riots inspired a shift toward more subtle terminologies of replacement on both sites, rhetoric also became more overtly violent. Additionally, although the GRC became less amorphous online following the Charlottesville riots, the ideological overlap between the GRC and related far-right conspiracies resulted in rhetoric becoming more nebulous. These seemingly paradoxical findings reveal the diverse rhetorical strategies employed by GRC adherents to advance their objective of large-scale radicalization. This study also challenges pre-existing assumptions about the relationship between GRC rhetoric online and offline events, while proposing a novel way of studying far-right conspiratorial discourse online.