A Study on Radicalization

Research question

The research question posited for this study is as follows:

How does online YouTube community ‘Leftube’, and in particular, Contrapoints, serve as a means of potentially de-radicalising the alt right and extreme left political positions?

The research question is derived from the current research and literature on YouTube’s potential to radicalise as well as de-radicalise individuals with alt right and extreme left political positions. Theory on political communications suggests that there is a link between media consumption and political opinion forming (Norris, 2000). However, it is also argued that there is a ‘virtuous circle’ where the news media and party campaigns serve to activate the active so that it is the ones who are the most political active or engaged, are likely to pay more attention to political news, while others are likely to switch off or ignore such news (Norris, 2000). This would suggest that in the context of YouTube, the users or viewers who are more engaged with politics, are likely to engage with political YouTube content. However, the question arises as to how such viewers who hold extreme views may be radicalised or de-radicalised through YouTube.

In particular, is it possible for people to be able to change their extremist political positions through engagement with YouTubers like Contrapoints? Barberá, et al (2015) write about echo chambers on YouTube, and Ledwich and Zaitsev (2019) write about YouTube’s algorithms. However, findings, contrary to popular held views on YouTube and radicalisation, show that YouTube can allow individuals to conduct national conversations regardless of their political viewpoints, although in some cases such conversations can get radicalised (Barberá, et al, 2015). Ledwich and Zaitsev (2019) also provide evidence against the argument that behind-the-scenes recommendation algorithm on YouTube plays an important role in encouraging online radicalization.

These findings are relevant to the forming of the research question seeking to explore further how YouTubers like Contrapoints can help people engage with opposing viewpoints and serve as a way to de-radicalise alt right and extreme left political positions. Marcus (2000) suggests that emotions do not play as important a role in formulating responses to political events and situations as previously thought; instead he argues that people may experience different emotional reactions to contemporary circumstances. Therefore, in theory there is some evidence to suggest that it is possible for individuals with extreme political viewpoints to respond to emerging and contemporary political events independently from their own political positions and emotions.

The research question was formulated on the basis of a literature review exploring feminist theory, the theory of emotions and politics, and political communications theory. Literature on YouTube, Contrapoints, and Lefttube was useful in providing background and context, which helped in the formulation of research question based on the questions and queries raised through the literature that suggests that YouTube can serve as a de-radicalisation tool as well.

Annotated bibliography

Norris, P., 2000. A virtuous circle: Political communications in postindustrial societies. Cambridge University Press.

Pippa Norris engages with the political communication theory, particularly in the context of arguments that seek to show a link between news media consumption and increasing political cynicism in the United States and Europe. She argues that instead of news media fuelling cynicism, it would be more plausible and convincing to assume that there is a ‘virtuous circle’ where the news media and party campaigns serve to activate the active. This means that individuals who are most interested and knowledgeable pay most attention to political news and thus news media can actually reduce the barriers to further civic engagement by leading to more engagement with the policy stances of the candidates and parties, social and economic problems facing the nation, and the record of the government. On the other hand, Norris argues that news media cannot reinforce the disengagement of the disengaged individual who may simply turn over, turn off, or surf to another web page when presented with news about politics and current affairs.

Norris’ argument may have some implications for how far YouTube community ‘leftube,’ will be successful in serving as a means of potentially de-radicalising the alt right and extreme left because if Norris’ argument is plausible, it would mean that those with specific viewpoints are likely to not engage with the channel. On the other hand, it may also be an argument that those with extreme right or left views are politically engaged individuals who may be able to engage with ‘leftube’ because of the neutrality of the community on right and left positions.

Barberá, Pablo, John T. Jost, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua A. Tucker, and Richard Bonneau. "Tweeting from left to right: Is online political communication more than an echo chamber?." Psychological science 26, no. 10 (2015): 1531-1542.

Barberá, et al provide empirical data related to ideological preferences through a research study in which they studied 150 million tweets concerning 12 political and nonpolitical issues for 3.8 million Twitter users seeking an answer to the question where political communication in online formats lead to “echo chamber” or a “national conversation.” Findings of this study suggests that information is exchanged primarily among individuals with similar ideological preferences for political issues and that some issues of national significance may begin as a national conversation before transforming into a polarised exchange. Of special significance to the present research, this study provides a finding that liberals are more likely than conservatives to engage in cross-ideological dissemination, which is explained by Barberá, et al as being consistent with psychological theory bearing on ideological differences in epistemic, existential, and relational motivation. Thus, in the context of the present research, there may be implications for the deradicalisation of those holding extreme right positions in political and non political issues. In other words, the findings of Barberá, et al may raise a question as to whether there could be differences in how users and viewers with extreme left and right positions respond to ‘leftube,’ and whether ‘leftube’ may be more successful in serving as a means of potentially de-radicalising the extreme left as compared to alt right.

Grant, John, and Fiona MacDonald. "The “alt-right”, toxic masculinity and violence." Turbulent times, transformational possibilities (2020): 368-388.

Grant and MacDonald discuss feminist theory in the context of alt right politics and movement. They argue that the alt right movements represent a politics of masculinity in the western societies. On the other hand, those with leftist positions may seek to challenge traditional masculine viewpoints. Alt right movements also emphasise on hegemonic masculinity according to Grant and MacDonald. In the context of this research, a question arises as to how to ‘leftube’ approaches the masculinity related politics because it is expected that those from the alt right that it seeks deradicalise may have an emphasis on the politics of masculinity while those on the extreme left may have opposite approaches to femininity, gender and related issues.

Marcus, George E. "Emotions in politics." Annual review of political science 3, no. 1 (2000): 221-250.

Marcus provides a critical engagement with the scholarship on theory of emotions in politics. He argues that people experience different emotional reactions to contemporary circumstances so that responses to circumstances may see people shift focus shifts from the emotion inherent in their personality to the emotion attached to external events, symbols, and situations. This has implications to how people respond to political events and stimuli through their emotions so that emotional expression may be resulting from distinct affective processes. Marcus’ work is particularly significant because he collates the diverse work on emotions in politics where some scholarship is focussed on the personalities and decision making of the leaders while others focussed on mass publics. Of particular relevance to the present research question is the literature discussed by Marcus to explain how emotional responses can support contemporaneous evaluation made by individuals independent of conscious perception. Thus, while individuals may have certain conscious perceptions towards their political positions, they may be capable to responding to contemporary external events independently from such conscious perceptions. This is of relevance to the question of whether ‘leftube’ can have potentially de-radicalising effects for both extreme left and alt right positions because it can be argued that persons on either side of the spectrum are capable of responding to certain events or stimuli independently from their conscious perceptions which may be alt right or extreme left in orientation.

Alizadeh, Meysam, Ingmar Weber, Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, Santo Fortunato, and Michael Macy. "Psychology and morality of political extremists: evidence from Twitter language analysis of alt-right and Antifa." EPJ Data Science 8, no. 1 (2019): 17.

This study provides empirical evidence related to psychological and moral appeal of extremism based on Twitter data of 10,000 political extremists. The study compare the text-based psychological constructs of extremists with those of 5000 liberal and 5000 conservative users and find that extremists show a lower positive emotion and a higher negative emotion and that left-wing extremists express more language indicative of anxiety than liberals, right-wing extremists express lower anxiety than conservatives. These results are significant for the current research question because it has implications for the ‘leftube’ users of extremist orientation. If the extremist positions are aligned with higher negative emotion, what processes can be used by ‘leftube’ to increase engagement with extreme left and right positions for the purpose of their deradicalisation.

Maddox, Jessica, and Brian Creech. "Interrogating lefttube: ContraPoints and the possibilities of critical media praxis on YouTube." Television & New Media (2020): 1527476420953549.

Maddox and Creech specifically research on “LeftTube,” and they write about how media commentary and cultural analysis has increasingly been critical of YouTube as a radicalization hub, especially alt-right content creators. They focus on the leftist YouTube content creators, which they say is loosely coalescing into the platform’s “LeftTube,” and they argue that this platform has managed to develop dialogic relationships with some of YouTube’s most extreme content. ContraPoints, which is also the particular are of research for the current study forms the major part of focus and discussion in the Maddox and Creech study. They explore how Youtubers on the political left engage with YouTube’s cultural and technical affordances to challenge alt-right ideology. This particular work is useful for the current study because it provides a textual analysis of ContraPoints’ top thirty videos, and by doing this the authors identify three main discursive strategies of ContraPoints. First, practicing deradicalization strategies on YouTube. Second, establishing alt-right individuals as an intentional audience. Third, developing a language for escaping alt-right logics.

Ledwich, Mark, and Anna Zaitsev. "Algorithmic extremism: Examining YouTube's rabbit hole of radicalization." arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.11211 (2019).

Ledwich and Zaitsev write about whether the argument posited by researchers and news media that behind-the-scenes recommendation algorithm on YouTube plays an important role in encouraging online radicalization. The authors have categorised 800 political channels on YouTube and based on this categorisation, the authors differentiate between political schemas for analysing the algorithm traffic flows out and between groups on YouTube. The authors use detailed analysis of recommendations received by each channel type, to argue that the popular radicalisation claims are not accurate. Instead, the authors suggest that their findings show that YouTube's recommendation algorithm actively discourages viewers from visiting radicalising or extremist content. This is an interesting finding that can have implications for the current research study as well because if it is accurate to say that YouTube algorithm favours mainstream media and cable news content over independent YouTube channels with slant towards left-leaning or politically neutral channels, then this would also have some relation to “LeftTube” content on YouTube.

Champion, Amanda, and Richard Frank. "Exploring the “Radicalization Pipeline” on YouTube." In Terrorism Risk Assessment Instruments, pp. 359-374. IOS Press, 2021.

Champion and Frank do not write about political extremist content, rather they write about terrorism related extremism content. However, they have written about theory on radicalisation and deradicalisation, which can be useful for this research study. The authors provide evidence that influential videos with more followers have the potential to disseminate radicalized ideas. Interestingly, the authors also write about innocuous videos and their links to radicalised content.

Bibliography

Alizadeh, Meysam, Ingmar Weber, Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, Santo Fortunato, and Michael Macy. "Psychology and morality of political extremists: evidence from Twitter language analysis of alt-right and Antifa." EPJ Data Science 8, no. 1 (2019): 17.

Barberá, Pablo, John T. Jost, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua A. Tucker, and Richard Bonneau. "Tweeting from left to right: Is online political communication more than an echo chamber?." Psychological science 26, no. 10 (2015): 1531-1542.

Champion, Amanda, and Richard Frank. "Exploring the “Radicalization Pipeline” on YouTube." In Terrorism Risk Assessment Instruments, pp. 359-374. IOS Press, 2021.

Grant, John, and Fiona MacDonald. "The “alt-right”, toxic masculinity and violence." Turbulent times, transformational possibilities (2020): 368-388.

Ledwich, Mark, and Anna Zaitsev. "Algorithmic extremism: Examining YouTube's rabbit hole of radicalization." arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.11211 (2019).

Maddox, Jessica, and Brian Creech. "Interrogating lefttube: ContraPoints and the possibilities of critical media praxis on YouTube." Television & New Media (2020): 1527476420953549.

Marcus, George E. "Emotions in politics." Annual review of political science 3, no. 1 (2000): 221-250.

Norris, P., 2000. A virtuous circle: Political communications in postindustrial societies. Cambridge University Press.

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