ABSTRACT
Social media has fundamentally transformed political life, particularly in the context of far-right extremism. Social media has fueled the transformation of far-right ideologies and their subsequent mainstreaming, leading to a surge in extremist violence and terrorism. Although the correlation between social media and the current wave of political extremism is widely acknowledged, the mechanisms behind this phenomenon remain less explored. The dominant hypothesis posits that social media produces “echo chambers” or “filter bubbles”, isolating individuals from dissenting perspectives. According to this rational framework, exposure to diverse viewpoints fosters shared understanding through public deliberation, while fragmented enclaves drive extremism. However, mounting empirical evidence challenges this premise, suggesting the need for a new explanation. So, why does social media breed radicalization and polarization? What takes place within the online spaces from which violent extremists emerge? To answer these questions, this book goes inside the far-right online community Stormfront. Using a combination of computational text analysis and close reading, we examine 20 years of discussions and trace how they affect the participants. Through this empirical deep dive, we lay the foundation of a new paradigm of online radicalization research, building on the tradition of Émile Durkheim. This framework asserts that the roots of radicalization lie not in rational deliberation, opinions, and arguments but rather in identity, emotion, and discourse. Consequently, extremist online communities are not arenas for rational deliberation but conduits for a distinctive form of social ritual.
