Online Signals of Extremist Mobilisation

This study underscores that understanding and predicting extremist mobilisation requires focusing on specific behavioural indicators such as talk of violence and logistics.

Taken from the paper:

Abstract:

Psychological theories of mobilisation tend to focus on explaining people’s motivations for action, rather than mobilization (“activation”) processes. To investigate the online behaviours associated with mobilisation, we compared the online communications data of 26 people who subsequently mobilised to right-wing extremist action and 48 people who held similar extremist views but did not mobilize (N = 119,473 social media posts).

In a three-part analysis, involving content analysis (Part 1), topic modeling (Part 2), and machine learning (Part 3), we showed that communicating ideological or hateful content was not related to mobilisation, but rather mobilisation was positively related to talking about violent action, operational planning, and logistics.

Our findings imply that to explain mobilisation to extremist action, rather than the motivations for action, theories of collective action should extend beyond how individuals express grievances and anger, to how they equip themselves with the “know-how” and capability to act.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, we suggest that understanding extremist mobilisation and the initiation of action requires different theorising than radicalisation (or support for extremist collective action)—as they involve different processes (or at least different phases of a process). Our findings suggest that people who are intent on mobilising to extremist action are likely to post content about violent actions, operational planning, and logistics, as well as “leaking” emotional intensity through paralinguistic cues. In contrast, both people who support extremist action but are not intent on mobilising, and people who are, post-ideological and hateful content, so this content cannot help elucidate the mobilisation process. To enable accurate explanation and prediction of mobilisation, theories of collective action and mobilisation need to describe the behaviours and conditions that lead to a radicalised individual passing a psychological tipping point that enables action. In turn, these insights and methods may help law enforcement personnel to identify the “needles” of terrorism in an ever-growing “haystack” of extremist content.