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VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

On Tuesday, December 6, 2011 the Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence will hold a hearing entitled “Jihadist Use of Social Media – How to Prevent Terrorism and Preserve Innovation.”

It has become a familiar observation that social media usage can afford material assistance to the advancement of violent extremist or terrorist causes and can be a tool for counter-extremism and counter-terrorism efforts. This chapter discusses how several core supporting pillars of extremism mesh with social media in apparently similar ways to non-extremist activity and then considers the limited available literature on non-extremist online fundraising, moving thereafter to the literature which is more focused specifically on the study of social media funding for extremist or terrorist causes. It highlights the potential role of symbolic representation of shared values on social media and how this can help to address the challenges of an era where large-scale but ostensibly non-extremist movements such as QAnon and Stop the Steal arguably share some values in common with extremist causes and hence are a potential funding reservoir not necessarily observed if one focuses on specific extremist messaging content or extremist symbology.

This blog post explores the reasons why some online ideological groups take action while others do not and focuses on to what extent the online communications of ideological groups contribute to direct collective action.

In order to address this question, we examined a number of online groups using a variety of criteria, including the way they express their group identity online, the narratives they use to imbue their ideologies with legitimacy, and the goals or actions they advocate. We compared these criteria to the actions that the groups have taken, and goals they accomplished.

Our research also explores communication processes and the use of persuasive narratives in an online setting through a number of case studies. These observations provide insight into the decision-making of groups in an online setting and the ways that narrative and discourse are used to justify taking certain actions.

We discuss here findings from two of these case studies, on the American Resistance Movement (ARM), an online community related to the American Patriot movement and the online hacktivist group Anonymous.

We will set out how the concepts of ideology and identity impact on each case, how these relate to the types of actions advocated and taken, and, briefly, the differing effect of anonymity.