Going dark
Have you ever wondered how a person become radicalised? What’s involve in turning an average person to an extremist? Chapters in this book are arranged following steps of such conversion i.e. recruitment, socialisation, communication, networking, mobilisation, attack, prediction and solution. The premise of the book is intriguing. By day, the author is a counter-terrorism analyst working at a think tank learning about extremist advising governments and companies. By night, she infiltrates extremist groups learning about their operation tactics. This book was a culmination of long standing research into extremists consisting of countless interviews of extremist organisation insiders. The book is interesting as it opens our eyes to what’s going on in our world. Reading it is, however, depressing and sad to see the path we are all on if nothing is being done about it.
Loneliness as a recruiting tool of extremists
Research suggests that Tinder users are less satisfied with their bodies and faces and male users suffer from lower levels of self-esteem than non-users.
Internet platforms and behaviours
Unlike other online advice and counselling forums, most users who enter the platform to seek help with a specific problem end up sticking around in the medium on the long run. They are gradually indoctrinated and internalise the norms and ideologies of their coaches and peers. The change in their identities, attitudes and behaviours illustrates how effective and dangerous this online socialisation machinery is.
A 2017 Pew Research Center survey found that two in three Americans get their news from social media.
The University of Maryland collected social media data of close to 500 US extremists, finding that in 2016 alone online social media platforms played a role in 90 per cent of all radicalisation cases.
Group dynamic and social media bubbles
Personal struggles turn into collective ones, and collective conflicts become personal. Often the identity of individuals starts to fuse with that of the group when they share grievances or traumatising experiences with each other. A perceived oneness with the group can then lead to a higher willingness to commit acts of self-sacrifice for the group’s ideology, vision and honour. This is how suicide terrorists are born.
This human nature is exploited by extremists and politicians alike. Saul Alinsky, the American father of community organisation and author of Rules for Radicals, inspired the campaigns of Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Digital dualism
Christchurch was a wake-up call for those who still believed in so-called ‘digital dualism’, the idea that the online and offline worlds are separate realities. The term was coined in 2011 by Nathan Jurgenson, the founder of the Cyborgology blog, and quickly entered the jargon of social media researchers. I’d argue that one case doesn’t prove anything. We can’t really use the exception to argue the average. Whether digital dualism is true shouldn’t depend on just one incident. In any case, the logic that it’s not true is compelling.
Friends on Facebook
Somewhat counter-intuitively, having many social media friends from ideologically diverse backgrounds does not protect you from online tribalism. In fact, quite the opposite is true. One of the biggest paradoxes of Facebook is that the more friends you have, the less diverse becomes the content you see. This is because its filters have more information to work with and will learn the nuances of your ideological leanings, topic preferences and sense of humour based on whose posts you like and engage with.
There’s no incentive to improve the situations
Our subconscious preference for radical content means that few policymakers and even fewer private businesses have a genuine interest in combating extremism or hate speech. Politicians respond to the demands of their voters, prioritising the politically useful over the strategically valuable. Meanwhile the tech firms are slaves to their own business models, which rely heavily on income from advertisements and are therefore ruled by our consumption behaviour.
If one of your key performance indicators is the number of monthly users on your platform, you have little incentive to remove bots and fake accounts – especially if you know that they might make up a significant proportion of your active users. If another of your key performance indicators is measured in the time these users spend on your platform, then taking down extreme content that captures the attention of its users – regardless of how extreme or distasteful it is – makes little sense from a sheer business perspective
This is depressing as I see no light at the end of the tunnel. If nothing is being done, it’s going to only get worse and worse.
Digital literacy program
Of several solutions the author offered to counter extremist trends, I can only see the logic and the feasibility of the digital literary program.
We need to develop critical thinking skills, media literacy and digital citizenship and brace ourselves for extremist grooming and manipulation strategies. Digital education initiatives should encourage everyone connected to the internet to engage with questions such as:
How has social media changed the information ecosystem?
How do algorithms work and how are they exploited by extremists online?
How can credible media sources be distinguished from biased, unreliable or distort information?
The author is convinced that any response that focuses purely on technology-led intervention and on regulating the digital sphere will not work. Technology is built on our own images. Technology exploits vulnerabilities of human nature. If technology is no more than an extension and multiplier of human flaws and qualities, we need to return to a more human-centred approach. Questions around identity, trust and friendship in the online world must be raised if we want to break through the ‘us and them’ thinking that all extremist movements have in common. Only an open-minded approach that puts people at its heart will allow us to take back the digital sphere and avoid going forward to the past.
Having completed the book, I’m not very hopeful of the future. It looks rather bleak. It is because for things to get better businesses must be willing to make a loss or at least less profit.