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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.

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.

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.

This work examines the intersections of subcultural theories and radicalization theories from terrorism studies to identify how they may be improved through integration. To date there have been almost no efforts to merge these frameworks, though terrorism shares common characteristics of deviant subcultures. Both are driven by ideologies that are in opposition to that of their targets. We focus particularly on the process of online radicalization to assess how subcultural research in online environments may inform the process of enculturation into a terrorist belief system. We conclude by discussing the implications of this expansion for research on terrorism and subcultures.

The rise of the Internet has dramatically increased the degree to which youth may be exposed to online hate content, and simplified the process of sharing this content with others. Viewing messages that contain hate speech or language vilifying others can increase an individual’s risk of radicalization to extremist views and the acceptance of violent ideologies. Researchers have begun to explore the risk factors for exposure to such content, with prior studies demonstrating a relationship between low self-control and online activities being important correlates. Few studies have utilized youth samples to assess these relationships, or explored the voluntary consumption and sharing of content. This study attempts to address this gap in the literature using self-report responses provided by a sample of 1,193 youths in South Australia. A series of quantitative models are estimated assessing the relationships between self-control, opportunities to view content using both on and off-line measures, and four dependent variables related to exposure to or sharing of hate content. The implications of this analysis for our understanding of the utility of criminological theory to radicalization and countering violent extremism are discussed in detail.

Involuntary celibates, or incels, have been of heightened interest to scholars and practitioners due to their ongoing engagement in misogynistic and violent discourse. The incel subculture is complex, requiring unique strategies to develop effective interventions. The present study investigates patterns in incels’ online posting behaviors and whether acceptance of subcultural beliefs is reflected in variations of user engagement and posting behaviors over time. A sample of postings are drawn from a well-known incel-moderated forum and analyzed using group-based trajectory modeling. The results demonstrate that three distinct posting trajectory groups are present. The findings demonstrate heterogeneity among users’ posting behaviors in the forum over time and suggest that variation may be a reflection of users’ subcultural beliefs.