Journal Article |
Political Radicalization on the Internet: Extremist Content, Government Control, and the Power of Victim and Jihad Videos
View Abstract
The role of the internet in radicalizing individuals to extremist action is much discussed but remains conceptually and empirically unclear. Here we consider right-wing and jihadist use of the Internet – who posts what and where. We focus on extremist content related to radicalization to violent action, and argue that victim videos and jihad videos are particularly powerful in moving individuals to radical action. We interpret these two kinds of video as complementary parts of the kind of mobilization frame studied by social movement theorists. Finally we consider various kinds of government effort to control extremist content on the Internet.
|
2015 |
Holt, T., Frellich, J.D., Chermak, S. and McCauley, C. |
View
Publisher
|
VOX-Pol Blog |
Can Taking Down Websites Really Stop Terrorists and Hate Groups?
View Abstract
|
2017 |
Holt, T., Freilich, J. D. and Chermak, S. |
View
Publisher
|
Journal Article |
Loners, Colleagues, or Peers? Assessing the Social Organization of Radicalization
View Abstract
This study explores the utility of a sociological model of social organization developed by Best and Luckenbill (1994) to classify the radicalization processes of terrorists (i.e., extremist perpetrators who engaged in ideologically motivated acts of violence) who are usually categorized as loner or lone wolf attackers. There are several organizational frameworks used to define or classify violent acts performed by individuals who may or may not have ties to extremist groups, but these studies largely ignore the role of social relationships in radicalization and the extent to which they inform our knowledge of terror. To address this gap, we apply the Best and Luckenbill model of social organization using a qualitative analysis of three case studies of four lone actor or small cell terrorists. The findings demonstrate lone actors are not always true loners in the context of radicalization, and highlights the ways that the Internet and social ties foster the radicalization processes of terror.
|
2018 |
Holt, T.J., Feilich, J.D, Chermak, S.M., Mills, C., and Silva J. |
View
Publisher
|
Report |
From Minutes to Months: A rapid evidence assessment of the impact of media and social media during and after terror events
View Abstract
This document reports findings from a Rapid Evidence Assessment conducted on the role of mass and social media during and after terrorist events. It is designed to bring together and synthesize insights and evidence from the available published research literature to inform future policy and practice development. By promoting understanding of how different forms of mediated communication shape what happens in the aftermath of terror events, the work seeks to reflect changes in both the conduct of terrorism and the contemporary information environment. In particular, the spread of social media has had disruptive and transformative impacts upon press and broadcast journalism, and the ways
that terrorist violence is performed.
|
2018 |
Innes, M., Innes, H., Dobreva, D., Chermak, S., Huey, S., McGovern, A. |
View
Publisher
|
Journal Article |
Invisible Empire of Hate: Gender Differences in the Ku Klux Klan’s Online Justifications for Violence
View Abstract
This article presents a systematic linguistic approach to mapping gender differences in the formulation and practice of right-wing ideology. We conducted a set of content- and text-analytical analyses on a 52,760 words corpus from a female-only subforum, dubbed LOTIES (Ladies of the Invisible Empire), compared with a matching corpus of 1.793 million words from a male-only subforum of the Ku Klux Klan’s primary website. Using a combination of computational and noncomputational linguistic methods, we show that the wholesome and avowedly prosocial discourse of the female forum is a gateway to Klan activity and, ultimately, to the Klan’s ideology through a fear-based “all means are necessary” mindset and violent sentiments. The findings also suggest that the female forum’s porousness and emphasis on inclusion and homogeneity may have facilitated the spontaneous “mutation” of the traditional KKK ideology into a generic Far-Right ideology that enjoys broad consensus. Rhetorically, this generic right-wing ideology downplays overt racial and violent elements and eschews theological controversies by relating to Christianity instrumentally as a cultural heritage rather than a religion in the metaphysical sense of the word.
|
2018 |
Cohen J. S., Holt J. T.,Chermak M.S, and Freilich D. J. |
View
Publisher
|
VOX-Pol Blog |
Triggered by Defeat or Victory? Assessing the Impact of Presidential Election Results on Extreme Right-Wing Mobilisation Online
View Abstract
|
2020 |
Scrivens, R., Burruss, G. W., Holt, T. J., Chermak, S., Freilich, J. D. and Frank, R. |
View
Publisher
|