Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

"This Is How The West Ends": A Content Analysis Of Conservative Youtubers Notions Of Western Excellence, Michelle Johnson

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2024

In 2023, YouTube was one of the most used social media platforms in the United States alone. While existing scholarship (Finlayson 2022) has observed linkages between right-wing social media and distrust in institutions of government, family, and others, I seek to understand how conservatives use YouTube as a means to teach their audience racialized, gendered, and nationalistic ideas about the Western hegemonic order. To examine this issue, I conducted an in-depth qualitative content analysis of three key conservative content creators: Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and Michael Knowles. Two videos were chosen within each creator's profile using keyword searches such as …