From Wellness to White Nationalism: Mapping Women’s Radicalization Pathways on TikTok

TikTok is often portrayed as a platform for entertainment, self-improvement, and community building. Yet beneath seemingly benign content lies a complex ecosystem through which some women are exposed to increasingly conservative, alt-light, alt-right, and far-right ideologies.

Drawing on digital ethnography and working with a research team, this talk examines how algorithmic recommendations, influencer cultures, and everyday content categories — including baking, wellness, motherhood, femininity, and relationship advice — can function as pathways into more extreme political spaces. Rather than beginning with explicitly political content, many journeys start with lifestyle and identity-based communities that gradually introduce narratives around gender roles, anti-feminism, anti-immigration sentiment, white nationalism, and other exclusionary ideologies.

Through an analysis of tradwife influencers and related online communities, this presentation explores how radicalization unfolds in highly gendered ways and considers the implications for understanding contemporary political extremism, platform governance, and the growing influence of social media in shaping women's political identities and beliefs.

45 minutes will be devoted to Q&A; feel free to ask any questions.