Online Radicalization and the Increase in Lone Wolf Attacks

As the internet becomes a larger and larger force in our every day lives, the conversation on and surrounding the internet grows with it. The internet is a place for many things, one of which being interaction between people. The newfound access to people and pseudo-anonymity comes at a cost though. Given the approximate daily users of the internet being 5.3 billion,¹ which is over half the world’s population, there are bound to be at least a few bad apples in the bunch. Previously, terrorist groups had organized structures, with recruiters, and were typically limited to a local area. Now, they have access to almost the entire globe, and anonymity. Terrorist groups can now more easily than ever cause violence using the internet. The roots of this violence come from radicalization, which is now easier than ever with the advent of social media, and personalized algorithms. This phenomenon has come to be known in recent years as Stochastic Terrorism.

The process of creating real world violence through the internet is a slow one, but it could happen to almost anybody. There is no singular demographic that tends to fall victim to online radicalization more than another.² The radicalization process has been described as a metaphorical pipeline.³ A person enters the pipeline at one side, as a normal person, but that pipeline will push them closer to violence. This is not to say that once a person enters a pipeline, it is immediately certain that they will cause violence. Most people realize that what they are doing online is unhealthy before they get to the point of committing violence.

Footnotes §

1. Petrosyan, Ani. “Internet Usage Worldwide.” Statista, Statista, 18 Dec. 2023, statista.com. ↩

2. Marwick, A., Clancy, B., & Furl, K. (2022). Far-Right Online Radicalization: A Review of the Literature. The Bulletin of Technology & Public Life. https://doi.org/10.21428/bfcb0bff.e9492a11 ↩

3. Scully, Aidan. “The Dangerous Subtlety of the Alt-Right Pipeline.” Harvard Political Review, 10 Oct. 2021, harvardpolitics.com/alt-right-pipeline/. ↩