Radicalization by Design

Description

Are our media radicalizing us? In the past half decade this question has increasingly come to preoccupy both popular and academic debate. Social media are often conceptualized as full of "rabbit holes" leading to deeper and often more dangerous parts of the web that traffic in "radical ideas" often under the aegis of "free speech'". While the metaphor of a radicalization rabbit hole is common amongst critics and "alternative influencers" alike, perspectives diverge when it comes to who or what is responsible for the radicalizing. Typically the left pinpoints structural features built into the environment, while the right points to the individual's choice — to "take the red pill". The thing about new media however is that they tend to blur clear distinctions between inner and outer worlds, between the scales of the psychological and the sociological. In order to address the current problem of online radicalization we need nuanced analyses from multiple perspectives that don't reduce the inherent complexity of these dynamics. To achieve that end, and given the urgency of the issue, the web project Radicalization by Design convenes a cross-disciplinary and public facing dialogue at the intersection of new media and extremism studies to discuss these questions and to cast light on these darker regions of the Web. Radicalization by Design has been produced as a web project as an alternative to two public events IMPAKT intended to stage, but had to cancel because of COVID-19.