de León, E., Kristensen, J. B., Makhortykh, M., Mayerhöffer, E., & Adam, S. (2025). The political weaponization of online content: From direct to networked exposure. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/grne7_v1
Summary
This paper introduces the concept of networked exposure to broaden how we understand audiences’ encounters with political information online. Its central argument is that prior exposure research has been too narrowly fixated on direct encounters with obviously problematic material — misinformation, conspiracy content, hyperpartisan outlets — and has thereby missed a distinct pattern: people also encounter seemingly ordinary content, such as mainstream news stories or Wikipedia articles, that has been circulated and weaponized within extremist and conspiracy-aligned networks. The paper positions networked exposure as a corrective and complement to the direct-exposure paradigm, showing how ostensibly neutral content acquires political meaning through the ideological context of its circulation.
Key Contributions
- Introduces networked exposure as an analytically distinct concept alongside direct exposure.
- Foregrounds the political weaponization of ordinary content (traditional news, Wikipedia) inside extremist and conspiracy networks.
- Offers a reframing of how exposure is studied and measured, arguing the field must account for circulation context, not just content type.
Methods
The available abstract describes a conceptual/theoretical contribution rather than a specific empirical design. The work develops the notion of networked exposure and situates it within existing scholarship on online political information exposure, misinformation, and conspiracy/extremist media ecosystems. Specific empirical methods are not detailed in the summary provided.
Findings
- No specific empirical findings are reported in the available abstract.
- The primary payoff is conceptual: the distinction between direct and networked exposure and the claim that neutral content gains political charge through its network of circulation.
Connections
This paper’s emphasis on how ordinary content is repurposed within ideologically charged networks connects to work on the circulation dynamics of coordinated and cross-platform sharing, such as Giglietto2017-4375de2f. Its framing of extremist and conspiracy-aligned media ecosystems relates to studies of online radicalization and conspiracy networks including Marwick2026-qd, Rothut2026-or, and Grusauskaite2026-po.