Aug 5, 2025 Aly Hill, Spring 2025 DM Graduate Fellow, The White Supremacist Next Door: A Digital Ethnography of the Far-Right and Hyperlocal Political Strategy

When Research Hits Home: Rethinking Extremism Through Localized Research

Academic research has long faced criticism for its detachment from the communities it studies, contributing to the Academy’s reputation as an “ivory tower.” In response, ethnographic methods emerged to center “thick descriptions” of social life, rooted in immersive, community-based fieldwork. The rise of digital spaces in the early 2000s expanded these methods further, prompting scholars to investigate online communities and the new forms of social and political life they enabled.

My own research on political extremism and digital violence draws from a wide range of online materials, including news coverage, social media posts, and legislation, to examine the ideologies, identities, and infrastructures that shape extremism and those it harms. Despite this breadth, my focus on online spaces left gaps in my understanding of the dimensions of extremist communities in my own backyard.

This, I learned, was a prevailing challenge in political communication and digital media scholarship, which routinely separates online and offline political life and prioritizes large-scale national movements over the local, place-based communities that sustain political action. This is at odds with contemporary political organizing, especially on the political right, which relies on bottom-up tactics to achieve wider political goals.

This challenge was the starting point for my Digital Matters project: The White Supremacist Next Door: Mapping Far-Right Networks in Local Politics. During my residency, I explored how far-right groups in Utah use digital platforms to shape policy, intimidate opposition, and mobilize supporters around a wide range of legislative issues on and offline.

Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT)—a qualitative framework for mapping how human and non-human actors (e.g., policies, technologies, narratives) interact to produce political outcomes—I investigated nineteen Utah-based hate groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center. By analyzing their websites, social media activity, and press coverage, I traced how these groups and their affiliates operate within a localized political network to build influence and embed far-right ideologies into local political processes.

This project not only deepened my understanding of Utah’s far-right ecosystem, but also reconnected me with the deeper purpose behind my research and my relationship to the places and places it’s rooted in. Like many scholars, my interest in extremism stems from growing up in a community where far-right ideologies were normalized; research became a way to make sense of that experience.

Today, many of the most dangerous political movements thrive precisely because they are hyperlocal, rooted in community networks and small-scale governance, yet expanded and amplified through digital infrastructures. As scholars, we must pay closer attention to the ways online and offline dynamics interact to shape power and political life. Localized research is not just a methodological choice, but an ethical imperative. It keeps us honest. It keeps us human. And most importantly, it ensures our work remains connected to the world it seeks to understand.