DECORA – Decoding Online Right-Wing Antisemitism
Subproject of the collaborative research project DAYVid: Decoding Antisemitism in YouTube Videos
Background
YouTube has become the primary platform through which young people in Germany consume information and entertainment — and simultaneously one of the most significant sites for the spread of antisemitic content in the digital sphere. Eighty-one percent of young people in Germany use the platform regularly; one in three turns to it as their main source of information on world events. Yet rigorous, platform-specific methodologies for studying YouTube — accounting for its long-form video formats, comment sections, and recommendation algorithms — remain largely absent from the research literature.
The collaborative research project DAYVid (Decoding Antisemitism in YouTube Videos) addresses this gap. For the first time, it systematically examines four socially and politically significant forms of antisemitism on YouTube: far-right, far-left, and Islamist milieus, as well as popular infotainment and explainer content on Israel and the Middle East conflict. The three partner institutions are developing an interdisciplinary methodology specifically designed for YouTube, integrating linguistic discourse analysis, film studies, multimodality research, communication studies, and AI-assisted approaches.
Within the consortium, the Weizenbaum Institut leads the DECORA subproject (Decoding Online Right-Wing Antisemitism). DECORA conducts a comparative analysis of antisemitic communication strategies in far-right and New Right YouTube contexts — examining English-language Alt-Right content alongside German-language Neue Rechte content. Its focus is on verbal, visual, and multimodal communication strategies: coded language, implicit narratives, Israel-related antisemitism, and adaptation processes following October 7, 2023. DECORA builds directly on the Decoding Antisemitism framework developed in 2020, which encompasses a multilingual corpus of over 300,000 annotated user comments and combines AI-assisted detection models with qualitative discourse analysis. The subproject is led by the Decoding Antisemitism team at the Weizenbaum Institut.
Methodology and Objectives
Foundational Methodological Development
In the first project phase, all consortium partners jointly develop a methodology grounded in critical antisemitism studies for the analysis of YouTube videos. This integrates qualitative discourse analysis, multimodal analysis informed by film studies, and exploratory AI-assisted approaches. The goal is a transferable methodological framework that remains available to the broader research community for the study of hate discourses on video platforms beyond the project's conclusion.
Comparative Case Studies – DECORA
DECORA conducts a comparative analysis of antisemitic communication strategies in far-right and New Right YouTube contexts. The subproject generates multimodal corpora of English-language Alt-Right videos and German-language Neue Rechte videos, analyzing them at the levels of image, text, and text-image correlation – including comment sections and channel self-presentation. The central research questions are:
- How do the Alt-Right and the Neue Rechte differ in their emphasis and framing of antisemitic concepts (stereotypes, conspiracy myths, discursive strategies)?
- What linguistic and visual codes are deployed to encode or camouflage antisemitic content?
- How have narratives and communication strategies shifted in the aftermath of October 7, 2023?
