Right-leaning comedy podcasts are a gateway to conspiracy theories and misogynistic content, a new study has found.
While these podcasts may seem harmless at first—often discussing sports like the NFL and MMA and featuring guests such as Ben Affleck and David Goggins—a new report reveals that engaging with their content online can open a Pandora’s box of aliens and Andrew Tate, the former professional kickboxer who built his platform by promoting misogynistic ideas.
In a study published this week, the nonprofit Media Matters for America examined five comedy shows that platformed Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election while claiming to be nonpolitical: Full Send, The Joe Rogan Experience, Impaulsive With Logan Paul, This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, and Flagrant.
Using a brand-new TikTok account created solely for research, Media Matters interacted with accounts affiliated with these shows or their hosts. (In the case of Rogan, who does not have an official TikTok, a fan account exclusively posting show clips was used.)
After Media Matters watched and “liked” the 10 most recent videos from each account, TikTok’s algorithm began delivering a stream of content that included conspiracy theories, toxic masculinity, misinformation, doomsday prepping, racism, right-wing media, and transphobia.
Among the first 425 videos shown on the Media Matters account’s “For You” page, 28% contained conspiracy theories and 16% promoted toxic masculinity. These included claims that recent plane crashes were orchestrated to “make sure people won’t leave.” Other videos featured phrases like “get rich and disappear,” set to montages of luxury watches, boats, cars, and planes—many soundtracked by Tate.
“TikTok’s recommendation algorithm fed our account with misogynistic content and fringe conspiracy theory videos that can lead users down a right-wing rabbit hole of misinformation and more extreme content, which has the potential to radicalize them,” Media Matters senior investigative researcher Olivia Little tells Fast Company.
The concern grows when considering the reach of these shows. Right-leaning podcasts far surpass their left-leaning counterparts in audience size. According to a Media Matters report published in March, 9 of the 10 most-followed online shows across all platforms are right-leaning, with a combined total following of more than 197 million.
These shows extend their influence through social media, where they post full streams, short clips, and links. While left-leaning online shows have a collective following of 48 million across platforms, right-leaning shows have amassed more than 225 million followers.
“TikTok is so popular because of its focus on hyper-tailoring a user’s recommendation feed to their content preferences, which has the potential to throw users down hard-to-escape rabbit holes,” Little says. “Engaging with right-wing or right-wing-adjacent content appears to signal to the recommendation algorithm that you’re interested in that content and your feed will quickly reflect that.”
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