Abstract
How do interactions with an ideologically extreme online community affect cognition? In this paper, we examine whether engagement with an online neo-Nazi forum is associated with more one-sided, “black and white” thinking. Using naturalistic language data, we examined differences in integrative complexity, a measure of the degree to which people acknowledge and reconcile conflicting ideas and viewpoints, and contrasted it with Language Style Matching, a measure of group cohesion. In a large web scraping study (N = 1,891), we tested whether two measures of engagement and interaction with the community are associated with less complex, balanced cognition. Using hierarchical regression modeling, we found that both individuals who had been community members for longer and those who had posted more tended to show less complexity in their language, even when accounting for mean differences between individuals. However, these differences in integrative complexity were distinct from group cohesion, which actually decreased with our measures of engagement. Despite small effect sizes, these findings indicate that ideologically extreme online communities may exacerbate the views of their members and contribute to ever-widening polarized cognitions.
Highlights
Online social spaces have a great power to unify
We study the relationship between engagement and a linguistic marker of group cohesion, Language Style Matching, in order to see if polarization co-occurs with increased group cohesion
Extremism and integrative complexity this research, we examine patterns of polarized cognition in an ideologically extreme White Supremacist online community, examining whether integrative complexity decreases as community engagement increases
Summary
Online social spaces have a great power to unify. People with fringe interests and beliefs, isolated before the technological boom at the end of the 20th century, can be united in online affinity groups, a trend with mixed social consequences. There are countless instances of extremist groups using the internet to organize violence, from the Islamic State’s prolific online campaigns to the tragedy at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that resulted in a state of emergency declaration and homicide [3]. These groups unite those with similar extreme values, but their effects on members’ attitudes and beliefs are still largely unknown [4].
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