Unifying the Extremes: Developing a Unified Model for Detecting and Predicting Extremist Traits and Radicalization
This addresses the global concern of online radicalization by providing a cross-ideological approach for researchers and policymakers, though it appears incremental by extending existing trait-specific models to a more holistic framework.
The paper tackles the problem of detecting and predicting extremist traits and radicalization across diverse online communities by developing a unified model called 'The Extremist Eleven', which identifies 11 distinct factors as a generalized psychosocial model. The result shows the model can predict users joining extremist communities like incel forums up to 10 months in advance with an AUC >0.6, increasing to ~0.9 closer to the event.
The proliferation of ideological movements into extremist factions via social media has become a global concern. While radicalization has been studied extensively within the context of specific ideologies, our ability to accurately characterize extremism in more generalizable terms remains underdeveloped. In this paper, we propose a novel method for extracting and analyzing extremist discourse across a range of online community forums. By focusing on verbal behavioral signatures of extremist traits, we develop a framework for quantifying extremism at both user and community levels. Our research identifies 11 distinct factors, which we term ``The Extremist Eleven,'' as a generalized psychosocial model of extremism. Applying our method to various online communities, we demonstrate an ability to characterize ideologically diverse communities across the 11 extremist traits. We demonstrate the power of this method by analyzing user histories from members of the incel community. We find that our framework accurately predicts which users join the incel community up to 10 months before their actual entry with an AUC of $>0.6$, steadily increasing to AUC ~0.9 three to four months before the event. Further, we find that upon entry into an extremist forum, the users tend to maintain their level of extremism within the community, while still remaining distinguishable from the general online discourse. Our findings contribute to the study of extremism by introducing a more holistic, cross-ideological approach that transcends traditional, trait-specific models.