Journal Article
Inside a White Power echo chamber: Why fringe digital spaces are polarizing politics
September 18, 2023Recent decades have seen a blurring of the line between extremist movements and mainstream politics, driven by rising sectarian polarization. This development has been linked to digital media, with suggestions that so-called echo chambers may drive political radicalization. To understand the social processes taking place inside such digital spaces, this article draws on Randall Collins ...
Deadly Disinformation: Viral Conspiracy Theories as a Radicalization Mechanism
September 18, 2023Viral online disinformation is misleading content that is generated to manipulate public opinion and to circulate rapidly in the digital space. Although viral disinformation has become an instrument for radicalization, the specific psychological mechanisms by which disinformation can be weaponized––wielded as mobilizing and radicalizing political tools––are not yet well-understood. In this paper, we establish the ...
Why Do Online Countering Violent Extremism Strategies Not Work? The Case of Digital Jihad
September 18, 2023This article discusses the reasons why content moderation and control in cyberspace, being a primary means of online countering violent extremism (CVE), does not work as intended. It makes four main arguments. Firstly, despite years of efforts from CVE stakeholders, the propaganda of militant Islamist VEOs is still easily accessible on the Internet. This study ...
Examining incel subculture on Reddit
September 18, 2023The online presence of incels, or involuntary celibates, has been an increasing security concern for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in recent years, given that self-identified incels – including Alek Minassian and Elliot Rodger – used the Internet to disseminate incel ideology and manifestos prior to committing acts of violence. However, little is empirically known about ...
How online interaction radicalises while group involvement restrains: a case study of Action Zealandia from 2019 to 2021
September 18, 2023Scholars have long seen radicalisation as a predominantly group based phenomenon, occurring largely through ‘real world,’ in person interaction. By contrast, the internet is seen as playing only a limited ‘facilitating’ role in radicalising people to violence. However, a series of attacks by far right extremists over the past decade has demonstrated that this perspective ...
Understanding the role of digital media in female participation in terrorism: the case of Bangladesh
September 18, 2023Notwithstanding the discernable participation of women in terrorist groups, empirical research on women in terrorism is very scant in Bangladesh. To fill this gap, our article examines women’s involvement in terrorism by analyzing the life stories of dozens of Bangladeshi women terrorists. We use a terrorist lifecycle approach to understand the role of digital media ...
Mobilizing against Islam on social media: hyperlink networking among European far-right extra-parliamentary Facebook groups
September 18, 2023The far right is notoriously effective in its use of digital media to mobilize people and to build a sense of collective identity around oppositional cultures. Yet, while research has begun to explore far-right groups’ social media hyperlinking activities, relatively little is known about the purposes and communicative functions of this form of communication. By ...
Of Humans, Machines, and Extremism: The Role of Platforms in Facilitating Undemocratic Cognition
September 18, 2023The events surrounding the 2020 U.S. election and the January 6 insurrection have challenged scholarly understanding of concepts like collective action, radicalization, and mobilization. In this article, we argue that online far-right radicalization is better understood as a form of distributed cognition, in which the groups’ online environment incentivizes certain patterns of behavior over others. ...
Ecofascism: An Examination of the Far-Right/Ecology Nexus in the Online Space
September 18, 2023With Patrick Crusuis’ 2019 attack that killed twenty-two people in El Paso, Texas, discussions of ecofascism were thrust into mainstream news outlets and magazines. In his manifesto, Crusius described himself as an “ecofascist” seeking to challenge the “environmental warfare” of immigration. His choice of target, a Walmart frequented by Mexican immigrants, reflects this ideological connection ...
Kyle Rittenhouse and the Shared Meme Networks of the Armed American Far-Right: An Analysis of the Content Creation Formula, right-wing Injection of Politics, and Normalization of Violence
September 18, 2023This paper analyzes the meaning of iconography that constitute memes by reviewing a collection of memes propagated on social media related to the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting of protestors in Wisconsin. The authors collected 355 images from 37,774 tweets, supplemented by images found in Facebook groups, militia forums, and right-wing meme repositories related to Kyle Rittenhouse. ...