Discussions of Race in Online Right-Wing Communities: A Cross-platform Computational Analysis of Reddit, Telegram, and Truth Social Using BERT and Structural Topic Modeling

Race has long been a divisive fault line in American public discourse. Yet, political and societal changes have catalyzed the emergence of alternative collective identities, particularly in digital environments where alternative narratives can flourish. We examine right-wing social media spaces as forums in which racial discourse (specifically, that related to Black identities) is produced and contested through conversation, focusing on three platforms—Reddit, Truth Social, and Telegram—during Summer 2022. Structural topic modeling reveals six prominent themes: comparisons of the Black Lives Matter and January 6th protests; persistent discussions of race, crime, and violence; perceived racism within the Democratic party; broad discussion about "wokeness"; race and health (abortion and infectious disease); and racial identity. While their relative prominence and framing vary, these themes appear across all platforms. This indicates racial narratives do not vary substantially across platforms. This study advances academic understanding of how racial identities are both (re-)constructed and (re-)enforced online.