Reaching a larger audience: Content-related strategies of the far right on VK

Abstract

The recent global rise of far-right ideologies has been accompanied by the normalization of these ideas in online communication. However, little is known about the strategies employed by the far right to drive this trend, particularly outside Western countries and major platforms. This study addresses these gaps by conducting a systematic content analysis of far-right content on VK (VKontakte), the most widely used Russian social network, to examine the content’s characteristics that facilitate the mainstreaming of the far right. Findings indicate that far-right actors leverage agenda-setting mechanisms and adopt news-like formats to embed xenophobic and exclusionary narratives within the broader mainstream Russian discourse. This study contributes to research on far-right content-related strategies and the interplay between non-Western contexts, digital affordances, and far-right communication in less regulated online spaces.

Keywords

Far-right nationalism Russia social media VK

Introduction

The recent rise of far-right movements has been a source of great concern, spreading to both Western and non-Western countries. The far-right groups increasingly “engage in political activities or pursue a metapolitical approach to normalize their views” (Pauwels, 2021: 7). While this phenomenon has been extensively studied in Western countries (Barnett et al., 2025; Bliuc et al., 2018; Chris Hale, 2012; Kakavand, 2024; Marwick et al., 2022), there is little empirical research outside Western discourse, although Eastern Europe and Russia play a significant role in the dissemination and mainstreaming of far-right views. Researchers and international organizations have reported numerous connections between Russia and far-right movements in Europe (Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2025; Leahy et al., 2022; Michael, 2019; Rekawek et al., 2024; Shekhovtsov, 2017). Within Russian society, against the backdrop of military action with Ukraine, there has been a turn toward national-conservative politics, and a “semi-official campaign” (Verkhovsky, 2024a, para. 3) against labor migrants. This has allowed the Russian far right to overcome a long crisis and intensify its efforts across various fronts. Large far-right movements have resumed street patrols and raids, a practice dating back to the vigilantism of the 1990s, and try to take on the functions of “guardians of order,” collaborate with law enforcement, or even replace the police. The activity of autonomous far-right cells—youth groups with an orientation toward neo-fascist ideas, denying links to known political groups and focused on street violence—has also increased; in the first 5 months of 2024, the number of attacks increased by more than 150% compared to the previous year, and this trend is steadily continuing (SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, 2024). Russian researchers highlight an alarming trend in Russia in recent years: violent incidents motivated by nativism, committed by individuals not affiliated with a specific group and whose ideological orientations remain fluid (Pashchenko, 2022).

Simultaneously, the Russian far-right is active online. Through the widespread dissemination of content on social media, Russian far-right groups are successfully expanding beyond the radical segment of the Internet into the mainstream, defending their ideology, amplifying migration-related discourse, and attracting new supporters (SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, 2024). This corresponds to the strategies of “mainstreaming” (Rothut et al., 2024), “normalization” (Wodak, 2021), and “toned down approaches” (Borgeson and Valeri, 2004: 105) described in studies of Western far-right discourse. Distributing radical ideas on Russian social networks is even easier for the far right than on Western platforms. The most popular Russian social network VKontakte (VK) is actively used by radical groups (ADL, 2019; Hammer et al., 2022; Macdonald et al., 2022; Voskresenskii, 2023) owing to weak moderation and specific characteristics of the platform, which made it “a networking service that is known to host violent content” (RAN, 2022: 7). At the same time, “given its popularity, studying Russian-language posts on VK can provide insight into social media behavior representative of the general Russian population” (Urman, 2019). Thus, analyzing far-right content on VK offers insight into the most common strategies of the Russian far-right and how they attract a broad audience and spread their ideas.

The growing popularity of mainstreaming strategies, along with the increasing penetration of the far-right into various segments of Russian society, necessitates expanding the study beyond content analysis within well-known far-right groups. Unlike other popular platforms in Russia, such as Telegram and Odnoklassniki, VK exclusively provides the opportunity to search for keywords across all publicly available text posts and sort posts chronologically. And the VKontakte API has significantly fewer limitations than APIs of other social media (Karpova et al., 2022). Examining mainstreaming strategies also requires identifying the characteristics of social media content that help the far right attract a larger audience and increase post reach. Given the limited prior research on Russian far-right content characteristics, this study adopts an exploratory inductive approach rather than testing specific theoretical predictions. To this end, this study (1) collects far-right posts from all publicly available VK text posts over a specific period using keyword searches and API, (2) identifies key characteristics and conducts qualitative and quantitative content analysis, (3) analyzes the associations between these characteristics and post reach, and (4) discusses the findings in light of research on far-right сontent-related strategies in other contexts.

Literature review

Studying mainstreaming, “the process by which parties/actors, discourses and/or attitudes move from marginal positions on the political spectrum or public sphere to more central ones” (Brown et al., 2023: 170), it is necessary to define the boundary between far-right ideas and the mainstream, then examine how it is being erased. As the far right has no specific endpoints but always depends on a politically and system-specific reference point (Rothut et al., 2024), this study needs to define it in the modern Russian context.

Following Mudde’s conceptual framework (Mudde, 2019), this study employs “far right” as an umbrella term for nativist-authoritarian ideologies that advocate a rigidly hierarchical society, wherein the state must enforce an exclusionary sociopolitical order, privileging the “native” group while systematically identifying and marginalizing perceived “non-native” elements. The far-right can be distinguished according to the following criteria: (1) unlike left-wing ideologies, right-wing believe that the main inequalities between people are natural and positive, to be defended by the state (Bobbio, 1997); (2) unlike civic nationalism and patriotism, proclaiming the nation as all citizens of the state, regardless of their ethnic and cultural background, united by loyalty to political institutions and to the constitution (Tolz, 1998), far-right ideologies advocate ethnic and cultural exclusionism.

Thus, the central characteristics of far-right ideology are understood as authoritarianism and nativism (the combination of nationalism and xenophobia) (Mudde, 2019). Speaking about Russia, Mudde emphasized that he does not classify Vladimir Putin’s policies as far-right since they do not meet the second criterion (Mudde, 2022). Russia’s mainstream “official nationalism” asserts the priority of political loyalty over ethnicity or religion and emphasizes the political unity of the Russian nation and its inclusiveness (Verkhovsky, 2024b). This distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism is clearly evident in the Russian language (Laruelle, 2019), where ethnic Russians (russkie) and citizens (rossiane) are designated by different words.

The Russian far-right movement is highly heterogeneous and inconsistent, rooted in competing interpretations of “Russian” as identity made by Russian nationalists, each with distinct historical, political, religious foundations. According to the Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), individuals strive for a positive social identity for their own group, and this can be expressed not only in the form of in-group favoritism but also of out-group discrimination under certain circumstances, such as sensitivity to threat, social comparison processes, and power politics (Brewer, 1999). The researchers highlight that Russian nationalists struggle with the formulation of positive values and qualities of the group (Likhacheva et al., 2015). At the same time, scholars note that Russian nationalists tend to build their identity by “self-definition from the opposite”—that is, not by claiming superior positive qualities compared to out-groups, but by denying they possess the negative characteristics attributed to those out-groups (Gudkov, 2004), which can be foreign or domestic. Thus, despite the ideological fragmentation and in the absence of a common idea of “who Russians are” (Verkhovsky, 2024b), the Russian far-right is able to construct a xenophobic concept of domestic “enemy”—those perceived as non-Russian and embody all the negative traits that are supposedly alien to Russians, and frame their own success as contingent upon negative acts toward this out-group, including verbal attacks, diminishment, discriminatory behavior, or violence (Berger, 2017).

Researchers note that some Russian far-right groups even refused to formulate a specific ideology beyond the principles of strong order and ethnic discrimination to avoid ideological schisms (Laruelle, 2019), which makes it more relevant in this context to study content that promotes out-group hatred than in-group favoritism. In studying far-right content aimed at out-group discrimination and factors that contribute to its widespread distribution, researchers note the need to examine who is the target of hate, what actions are promoted against targets, the specific format or features of these messages, and their narrative content (O’Connor, 2021; Rieger et al., 2021; Törnberg and Wahlström, 2018). Although Russian studies lack sufficient research on the characteristics of far-right content, Western scholarship provides a substantial body of work analyzing various analytical categories of far-right online materials.

First, the tactics of the far-right can be adapted depending on who becomes the object of hatred and how the choice of the object of hatred is justified. Researchers have indicated that the central principles for defining an outgroup for far-right ideologies can be socioeconomic justifications (Perocco and Della Puppa, 2023), assimilation issues (Hamid, 2019), cultural incompatibility (Lucassen and Lubbers, 2012), and perceptions of security (Kundnani, 2012; Paterson and Karyotis, 2022). A more common approach is to define far-right content through a certain outgroup, such as anti-Muslim (Froio, 2018), anti-immigrant (Garapich et al., 2024), and anti-Semitic (Weimann and Masri, 2021).

The next important category of characteristics for examining far-right content-related strategies is the escalation level or the degree of violence promoted. Not all far-right movements use direct calls for mobilization and violence (Chris Hale, 2012); some prefer to attract a large audience with discriminatory messages, where populist slogans are intertwined with far-right narratives of nationalism and xenophobia (Perry, 2022). Many radical right groups are not recognized as extremists or terrorists; radical right content may not contain any mention of extremist groups or personalities; the far right uses jargon that is difficult to identify as radicalized content (Conway, 2020). Rieger et al. (2021) underline the need to consider implicit hate speech when analyzing the extent of online hate and potential harm. Moreover, they emphasize the long-term dangers of hate speech becoming “normal” through mainstreaming. Researchers highlight that although some groups claim to support non-violent forms of action, their ideologies still contain extremist features, including the dehumanization of immigrants and political opponents (Volk and Weisskircher, 2023).

In examining the phenomenon of mainstreaming, researchers have noted that far-right groups often attempt to mimic certain formats of content common on platforms. Humorous content allows them not only to fuel the radical views of existing supporters but also to attract the attention of mainstream audiences (Bliuc et al., 2018; McSwiney and Sengul, 2024), as jokes allow them to disguise a hateful message so that users are less likely to perceive them as hostile (Schmid, 2023). By co-opting news content from mainstream media, far-right groups integrate their radical ideas into mainstream discourse, which can serve to legitimize far-right tropes (Peucker and Fisher, 2023). Far-right groups that use specific events, incidents, and political statements as evidence for their claims create a symbolic environment in which their audiences constantly feel threatened and under siege (Bennett Furlow and Goodall, 2011). To support their ideas, far-right groups may not only provide their audience with official news reports but also collect “anecdotal evidence” trying to show violence or outrageous behavior by outgroup members and building their reasoning on “conformity with stereotypes or conventional wisdom” (Krämer, 2017: 1299). To add credibility to their narratives, far-right groups may publish long pseudo-analytical articles with disinformation, “expert opinion,” and manipulated statistics (Butcher and Neidhart, 2020: 17). To create a sense of coherence and continuity in the radical discourse far-right groups use the format of historical summaries and references. By drawing parallels between the current enemy and a “generally accepted, culturally specific historical enemy” (Bennett Furlow and Goodall, 2011: 218), far-right groups give the audience a clear idea of why the adversary group should be hated and to what extent. Far-right radicals also find easier ways to legitimize their claims, for example, through the comments section, where users perform, defend, reinforce their political identities (Breeze, 2022).

Narratives are one of the key areas of research in far-right social media content-related strategies. Researchers suggest that narratives utilized by the far right tend to be structured in strikingly similar ways and use the same basic rhetorical strategies to explain their worldviews (Bennett Furlow and Goodall, 2011). Many narratives, such as “replacement” (Ekman, 2022; Sedgwick, 2024) and other conspiracy theories (Rousis et al., 2022; Walther and McCoy, 2021), victimization (Boussalis et al., 2025; Marcks and Pawelz, 2022; Purdue, 2022), dehumanization (Fischer and O’Mara, 2023; Wahlström et al., 2021), and resentment, are universal across many far-right movements around the world. However, the researchers note that narratives appeal to values and a sense of significance that are defined uniquely in different cultures (Kruglanski et al., 2018), and the same narratives may not have the same effect in a different national context.

Building on the frameworks discussed above to understand content-related strategies of the far right, this study examines the following categories of content characteristics: targeted minority group, escalation level, format of post, narrative. While engaging with existing theories of far-right discourse, the analysis remains open to identifying novel patterns and characteristics specific to the Russian context.

Research questions

This study aims to examine the most common and effective content-related strategies used by the far right on VK. Specifically, it addresses two research questions:

RQ1. Which content characteristics are most prevalent in the far-right posts on VK?

RQ2. Which of the identified content characteristics are associated with greater reach?

Methodology

Research into far-right mainstreaming strategies requires specific methodological choices, in particular, the use of content analysis, as it captures nuanced aspects of far-right communication that may be overlooked when exclusively using automated approaches (Barnett et al., 2025). Second, the prevalent focus of many studies on intra-group far-right activities (Castle and Parsons, 2019; Myagkov et al., 2019; Volk and Weisskircher, 2023; Wahlström et al., 2021) may provide a limited picture, as this approach overlooks individual content creators and far-right messaging that occurs outside established online communities. Although far-right groups maintain considerable influence, experts observe the emergence of “diffuse violent far-right online networks” (Terrorist Content Analytics Platform, 2024: 15) and note that content produced by individuals becomes particularly prominent when the established groups face external pressures, such as online tracking and deplatforming, or internal challenges, including organizational fractures. The boundaries between specific groups and movements can be blurred, with some far-right activists or groups partially abandoning the principles of the movement, combining ideas from different movements in their ideology in a “salad bar” (Ryan et al., 2021: 4). By utilizing VK’s search interface to examine all publicly visible posts within a defined timeframe, this study can identify and capture the broader spectrum of far-right communication. Third, researchers note a lack of understanding of the factors that influence the popularity of far-right content (Barnett et al., 2025), and examining multiple content characteristics alongside view counts can elucidate its most successful strategies, as view counts are an important indicator of messages’ virality (Nobari et al., 2021) and mainstreaming processes (Schmid et al., 2025). Finally, multiple linear regression allows to identify which specific characteristics are most strongly associated with reach while statistically controlling for the influence of all other measured variables, enabling assessment of each predictor’s unique contribution.

Keywords

To create the keyword list for this research, this study used a set of lexical units from Zlokazov and Rozhkov (2020), who analyzed the Federal List of Extremist Materials using cognitive linguistic methods to classify far-right concepts. The present study applied this set of lexical units and the snowball method to conduct a primary search in VK and found the most commonly used words that denoted minority groups as the target of hatred. The search for keywords was conducted using the desktop version of the social network, the built-in search engine of VK, which displays all publicly accessible posts published by users or groups in chronological order. The study found 203 keywords, which included words and set phrases with strongly negative and offensive connotations, but neutral words as well, as “non-violent language also facilitates access to materials promoting violence” (Ahmed and George, 2016).

The study then analyzed the list and identified six main minority groups that were the target of hate: “Ukrainian,” “Jewish,” “Ethnic Outsiders,” “North/South Caucasian,” “Asian,” and “Muslim.” The study identified six keywords (the search included comprehensive morphological variants, encompassing both inflected forms and related adjectival/derived forms) for each group that displayed the largest number of search results. By taking an inductive approach to qualitative content analysis, codes and subcodes were data-driven without a predetermined coding scheme. Based on the preliminary search results, a codebook (see “Supplementary Material” for details) was created to further code the sample posts.

Sample

Several factors were considered in the data collection process. First, data needed to be collected systematically as posts were published rather than retrospectively. Retrospective data collection would not be methodologically accurate, as many posts may have been blocked or deleted over time, and older posts would have had more exposure, making view count data an unreliable reflection of actual audience reach. This study mitigated these issues by conducting data collection regularly throughout the study period, specifically within 18–24 hours after a post’s publication. This interval allowed sufficient time for posts to accumulate the majority of their reach while minimizing the risk of removal by moderators. Second, since this study involves qualitative text analysis, it was necessary to reduce the sample to a manageable level without compromising representativeness. Therefore, the study collected posts published within the same hour (19.00-20.00 UTC + 3, which corresponded to the evening peak activity of VKontakte users) every second day, which also allowed for one day to be used for data quality checks, documentation, and initial data coding. The data was collected for 3 months, from September to December 2023, as this period covers a sufficient time span to identify stable trends in content distribution, excluding the influence of short-term factors.

The data was collected using the VKontakte API for VK Search by keywords from all publicly accessible posts published between 19.00 and 20.00 UTC + 3. As the API retrieved a significant amount of irrelevant content due to polysemy and homonymy of words, we implemented a filtering system using exclusion terms—words associated with the unwanted meanings of each keyword. This approach significantly improved the relevance of the collected content. In total, 16,713 text posts were retained before using exclusion terms, and after this, the sample consisted of 4658 posts. These posts were included in a sample for manual qualitative content analysis and coding, during which they were checked for compliance with the definition of far-right adopted in this study. The 4207 posts that met this criterion formed the final sample for analysis; they were documented (all identifiable information about personal accounts was deleted) and were included in the final coding table.

Data preparation and analysis

In accordance with the codebook, the study conducted a content analysis (the codebook was tested with two independent coders on 20% of the sample; Cohen’s Kappa = 0.787). The analysis focused on examining each post, profile, and code for up to 11 elements. Each post was assigned the following items: “URL,” “Personal/Group Account type,” “Account Followers,” “Account Description” (optional, for group accounts only), “Multimedia,” “Publication Date,” “Number of Views,” “Minority Group,” “Escalation level,” “Content Description” (optional), and “Narrative.”

Next, a two-step exploratory approach was used: (1) frequency analysis of the qualitative characteristics of posts to measure their overall prevalence (Table S1) and (2) multiple linear regression to examine which specific characteristics are most strongly associated with reach (Table S2, all tables are presented in the “Supplementary Material”).

Results

RQ1: Which content characteristics are most prevalent in the far-right posts on VK?

The most common value for the category “Account Type” was “Personal,” with 2725 posts (64.77%), and 1482 posts (35.23%) had the code “Group”; thus, more than one-third of far-right posts were published by a group account. Most posts (3342 posts or 79.44%) contained multimedia content (images and videos).

The study found that the most common value for the category “Minority group” (C31–C36 in Codebook) was “Ethnic Outsiders¹” (2187 posts, 51.98%), followed by “Jewish” (1265 posts, 30.07%), “Ukrainian²” (909 posts, 21.61%), “Asian” (899 posts, 21.37%), “North/South Caucasian” (532 posts, 12.65%), and “Muslim” (395 posts, 9.39%). Categories were assigned based on a keyword list. There could be several “Minority group” codes for one post. For other categories (“Escalation level,” “Format,” “Narrative”), posts could have only one category code.

While the majority of posts—3543 (84.22%)—are at a moderate “Escalation level” (C44–C48 in Codebook) and contain only “Discrimination” (the central idea of a post is discrimination against group, justified from a nativist and authoritarian position and/or containing ethnic slurs), 15.78% are at a higher escalation level: 118 posts (2.80%) contain “Alarmism”—a discriminatory message and unspecified call to “do something about it,” 169 posts (4.02%) contain calls for “Expulsion or Isolation,” 338 posts (8.03%) contain calls for “Violence,” and 39 posts (0.93%) contain signs of “Organizing Extremist Activity.” Each post had one code that was coded according to the most extreme escalation level contained in the text.

“Format³” (C50–C59 in Codebook) is a formal criteria of a post that determine its genre, style, and structural manner of extremist message presentation. It encompasses the various ways in which text-based content is mastered to convey extremist ideologies and interact with audiences.

“Response” format (1544 posts, 36.70%) is a short text with some attached content—an image, a video, a link, or a shared post. The key message is contained in the attached content, and the post itself serves as a reaction to the content.

“Analytics” (688 posts, 16.35%) is a long-read article aimed at persuading readers through comprehensive arguments, presenting biased interpretations of social, economic, or political phenomena, misinformation, and manipulation of statistical data to support a discriminatory stance.

“News” (682 posts, 16.21%)—a post that contains news event, news structures, and set expressions that imitate real media reports and some information about the reaction of police or authorities to the incident.

“Сall for Mobilization” (394 posts, 9.37%)—an appeal to the audience to create a sense of urgency about the issue and encourage followers to immediately unite against the common threat using verbs calling for actions or alarmist expressions (e.g. “Attention!,” “Urgent!”).

“Personal stories” (277 posts, 6.58%)—personal evidence of some crime, incidents, or misbehavior, received firsthand from witnesses or subscribers, without the involvement of journalists or police. A post reports about incident, but the publications lack news structure and dry news language.

“Discriminatory statement” (270 posts, 6.42%) is a short expression of hatred or incitement to discriminate against a minority group without any additional information, without providing any “argumentation” of discriminatory stance, without referring to any incident or event, and without any attached content.

“Historical Background” (148 posts, 3.52%)—historical examples that justify group discrimination using misinformation or special framing. “Joke” (100 posts, 2.38%)—post with humorous, ironic, sarcastic story, or metaphor as the main content.

“Narrative” (C60–C68 in Codebook) is “a coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories that share a common rhetorical desire to resolve a conflict by establishing audience expectations according to known trajectories of its literary and rhetorical form” (Halverson et al., 2011). The narratives identified differ partly from those described in Western far-right discourse and often combine some of them.

“Inferiority” (1262 posts, 30.00%)—dehumanization of outgroups as in-/sub-humans (Baele et al., 2023), objects or dirty animals (Bieber, 2022), or communities with primitive lifestyle, culture, language, and historical heritage; provokes disgust or contempt.

“Demonization” (1245 posts, 29.59%)—dehumanization of outgroups as pure evil and catastrophizing (Bennett Furlow and Goodall, 2011; Saucier et al., 2009) and the victimhood of the ingroup (Boussalis et al., 2025); provokes fear.

“Conspiracy Theory” (618 posts, 14.69%) portrays the outgroup as an insidious, powerful, and disguised enemy (Schulze et al., 2022); provokes pervasive mistrust.

“Vengeance and Retribution” (504 posts, 11.98%) represents outgroups as criminals who need to be punished, a concrete real threat (Marcks and Pawelz, 2022); provokes indignation and righteous anger.

“Seizure of Power” (261 posts, 6.20%) shows the outgroup as a greedy, power-hungry (Krämer, 2017) alien, that seeks to enslave members of the ingroup; provokes a struggle for freedom, and ideas of sacred duty.

“Replacement” (151 posts, 3.59%) in the Russian context is less about conspiracy and more about portraying an outgroup as an uncontrollable natural disaster, existential threat (Obaidi et al., 2022), or disease that spreads through a community.

“Threats to Сhildren” (93 posts, 2.21%) represents outgroup as perverts (Claus and Virchow, 2017); provokes indignation, disgust, guilt, and the idea of sacred duty.

“Misallocation of Resources” (51 posts, 1.21%) shows the outgroup as parasites and freeloaders or at least uninvited guests (Krämer, 2017), and evokes a sense of injustice and internal protest (see the full frequency table—Table S1).

RQ2: Which of the identified content characteristics are associated with greater reach?

The number of post views was chosen as the dependent variable, the number of followers as the control variable, and the remaining items as independent nominal variables, which were then recoded as dummy variables (each item value was coded as a separate dummy variable). After analyzing the variable “Number of Views,” the study found that the data had a large scatter, which is due to the presence of extreme values. Because this study is interested in knowing what allowed the far right to get the largest audience, extreme values were especially important for the study, and outlier exclusion could not be applied. Therefore, the data were transformed using logarithms.

Then, a multiple linear regression model was run with log-transformed VK post views as the dependent variable to examine which characteristics are most strongly associated with reach (Table S2). This was standard multiple regression with all predictors included simultaneously, as this allows for a meaningful interpretation of each coefficient and avoids problems inherent in automated variable selection methods. The value of the variable “Account type: Group” showed the expected positive associations with the number of post views (β = 2.293, p = .000) as well as “POST: Multimedia” (β = 0.226, p = .001). None of the values of the variable “Escalation level” had a statistically significant effect on views after adding other variables to the model. Some values of the variable “Minority group,” such as “Ukrainian,” “Ethnic Outsiders,” “Asian,” and “Muslim,” did not show statistical significance. The “North/South Caucasian” (β = 0.261, p = .008) showed an increase in views, while the “Jewish” showed a decrease in views (β = −0.152, p = .051).

Among the formats, all values except “Response” had a significant effect, with the greatest effect shown by “Personal stories” (β = 0.778, p = .000). The most significant decrease in views was associated with “Discriminatory statement” (the base category; all the others showed an increase in views compared to it).

The narratives “Replacement,” “Misallocation of resources,” “Inferiority,” and “Seizure of Power” did not show statistical significance. The greatest effect was shown by the value “Threats to children” (β = 0.473, p = .050). A moderate increase in views was observed for the narratives “Demonization” (β = 0.158, p = .070) and “Vengeance and Retribution” (β = 0.266, p = .036). The most significant decrease in views was associated with “Conspiracy theories” (the base category; all the others showed an increase in views compared to it).

Discussion

The data show that group accounts play a significant role in distributing far-right content, as the “Account Type” variable was strongly associated with post reach. This may confirm that group accounts not only simplify content distribution among existing users but also boost engagement, increasing the likelihood of posts appearing in others’ news feeds. (Schwemmer, 2021). VK fosters interest-based communities where users share news, content, and engage in discussions. Because users feel a strong sense of community, information undergoes minimal filtering and is often perceived as true (Miletskiy and Pisareva, 2019). However, this does not mean future studies should focus solely on group accounts. While analyzing group characteristics (Hutchinson and Droogan, 2024; Klein and Muis, 2019) may be necessary for studying far-right content on VK, examining content from individual user accounts remains important. Most of the collected during this study far-right content on VK (approximately two-thirds) was published from user accounts, which means that far-right content ceases to be identified with specific groups and movements, and mainstreaming is achieved by “laundering” the source.

The data showed that the majority of far-right posts on VK were aimed at the outgroup “Ethnic Outsiders,” which covered a wide range of “non-ethnic-Russian,” “non-Slavic,” “non-white.” The researchers noticed that this “racial exclusionism” raises particular concerns for ethnic relationships in Russia—“a historically multi-ethnic society with a substantial proportion of non-immigrant ethnic minorities” (Gorodzeisky, 2018: 2017). This broad outgroup designation allows the far right to integrate, for example, into the agenda of regional officials who blame labor migration for the failures of their policies. The far-right replaces the word “migrant” with an ethnic slur or dog-whistling when reposting news, creating the impression that nativism is acceptable and desirable in society but avoiding accusations of discrimination against any specific nationality or religion. At the same time, the study showed that on VK, discriminatory messages most often (84.22%) have a low “Escalation level” (without calls for violent actions). This strategy can be employed by the far right to prepare the audience and to point them to an “existing problem” to offer a ready-made radical solution later.

The analysis of Russian far-right content showed the trend of linking far-right ideas to current events and incidents (Baugut and Neumann, 2019; Giavazzi et al., 2024) through such content formats as “News” and “Response.” The prevalence of the “Response” format on VK is not surprising since the platform actively encourages users to share various types of content, including from external sources (Verstka, 2024; Yankovskiy, 2017). The popularity of this format, along with the frequent use of multimedia, demonstrates how the Russian far right leverage VK’s features. The platform promotes such content both algorithmically—by boosting visibility—and through built-in technical tools, using data compression algorithms, a high number of geo-distributed content delivery networks (CDN), multi-platform player and albums (VKontakte, 2024).

The least frequently encountered formats were “Joke” and “Historical Background,” so the researchers’ findings about the active usage of humorous content (Schmid et al., 2025) and historical materials (Saucier et al., 2009) by the far right for mainstreaming were not confirmed in Russian context. Simultaneously, these two formats have a positive association with post reach. It can be assumed that while humor and historical references attract larger audiences, it is strategically important for the Russian far right to demonstrate the significance and timeliness of their discourse to increase its relevance. The format that had the greatest positive association with post reach and potential implications for mainstreaming was the “Personal stories” format, which is rarely mentioned by researchers and requires more extensive study.

One of the most common narratives was the “Demonization,” which shows how both the far right and the mainstream are involved in the process of mainstreaming (Brown et al., 2023). The “labor migration” in general as a threat has been increasingly mentioned by Russian officials and politicians in the past few years against the backdrop of various economic and security issues (SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, 2024). The far-right echoes and slightly paraphrases these statements, pointing to the danger in anyone who looks different from Slav/white and often offering vigilantism as a solution. This harms not only migrants and Russian citizens with a migration background but also many indigenous ethnic minorities in Russia. Since victimization contradicts the popular Russian nationalist idea of “greatpowerness” (Urnov, 2014: 305), part of the far right employs the narrative of “Inferiority” for mainstreaming purposes. They claim that the outgroup is “incapable of prosocial values or that it is solely driven by animalistic impulses” (Baele et al., 2023, p. 5) or justify marginalization through the lens of public hygiene and controlling the spread of disease (Bieber, 2022). This study found that the use of both the “Replacement” narrative and socioeconomic justification of hatred are rare in far-right content on VK. This likely reflects Russian far-right groups avoiding economic issues and anti-elite rhetoric to avoid demonstrating opposition to the government.

Emotion-provoking narratives had the greatest positive associations with the post reach, whereas narratives that aimed to rationalize far-right concepts attracted smaller audiences. Thus, “Threat to Children” became the most sensitive and attention-grabbing topic (Essex, 2024), as the far right attempt to justify their actions “by appealing to ‘the (white) child’ and the duty of themselves as (white) men to protect it” (Frenguelli, 2024: 708). “Demonization” and “Vengeance and Retribution” also had a positive effect on increasing post views. “Conspiracy theory” narrative is of little interest to VK users, which partly refutes their popularity in Russia (Ortmann and Heathershaw, 2012; Panin, 2022). While this narrative is widely promoted by the far right, study results show it actually reduces post views. This suggests conspiracy theories may be less effective at mainstreaming among Russian audiences compared to Western contexts.

Conclusion

This study contributes to the literature on far-right content-related strategies in several ways. First, it analyzes the specifics of Russian-language far-right content, whereas most studies focus on English-language content and Western discourse. Second, the data for the study were collected on the little-studied VK platform, which provides additional insight into the specifics of this social network for the spread of far-right content online. Third, a combination of qualitative and quantitative content analyses showed the association between qualitative characteristics and the distribution of posts, which gives insight not only into the strategies of the far right but also into their effectiveness.

The study found that the strategies employed by the Russian far right for normalization of their ideas on VK have specifics influenced partly by the internal Russian context and partly by the platform’s features. While it is easy to find groups on VK related to well-known far-right movements, most far-right content is distributed through user accounts and non-affiliated groups, gaining traction beyond niche ideological communities. The most far-right posts contain broad outgroup designations (e.g. “ethnic”), which allow obscure direct xenophobic rhetoric and reject claims of discrimination against people of certain nationalities or religions. Hatred toward outgroups is constructed according to the exclusionary principle of “either them or us” but without explicit calls to violence to evade platform restrictions and public backlash. By fabricating news-like content (“News” and “Analytics” formats), reacting to trending topics, and reposting mainstream news (“Response” format), far-right actors leverage agenda-setting mechanisms to integrate their narratives into public discourse. They employ repetitive crime- or disease-related framing (“Demonization” and “Inferiority” narratives) to construct moral panics around the outgroup. Although humor and historical references increase view counts, the Russian far right appears to prioritize demonstrating significance and timeliness to reinforce the relevance of their discourse. This aligns with their offline strategy of gaining a lasting societal role and projecting an image as indispensable “guardians of public order”—rather than an outdated, marginalized group.

Limitations

Although the obtained data helped answer a number of questions related to the content-related strategies of the far-right content on VK, some limitations of the study may have affected the results. First, only publicly available content accessible to any Internet user with a VK account was analyzed. Content published in private groups and accounts, accessible only to subscribers and group members, was outside the scope of this study. While such accounts may share more radical content and engage in organizational activities, their limited reach restricts any broader propaganda effect, confining dissemination to already radicalized circles. In contrast, publicly available far-right content aims to recruit supporters and normalize extremist views, making it the primary focus of this study.

Second, this study only included the search and analysis of textual information. This means that the search for posts for the sample was conducted using keywords contained in the post text; therefore, if far-right ideas were contained in posts only as images or videos, they could not be found by the search. The posts included in the sample were analyzed only by text content, even if they had additional multimedia content. Only the presence or absence of multimedia content was coded, but not its characteristics.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-nms-10.1177_14614448251413141 – Supplemental material for Reaching a larger audience: Content-related strategies of the far right on VK

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-nms-10.1177_14614448251413141 for Reaching a larger audience: Content-related strategies of the far right on VK by Veronika Borovinski in New Media & Society

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-2-nms-10.1177_14614448251413141 – Supplemental material for Reaching a larger audience: Content-related strategies of the far right on VK

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-nms-10.1177_14614448251413141 for Reaching a larger audience: Content-related strategies of the far right on VK by Veronika Borovinski in New Media & Society

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-3-nms-10.1177_14614448251413141 – Supplemental material for Reaching a larger audience: Content-related strategies of the far right on VK

Supplemental material, sj-docx-3-nms-10.1177_14614448251413141 for Reaching a larger audience: Content-related strategies of the far right on VK by Veronika Borovinski in New Media & Society

Footnotes

Consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Ethical considerations

Not applicable.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the University of Haifa and the Center for Integration in Science, Israel Ministry of Aliyah and Integration. Funding for this project was also provided by the University of Haifa and the Center for Integration in Science, Israel Ministry of Aliyah and Integration.

ORCID iD

Veronika Borovinski

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author biography

Veronika Borovinski, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Communication at the University of Haifa. Her research interests include the mediatization of social and political conflicts, digital communication, political polarization, and online radicalization.

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