Social Network Analysis

This article examines how far-right groups advance political agendas through digital platforms, specifically by embedding reactionary ideology within health and wellness discourse. Our investigation concerns the “Barbarian Right” subculture on X (formerly Twitter), where reactionary content is often intertwined with wellness messaging. Using social network analysis of 42 accounts identified through digital ethnography, we mapped ...

This paper contributes to platform-comparative research through a case study of Twitter/X, Telegram, and Gettr in the context of German far-right social movements. It introduces the conceptual framework of platform opportunity structures to examine how platforms enable or constrain far-right mobilization. Using community analysis of sharing networks among the same pool of far-right social movement actors, the ...

Both vernacular security studies and critical terrorism studies (CTS) offer constructivist analyses of security couched in understandings of security speak. However, neither adequately take account of the ways in which social media presents important opportunities for greater insight into how terrorism is constructed. This study analyses tweets posted after the 2017 Manchester bombing, exploring how ...

Why do Westerners become foreign fighters in civil conflicts? We explore this question through original data collection on German foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, and test three sets of hypotheses that revolve around socioeconomic integration, online radicalization, and social network mobilization. We conduct link analysis to map the network of German foreign fighters prior ...

This paper explores the relationship of transphobia and other forms of harassment found across the events of the Gamergate hate movement through the development of an interactive social network analysis. With the social network being derived from hundreds of events tagged by hand, special consideration is given to the positionality and biases of its authors ...

The spread of radicalization through the Internet is a growing problem. We are witnessing a rise in online hate groups, inspiring the impressionable and vulnerable population towards extreme actions in the real world. In this paper, we study the spread of hate sentiments in online forums by collecting 1,973 long comment threads (30+ comments per ...

Current literature on online criminal and deviant groups recognizes the role of online forums in the transfer of knowledge and socialization of members, but debates on the role of the Internet in the socialization and radicalization processes in the context of online extremist groups. This study contributes to the discussion by examining online radicalization process ...

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