Nothing Has Changed Since Yesterday, Why the Role of Social Media in Radicalization is more Complex than it Seems

Abstract

In recent years there has been a seeming resurgence of political radicalism such as the alt-right and openly socialist groups that have coalesced around former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. This sudden resurgence of radicalism has often been blamed on Social Media and its perceived ability to create echo chambers and help these groups organize. The goal of this paper is to refute the idea that social media is the sole cause of this recent wave of radicalism by building a framework of radicalization agnostic of social media, and then to explore how social media interacts with that framework. The paper then provides potential solutions for reforming social media platforms to minimize what role they do have in radicalizatio

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