Studies on Extremist Online Communities

Online communities have led to an increased ability for individuals to express their views and connect with others who share similar ideologies. Although the vast majority of these communities are benign, a small subset of them are extremist in nature, espousing views that are well outside the mainstream and often promoting violence [41, 110 , 111 ].

Sources in question…

• 41 is (libgen link): “Tiana Gaudette, Ryan Scrivens, and Vivek Venkatesh. 2020. The role of the internet in facilitating violent extremism: Insights from former right-wing extremists. Terrorism and Political Violence (2020), 1–18.”
• 110 is (libgen does not have latest volumes of journal): “Ryan Scrivens, Amanda Isabel Osuna, Steven M Chermak, Michael A Whitney, and Richard Frank. 2021. Examining Online Indicators of Extremism in Violent Right-Wing Extremist Forums. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2021), 1–25.”
• 111 is (libgen journal missing volumes): “Ryan Scrivens, Thomas W Wojciechowski, and Richard Frank. 2020. Examining the developmental pathways of online posting behavior in violent right-wing extremist forums. Terrorism and Political Violence (2020), 1–18.”

All three share a common author, Ryan Scrivens. If I were concerned with an unfair bias against right-wing extremism, I might dig into the networks of authors involved to root out that bias. And yet that doesn’t occur here. More to the point though, all three of these sources are focused on right-wing extremism. This undercuts their assertion in the next sentences:

These extremist online communities can exist across the political spectrum, including right-wing and left-wing, as well as religious and other forms of ideologies. Furthermore, it has been observed that there can be similarities and overlap in the user bases of these communities.

Apart from being unsupported by the sources cited in the prior sentence, the sentences themselves are uncited. The citation given next:

For example, research by Mame et al. has shown that anti-feminist communities can serve as gateways to the far-right, with significant overlap between the Manosphere and the alt-right observed in their studies on Reddit and Youtube [75].

• 75 is (arxiv link): “Robin Mamié, Manoel Horta Ribeiro, and Robert West. 2021. Are Anti-Feminist Communities Gateways to the Far Right? Evidence from Reddit and YouTube. In WebSci. 139–147.”

also does not support a “both-sides” reading of left-wing and right-wing extremism, as the “overlap” in question is between stages of a pipeline within an ideological gradient, not between thoroughly contradictory ideological gradients.

Moreover, while the psycho-political profiles of left and right-wing extremists display considerable diversity [ 125 ], these extremist communities may exhibit similarities in their responses to specific events, e.g., left-wing and right-wing extremists fighting against ISIS in Syria [70].

• 125 is (libgen link): “Alain Van Hiel. 2012. A psycho-political profile of party activists and left-wing and right-wing extremists. EJPR 51, 2 (2012), 166–203.”
• 70 is (libgen link): “Ariel Koch. 2021. The non-jihadi foreign fighters: Western right-wing and left-wing extremists in Syria. Terrorism and Political Violence 33, 4 (2021), 669–696.”

If we have evidence of broad diversity across these two wings, and the strongest examples we have of left-wing and right-wing extremism being similar to each other is both sides saying “ISIS bad” and fighting against them, then perhaps that lends credence to the alternative answer: that the similarities either are not strong, or do not even exist.

Studies on Islamist extremism investigated the role of social media in the spread of extremist ideologies. Research has shown that these extremists use social media platforms to disseminate propaganda, recruit new members, coordinate attacks, amplify the voices of extremist leaders, and create a sense of community among like-minded individuals [ 16 , 18, 95].

• 16 is (libgen link): “Matthew C Benigni, Kenneth Joseph, and Kathleen M Carley. 2017. Online extremism and the communities that sustain it: Detecting the ISIS supporting community on Twitter. PloS one 12, 12 (2017), e0181405.”
• 18 is (online link): “Jonathon M Berger and Jonathon Morgan. 2015. The ISIS Twitter Census: Defining and describing the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter. Brookings Institution.”
• 95 is (libgen link): “James A Piazza and Ahmet Guler. 2021. The online caliphate: Internet usage and ISIS support in the Arab world. Terrorism and political violence 33, 6 (2021), 1256–1275.”

Nothing particularly objectionable here. Social media is important for all political leanings, left and right, extreme and moderate.

A comparative study [64] of the use of political violence by left-wing, right-wing, and Islamist extremists found that individuals and attacks associated with left-wing causes are likely to be less violent.

• 64 is (online link): “Katarzyna Jasko, Gary LaFree, James Piazza, and Michael H Becker. 2022. A comparison of political violence by left-wing, right-wing, and Islamist extremists in the United States and the world. PNAS 119, 30 (2022), e2122593119.”

So… the only study that could be found works against the notion that the right-wing and left-wing extremists are comparable.

This entire segment is, in itself, adequate explanation for the complaints of the next section: that there is “imbalance in research on online extremism.” There is imbalance because left-wing and right-wing extremists are not, in fact, isomorphic. There are differences that matter, and those differences inform where researchers spend their limited time, budget, and energy.