Online extremism and resilience

The internet has long been exploited by extremist groups, however, Brexit, the 2016 and 2020 US presidential campaigns, the increased refugee flow to Europe, the Covid-19 pandemic, and terrorist attacks around the world have created a wave of new concerns. The anger and fear generated by such events create ideal conditions for polarisation and extremism to flourish. Further, the ever-evolving ecosystem of social media platforms, file-sharing sites, and messaging services, amongst others, can facilitate this, providing easy access to mass audiences and the tools to spread their message wide and gain sympathisers. This chapter begins with an overview of online extremism in recent years, examining numerous events such as the 2019 Christchurch attack, the 2020 US Presidential election, the 2021 Capitol Hill Riots, and the Covid-19 pandemic response. There has been enormous pressure on tech platforms to do more to counter polarisation and extremism on their services, and the second half of the chapter focuses on tech platforms’ responses to these events and the exploitation of their platforms. While much previous scholarly work is on debates such as deplatforming, this chapter will focus on resilience-building on these services through the lens of a social capital framework: specifically, what causes people to be resistant to violence, rather than what makes them vulnerable to it.