Internet and Social Media for Radicalization and Countering Violent Extremism

Social Media and Violent Extremism
Student’s Name
Institution
Social Media and Violent Extremism
Introduction
The freedom to choose what is right and wrong need not be misappropriated for the sake of advancing ill motives. Fighting for what is meant to be in an acceptable manner is certainly worth pursuing, but when violence and hate take the better part of the pursuit, the act then becomes unreasonable and can as well be termed as extremism. According to Berger (2018), extremism can be defined in simple terms as that which is socially beyond the ordinary. However, as Kruglanski et al. (2017) point out, not all that is socially odd qualify to be classified as extremism but rather it has to be in a particular context. Although not all acts of extremism might not result in or be accompanied by violence, violence is certain to be encountered in the process of developing extremist beliefs and behaviors, a process commonly termed as radicalization (Trip et al., 2019). This results in the emergence of violent extremisms, often employed by political and spiritual actors to advocate for their ideologies. In the recent past, the world has witnessed violent dominated extremisms with the continued dominance of one group over the other in terms of race, political affiliation, and even spiritual beliefs.
There are numerous avenues and mediums in which extremisms can be pursued and upheld. With the emergence of new technologies, internet, and social media, the spread of information has become rampant and thus online radicalization. Social media, in particular, has helped domestic violent extremists in spreading hate, documenting their actions, and also recruiting new extremists.
Social Media Radicalization
Social media use among domestic extremists in the United States has been on the rise in the recent past as per the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) dataset (Jensen et al., 2020). Social media platforms have enabled people to create networks and can share content in the form of video, text messages, pictures, and other forms of online communications. The most common violent extremists in the United States are white supremacists. On several occasions, the Department of Homeland Security has apprehended violent extremists either for cases of mass shooting or radicalization of others while live-streaming their actions on various social media platforms. Besides online radicalization, domestic extremists have leveraged on the new technologies as a tool for silently recruiting new flock into their movement.
The internet society and social media platforms have provided the perfect opportunity for violent extremists to have a vast online presence via websites, blogs, and even the typical social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter pages. Extremists leverage these technologies to spread propaganda on extremism, allowing them to command maximum attention and eventually influencing and recruiting vulnerable people who fall for the bait. With the help of interactive web technologies, extremists can actively recruit new users through their push notification and spread their propaganda widely. For social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, they can easily align their propaganda on t...