ABSTRACT
Our new theoretical understanding of online radicalization and polarization accentuates the importance of studying dimensions of the social world traditionally confined to qualitative investigation – namely, meaning-making, emotion, and identity. While online platforms like Stormfront provide unprecedented insights into the intricacies of social movement dynamics, this also poses methodological and ethical challenges to the existing emphasis within Big Data and computational social science research. This chapter introduces a computational pluralist framework, adept at tracing the grassroots mechanisms through which members forge a collective worldview and a shared identity, by combining computational methods with interpretive analysis. We furthermore detail the methodology used in this book – how the data was collected and analyzed – and address the ethical dilemmas posed by examining white supremacists through digital data.
