Collective identity changes in far-right online communities: The role of offline intergroup conflict

Abstract

Despite the increasing citizen engagement with socio-political online communities, little is known about how such communities are affected by significant offline events. Thus, we investigate here the ways in which the collective identity of a far-right online community is affected by offline intergroup conflict. We examine over 14 years of online communication between members of Stormfront Downunder, the Australian sub-forum of the global white supremacist community Stormfront.org . We analyse members’ language use and discourse before and after significant intergroup conflict in 2015, culminating in local racist riots in Sydney, Australia. We found that the riots were associated with significant changes in the collective beliefs of the community (as captured by members’ most salient concerns and group norms), emotions and consensus within the community. Overall, the effects of the local riots were manifest in a reinvigorated sense of purpose for the far-right community with a stronger anti-Muslim agenda.

Online influence, offline violence: language use on YouTube surrounding the ‘Unite the Right’ rally

“…To capture the immediate and continuing effects of the rally we sampled video transcripts up to approximately 2 months after the rally, as well as an equal timeframe preceding the rally. Previous works assessing the online effects of offline events have examined timeframes ranging from 2 weeks [44], a month [39,40,43], to one or several years [42,45,54]. Because no consensus seems to exist in the literature, we opted for a middle ground of 2 months pre-and post-event (data from a longer timeframe is available on request).…”

Impulsivity, internalizing symptoms, and online group behavior as determinants of online hate

“…As a result, people tend to favor in-group members over out-group members and overestimate the similarity between themselves and in-group members as well as the dissimilarity between themselves and out-group members [53,54,55]. Currently, various online groups are increasingly important sources for social identification [56,57,58], discrimination and even dehumanization of out-groups [5,19,20,59].…”

“…23,25] and social identification with online groups [e.g. 19,20] as predictors of aggressive online behavior. However, social identification per se might not be related to online hate offending.…”

“…Antisocial behavior on the Internet is also related to online group behavior that motivates hostilities between different identity-based groups. Especially, social identification and deindividuation are suggested as a psychological mechanism of online hostilities [19,20,21]. Social homophily and polarization between different online communities have also been reported to motivate aggression in social media [22,23].…”

“You wouldn’t celebrate September 11”: Testing online polarisation between opposing ideological camps on YouTube

“…In echo-chambers, beyond the shift in the initial position, polarisation seems to lead to a decreased likelihood to interact with outgroup members (Quattrociocchi et al, 2016) and the formation of “identity bubbles” (Kaakinen et al, 2020; Oksanen et al, 2020). The polarisation of attitudes in echo-chambers is well-illustrated by research on the far-right in which online participation in radical echo-chambers (such as neo-Nazi and white supremacist forums) led to changes in group norms and increased unification at the intragroup level (Bliuc, Betts, Faulkner, et al, 2020; Bluic et al, 2019; Bliuc, Betts, Vergani, et al, 2020; Wojcieszak, 2010; for a review see Bliuc et al, 2018).…”