Open AccessTAKING THE REDPILL: TALKING ABOUT EXTREMISM
Author(s) -
Alice E. Marwick,
Katherine Furl
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
selected papers of internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2162-3317
DOI - 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12207
Subject(s) - radicalization , sociology , mainstream , narrative , media studies , terrorism , frame analysis , politics , the internet , political science , criminology , social psychology , psychology , content analysis , law , social science , linguistics , philosophy , world wide web , computer science
There is great public concern about far-right radicalization online,the process by which individuals are exposed to internet content and then adopt extremist orhateful ideas. However, this concept has two major problems. First, the idea of“radicalization” and “extremism” assumes that to study the radical is to study the other,yet white supremacy and racism are hardly new phenomenon in America. Second, while theinternet clearly contributes to spreading fringe and far-right beliefs, "onlineradicalization" furthers simplistic narratives of media effects that ignore political,economic, and emotional complexities. Thus, to understand the adoption of fringe andfar-right beliefs outside the problematic frame of “radicalization”, this paper takes upnarratives of “redpilling,” slang for coming to believe something counterfactual tomainstream consensus. Drawing from qualitative and ethnographic research on far-right onlinesubcultures and critical terrorism studies, we ask how members of far-right and fringecommuniteis understand and perform their own community enrollment. We conduct criticaldiscourse theory and qualitative data analysis on a broad corpus of in situ discussions ofredpilling drawn from internet spaces devoted to far-right and fringe discussions, including12 different subreddits, Gab.ai, Discord, Parler, Telegram, and 4chan. Our preliminaryfindings suggest that “online radicalization” is an ongoing process in which people come tobelieve extremist viewpoints by consuming far-right content, participating in far-rightinternet spaces, viewing interpersonal interactions through an ideological lens, andinteracting with friends and family with similar views.