With white supremacist violence nationwide, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas sociologist is studying how the Internet can turn hateful feelings into deadly actions.
says hateful ideology isn鈥檛 new, but the Internet offers a new, disconnected way to interact with those ideas.
鈥淥nce one goes online, the dynamics of our actions, what we do and how we interact online, prompt a certain sense of 鈥榰nreality,鈥� if you will,鈥� Gottschalk said. 鈥淪o that we kind of lose contact between what we type and the consequences of what we type.鈥�
A recent UNLV describes Gottschalk鈥檚 latest research, which involved analyzing more than 4,400 discussion threads from eight blogs hosted on three prominent white supremacist websites. Gottschalk and his students then developed a model 鈥渢hat explains how individuals who join white supremacist networks transform private feelings of fear, anger, and shame into a sense of power, pride, belonging, and a desire for vengeance.鈥� The team鈥檚 findings will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Deviant Behavior.
Gottschalk says online communities make it easier for people to join than in the past, as there are no physical limitations.
鈥淛oining those movements required some doing, meaning people had to gather in a particular space,鈥� Gottschalk said. 鈥淭he space was limited in terms of physical capacity, it was limited in terms of time. It had to be protected, it had to be secret, it had to be all those things.鈥�
To combat online radicalization, Gottschalk says one potential option is to shut down white supremacist websites, something he acknowledges would be fraught with controversy. He also suggests more education and intervention, as well as algorithms to block out certain hateful content.
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