Thinking for Themselves: Bootstraps Discourse and the Imagined Epistemology of Reactionary YouTube Audiences

In recent years, popular interest in disinformation has coalesced around a series of high-profile events, starting with the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump in 2016. While Facebook and Twitter drew the most scrutiny in the immediate aftermath of these events, attention has turned in recent years to YouTube as a source of right-wing disinformation and radicalization. While the bulk of the extant literature on this topic has focused on the supply of right-wing content on YouTube – including quantitative studies examining the impact of the recommendation algorithm and qualitative studies exploring the rhetoric and micro-celebrity practices of reactionary channels – few studies have examined what draws viewers to the videos they watch. This paper aims to fill this gap in research by analyzing interviews with 18 current and former fans of US-centric reactionary YouTube channels. Based on these interviews, I introduce the concept of bootstraps epistemology as a way of understanding right-wing approaches to accessing political truth and knowledge.