This International Communication Association (ICA) preconference aims to bring scholars together to:
1) Interrogate the conceptualization of radicalization in research about social media,
2) Diversify perspectives on radicalization online,
3) Highlight work on radicalization that focuses on more “mundane” and “everyday” forms of radicalization online,
4) Consider radicalization online as attitudinal or perceptual rather than solely an outcome of a process.
About the Preconference
The ways people talk about “radicalization” have changed significantly in recent years. Much of the foundational literature on radicalization equates it with violent terrorism (Borum, 2012; Kundnani, 2012; Marwick, Clancy, & Furl, 2022; Meleagrou-Hitchens & Kaderbhai, 2016); yet recent research and popular discourse on radicalization is more closely connected to theories about partisanship, polarization, and extremist beliefs (Almagro, 2023; Biddle et al., 2024; Dalgaard-Nielsen, 2012; Roose, 2019; Tufekci, 2018). People talk about how friends fall through social media “rabbit holes” and begin adopting new, more extreme political beliefs. Bad faith actors engage in strategic information operations on social media to sow discord and widen sociopolitical divides. And political operatives discursively dismiss political opponents and activist movements by labeling them “radical.” This pre-conference aims to fill the gaps between foundational radicalization literature and current understandings of polarization online.
While radicalization takes many forms, social media has been a key area of focus for how radicalization occurs today (Aryaeinejad & Scherer, 2024; Habib, Srinivasan, & Nithyanand, 2022; Haroon et al, 2022; Ibrahim et al, 2023; Roose, 2019; Tufekci, 2018). People express concerns about how echo chambers and filter bubbles affect users on social media, how the political economy of platforms incentivizes anger and division between individuals and groups, and how mis- and dis-information online make it easy for false narratives to spread.
Call For Proposals
We are now accepting proposals! The preconference is open to both conceptual and empirical submissions with topics that may include but are not limited to:
- How to define and operationalize radicalization online
- Hyper-partisanship and polarization as forms of radicalization online
- Misinformation and disinformation and radicalization
- Methodologies for studying radicalization online and overcoming difficulties in sampling from “radical” populations
- Intersectionality, social media, and radicalization
- Perspectives on radicalization and social media from the Global South
- Political economy of social media and radicalization
- Critical perspectives on the concept of radicalization
- Deradicalization efforts on and by social media platforms
- Computational approaches to studying radicalization
- The communication context and the effects of radicalization on social media
- The interplay between mass media and radicalization on social media