This past weekend, a white supremacist carried out a racist massacre in Buffalo, NY. Another shooter attacked three women in a Korean salon in Dallas, while yet another opened fire in a Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, CA. We’re mourning these horrific acts even as we recognize them as part of the larger patterns of extremist violence we study.
The fact that beliefs like Great Replacement Theory circulate in mainstream spaces is a threat to our democracy. Research alone can’t block these conspiracies from circulating, but understanding how they spread is critical to countering their influence.
Francesca Tripodi recently collaborated with Define American to trace how YouTube channels promote the Great Replacement Theory using appeals to fear and the use of misleading statistics or out-of-context information.
And in Slate this week, Alice Marwick wrote about how “curious young white men (and they are almost all men) who think of themselves as ‘logical’ and ‘rational’ cling to the scientific gloss on racist materials, thereby couching their hateful beliefs as factual. The shooter’s diaries are filled with statistics and graphs alongside racist cartoons and tweets.”
Based on this research, we know that while the internet does not cause radicalization, it absolutely helps spread extremist ideas by hosting communities of extremist thinkers and mainstreaming conspiracy theories and distrust in institutions.
As Alice said, “We must understand the ecosystems that immerse people in emotion and pseudoscience, and how even watered-down versions of hateful rhetoric give people like the shooter the space to dissociate from the people they harm.”
Publications and appearances
“A great deal of emphasis on combating online radicalization has been targeted towards platform companies trying to get them to deplatform people who are pushing this type of content, but also to change their recommendation algorithms so that people aren’t being recommended far-right content.” Alice Marwick talked in depth about the issues in the Far-Right Online Radicalization literature review last week on Tech Policy Press’s podcast, The Sunday Show, hosted by Justin Hendrix.
“When people do get radicalized online, it’s not something that happens in an instant, sometimes people like to think about this as a flash of lightning – that’s not how this works. It takes place over a period of time. There are possible points of intervention before it gets to this point.” Alice Marwick spoke to ABC News this week about the Buffalo shooting and the call for content moderation.
“What’s needed, for all Americans, is a full legal and political reckoning with the reckless manner in which digital technology has been allowed to invade our lives. The collection, use and manipulation of electronic data must finally be regulated and severely limited. Only then can we comfortably enjoy all the good that can come from these technologies.” Zeynep Tufekci discussed data collection, tracking, and abortion in the New York Times this week.
Coming soon
May 20: CITAP affiliate applications are due TODAY!
May 26-30: The 72nd annual International Communication Association (ICA) conference in Paris, France. Many of our CITAP folks will be there, so if anyone wants to meet with us while there, do reach out!
One World, One Network? Deen Freelon will be speaking at the closing plenary at ICA. If you’re heading to Paris, you can sign up for the event here.
Rest of Web
Interested in working at the Social Science Research Council? They’re hiring and looking to fill a program coordinator position.
Our friends over at The George Washington University Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics (IDDP) are looking for a postdoc!