Honors Program Theses

Award/Availability

Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Evan Renfro, Honors Thesis Advisor

Keywords

Extremists; Social media and society;

Abstract

As billions of people turn to their technologically elite phones and laptops for immediate information, online groups have learned how to take advantage of social media patterns and isolate people into a specific belief or carefully tailored platforms that eliminate opposing ideas. Extremist groups’ online presence have been studied as individual dilemmas, rather than being studied for patterns to combat the rapidly increasing radicalization of people who had no claim to these beliefs before social media. This study will contrast the online presence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the January 6th insurrectionists in terms of platforms usage, targeted populations, and effectiveness. Analysis of two distinctly opposing groups for their evolution of recruitment tactics and propaganda strategies can become the foundation for creating an online system that rejects groups who promote and breed violence in real life.

Year of Submission

2022

Department

Department of Political Science

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Date Original

5-2022

Object Description

1 PDF file (33 pages)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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