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Recent decades have seen a blurring of the line between extremist movements and mainstream politics, driven by rising sectarian polarization. This development has been linked to digital media, with suggestions that so-called echo chambers may drive political radicalization. To understand the social processes taking place inside such digital spaces, this article draws on Randall Collins and the Durkheimian tradition to develop a theory of discursive community formation. Empirically, we analyze 20 years of discussion on the White Power forum Stormfront, employing natural language processing to study discursive evolution as members become socialized into the community. Our findings suggest that digital media provide space for conversational rituals that instill in people a sense of social membership and intersubjectivity, contained in the elaboration of a shared discourse, within which certain beliefs become sacred and unquestionable. This provides a potential social mechanism linking echo chambers to the rise of sectarian polarization.

Digital media platforms have been implicated in the recent rise of far-right extremism. This study proposes that these platforms afford emotional processes that lie at the core of far-right movements. Drawing on Randall Collins’ interactional framework and the literature on cultural trauma, we investigate the emotional processes triggered by traumatic experiences within far-right online communities. As a case, we examine how the white supremacist community Stormfront responded to the 2008 election of Barack Obama, by analyzing the complete datasets of discussion on the forum through a combination of computational methods and qualitative analysis. Our findings suggest that the community functioned as a “emotional refuge”, where members collectively interpreted and transformed their emotional reactions, thereby shaping an emotionally energized collective with a focused target of collective action.

The far right is notoriously effective in its use of digital media to mobilize people and to build a sense of collective identity around oppositional cultures. Yet, while research has begun to explore far-right groups’ social media hyperlinking activities, relatively little is known about the purposes and communicative functions of this form of communication. By combining social network analysis and qualitative content analysis on Facebook data obtained from 17 PEGIDA and Generation Identity Facebook pages in the period around the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ (2015–2017), this exploratory study investigates the linked source types and their purposes. We find that the groups predominantly link to mainstream media, far-right media and far-right non-institutional groups. While there are great overlaps in the communicative functions and purposes of the links for the two networks, the PEGIDA groups mainly focus on the promotion of political issues, especially around the opposition to third-country (Muslim) immigration, while the GI groups use them for self-promotional purposes. These differences are largely explainable by the groups’ adverse (online) mobilization aims.

This dissertation explores the impact of new technologies on state repression, political violence, and contentious politics via three interrelated studies. The first chapter presents a novel theory that describes the technology policies the Chinese government uses to oppress Uyghurs and turn them into obedient citizens. The chapter analyzes artificial intelligence tools, incarceration testimonies, official documents, police data, satellite evidence, and reports by nongovernmental organizations and scholars. Its findings shed light on the pervasive and increasingly dangerous nature of state repression in the digital age. The second chapter investigates the relationship between digital repression and the nature of conflicts using a global event dataset that documents conflicts with at least 1,000 participants. Considering the results of a rare events logistic regression analysis, the chapter asserts that digital repression alone is not a strong enough determinant of the occurrence of violent incidents. This chapter contributes to explanations of the complex dynamics between state repression and collective behavior by taking a critical stance toward technological determinism. The last chapter examines the relationship between technological repression and the likelihood of success for social movements through a competing risk analysis. It shows that social movements are less likely to succeed in countries that employ repression technology more
frequently compared to their less repressive counterparts. This finding illuminates the longstanding debate on the repression–resistance nexus by demonstrating the negative impact of technological repression on civil resistance. In sum, this dissertation documents the risks and opportunities associated with new technologies while also delineating their limitations.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Globalization with advanced information technologies has changed the life of the people in
the world. When something occurs in one part of the world, other part of the world can be
informed easily within seconds. Current information technologies such as internet, social
media, blogs and news channels have enabled the people to create virtual groups all over the
world and to disseminate the information easily.
Most of the states, governments, public and private institutions have been using the advantage
of the information technologies to serve their citizens and customers. Concurrently, criminals
are also using the advantage of information technologies while committing crime. In other
words, everything including crime and criminals has changed their structures to be compatible
with the advanced information technologies.
Recently, lots of terrorist organizations have erupted especially in the Middle East and their
networks are spreading out with the use of technology. Most of the terrorist organizations
have been using the technology for military training of their militants, preparation, and
recruitment processes. Especially the internet is almost a virtual training slot for terrorist
groups. Recent studies (Weimann, 2006; Rothenberger, 2012) have revealed that the internet
is served as the library for the terrorist groups to provide instruction manuals and videos on
technical and tactical areas such as making a bomb, taking hostages, and guerilla combat. As
it has an appropriate space for interaction activities, potential terrorists use the advantage of
interaction face of the internet to learn how to make a bomb and send instant messages to the
instructors teaching illegal issues.
Thus, security forces in the face of all these developments should take the necessary
precautions to fight against the terrorist organizations by standing one step ahead on the use of
technology. Standing one step ahead can only be achieved understanding the phenomena and
ceaselessly updating the knowledge. Otherwise, security forces will fail if they maintain the
use of old technique and tactic to fight against the terrorist groups in this technology epoch.
Based on this point of view, this study will focus on understanding the use of technology to
fight against the terrorism. Furthermore, this study will also investigate some of the terrorist
organizations using the technology actively to commit crime. This study will also attempt to
shed light to the fact that different technologies have been used against the humanity by
terrorist groups although most of the people are not aware of that reality.