‘Don’t talk to me’: effects of ideologically homogeneous online groups and politically dissimilar offline ties on extremism
- 28 January 2010
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in New Media & Society
- Vol. 12 (4), 637-655
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809342775
Abstract
This study analyzes cross-sectional data obtained from respondents in neo-Nazi online discussion forums and textual data from postings to these forums. It assesses the impact of participation in radical and homogeneous online groups on opinion extremism and probes whether this impact depends on political dissimilarity of strong and weak offline ties. Specifically, does dissimilarity attenuate (as deliberative theorists hope) or rather exacerbate (as research on biased processing predicts) extreme opinions? As expected, extremism increases with increased online participation, likely due to the informational and normative influences operating within online groups. Supporting the deliberative and biased processing models, both like-minded and dissimilar social ties offline exacerbate extremism. Consistent with the biased processing model, dissimilar offline ties exacerbate the effects of online groups. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.This publication has 41 references indexed in Scilit:
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