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Angela Gendron of Carleton University at ‘Swansea University’s Symposium 2014: Terrorists’ Use of the Internet’ speaks on radicalisation and the role of internet preachers. Originally published on July 4, 2014 by CTProject

Counter-narratives and campaigns promoting normality, are often highlighted as universal means against online propaganda from militant movements. However, such campaigns are driven by a number of unfortunate assumptions and are difficult to apply in practice.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Counter-narratives are often claimed to be the ingenuous solution for the prevention of extremism and radicalisation. They are intended to dismantle extremism’s propaganda or create positive alternatives to its communities. But the effect is dubious and may, at worst, lead to the opposite result. Therefore, education and critical thinking are the best form of prevention.

Since the advent of the Internet, right-wing extremists and those who subscribe to extreme right views have exploited online platforms to build a collective identity among the like-minded. Research in this area has largely focused on extremists’ use of websites, forums, and mainstream social media sites, but overlooked in this research has been an exploration of the popular social news aggregation site Reddit. The current study explores the role of Reddit’s unique voting algorithm in facilitating “othering” discourse and, by extension, collective identity formation among members of a notoriously hateful subreddit community, r/The_Donald. The results of the thematic analysis indicate that those who post extreme-right content on r/The_Donald use Reddit’s voting algorithm as a tool to mobilize like-minded members by promoting extreme discourses against two prominent out-groups: Muslims and the Left. Overall, r/The_Donald’s “sense of community” facilitates identity work among its members by creating an environment wherein extreme right views are continuously validated.

While a growing body of evidence suggests that the Internet is a key facilitator of violent extremism, research in this area has rarely incorporated former extremists’ experiences with the Internet when they were involved in violent extremism. To address this gap, in-depth interviews were conducted with ten Canadian former right-wing extremists who were involved in violent racist skinhead groups, with interview questions provided by thirty Canadian law enforcement officials and ten community activists. Participants were asked about their use of the Internet and the connection between their on- and offline worlds during their involvement in the violent right-wing extremist movement. Overall, our study findings highlight the interplay between the Internet and violent extremism as well as the interactions between the on- and offline worlds of violent extremists. We conclude with a discussion of study limitations and avenues for future research.