ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the political information ecologies of the “deep vernacular web” by studying the cross-posting of links on 4chan’s “politically incorrect” board and a host of political subreddits. It finds that Reddit’s banning of political subreddits in June 2020 proved effective in culling the spread of misinformation. 4chan users turned from sharing propagandistic content towards conspiratorial links as the 2020 U.S. election approached. This turn towards conspiracy parallels the decline in popularity of alt-right punditry on both platforms, reflected in the shift in presence over time of these types of videos. The chapter offers an example of how URLs and YouTube links can be used as a cross-platform digital method in studying the spread of misinformation.
