Echo chambers and online radicalism: assessing the Internet’s complicity in violent extremism
Echo chambers and online radicalism: assessing the Internet’s complicity in violent extremism
This article considers claims made by various authors that the use of filtering and recommendation technology on the Internet can deprive certain communities of feedback, and instead amplify groups' viewpoints, leading to polarization of opinion across communities, and increases in extremism. The ‘echo chamber’ arguments of Cass Sunstein are taken as representative of this point of view, and examined in detail in the context of a range of research, theoretical and empirical, quantitative and qualitative, in political science and the sociology of religion, from the last quarter century. The conclusion is that the case has not been made either (a) that echo chambers are necessarily harmful, or (b) that the Internet is complicit in their formation.
extremism, radicalism, internet, echo chambers, public forums, networks
1-22
O'Hara, Kieron
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Stevens, David
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O'Hara, Kieron
0a64a4b1-efb5-45d1-a4c2-77783f18f0c4
Stevens, David
098753fd-88a7-453e-bf2a-8ed0fd6cfc02
O'Hara, Kieron and Stevens, David
(2015)
Echo chambers and online radicalism: assessing the Internet’s complicity in violent extremism.
Policy and Internet, .
(doi:10.1002/poi3.88).
Abstract
This article considers claims made by various authors that the use of filtering and recommendation technology on the Internet can deprive certain communities of feedback, and instead amplify groups' viewpoints, leading to polarization of opinion across communities, and increases in extremism. The ‘echo chamber’ arguments of Cass Sunstein are taken as representative of this point of view, and examined in detail in the context of a range of research, theoretical and empirical, quantitative and qualitative, in political science and the sociology of religion, from the last quarter century. The conclusion is that the case has not been made either (a) that echo chambers are necessarily harmful, or (b) that the Internet is complicit in their formation.
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Accepted/In Press date: April 2015
e-pub ahead of print date: 19 April 2015
Keywords:
extremism, radicalism, internet, echo chambers, public forums, networks
Organisations:
Web & Internet Science
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Local EPrints ID: 383440
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/383440
ISSN: 1944-2866
PURE UUID: d3af42d7-b56f-4277-8307-5e03c072b421
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Date deposited: 13 Nov 2015 12:12
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:09
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Author:
David Stevens
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