From national outlets to transnational audiences: far-right hyperpartisan news sources on YouTube

In the past two decades, far-right movements have gained significant power in a variety of countries around the world, coinciding with increasing cooperation between far-right actors across borders. While the transnational convergence of these movements has been documented at elite and institutional levels, there has been limited investigation into the transnationalisation of the digital environments through which far-right narratives circulate. This article addresses this gap by examining the transnational far right through the lens of hyperpartisan news sources on YouTube. Through a novel data-gathering method, this study constructs a unique dataset comprising metadata from 114,025 videos and 51,449,494 comments across the entire lifetime of four channels, each based in a different English-speaking country. Using a unique combination of digital methods, including social network analysis and topic modelling, this article documents the content strategies of these hyperpartisan news sources and the resulting audiences across the entire lifespan of the channels. The findings reveal a highly integrated transnational far-right information space on YouTube with significant and sustained audience overlaps between the channels. Furthermore, the analysis identifies several strategies used by hyperpartisan news sources to attract and engage international audiences and raises critical questions about the transnational influence of the far right from the United States.