Abstract

The Internet has become one of the extreme right’s most valuable assets in disseminating information to a broader audience. We are interested in whether hateful alt-right online communities are simply rendezvous of individuals who already subscribe to hateful ideology, or if the existence of these online communities has the capacity to radicalize previously neutral individuals. Our preliminary findings show that joining a hateful subreddit does show evidence of increased hate word usage. These findings have broad implications on the role of the Internet in not only supporting, but growing the alt-right movement.

Date

2021

Authors

Kaitlyn Ko, Keith Burghardt, Goran Muric

Conference

2021 IEEE 18th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Smart Systems (MASS)

Pages

657-658

Publisher

IEEE