Retreat into the Shadows: The Shift of Digital Forums Between Fringe Communities and “Dark Social” and Its Implications for Extremism Prevention
Dr. Lena Frischlich, Tim Schatto-Eckrodt and Julia Völker, together with student associates, shed light on opportunity structures for extremism and its prevention that have been created by the shift toward dark social media. They investigated changes in the social media ecosystem and reviewed literature on Dark Socials and Dark Participation.
Influencing factors like regulation, different genres and types of (dark) social media and attitudes, norms and technical affordances as motivators of human behavior (according to the Theory of Planned Behavior) are linked together and examined with regards to the user’s intention.
medium brown: norms
dark brown: technical affordances
blue: intention of use
The report is divided into two studies: an analysis of different platforms of established and dark social media (N=19), as well as an in-depth scoping review of the state of research on (dark) social media in the context of extremism and extremism prevention (N=142 texts).
blue graph: gray literature
One can see that interest in this topic is rising, however the published studies deal mostly with established platforms and little is said about the users themselves and possible effects.
Besides, the team also came up with possible starting points for people working in extremism prevention.
The report can be accessed here:
https://www.bicc.de/uploads/tx_bicctools/CoRE_kurzGutachten_Schatten_220119.pdf (German)
https://www.bicc.de/uploads/tx_bicctools/CoRE-NRW_FP_4_Withdrawal_from_the_Shadow.pdf (English)