From flowers to far-right extremists: A genealogy of ecology in terrorism and extremism studies

ABSTRACT

The idea that violent extremists inhabit an “ecosystem” of interrelated online spaces has been popularised by both scholars and practitioners in recent years. Drawing from the natural sciences, terrorism and extremism studies has sought to capitalise on the conceptual potential of ecology to understand otherwise perplexing natural and artificial environments. Yet, despite its popularisation, there remain fundamental gaps in understanding the benefits and limits of using ecology to analyse extremist communities dwelling in cyberspace. To be applied in a rigorous manner, it is essential that the intellectual tradition and tenets that underpin ecology in the natural and social sciences be explained. Since its conception in biology, this article presents a historical and conceptual exploration of ecology to explain the lessons, opportunities, and limits it presents scholars and practitioners in terrorism and extremism studies today. This article provides the first systematic, genealogical overview of how ecology has evolved from the study of plant communities to become relevant in far-right extremism studies. This article provides foundational knowledge and lessons for moving disciplinary research and policy work forward, and offers guidance on how future studies can use ecology in a more rigorous and consistent manner.

KEYWORDS:

• ecology
• ecosystem
• terrorism
• far-right extremism
• genealogy

Introduction

Ecology may now be considered almost a fashionable study. - Arthur George Tansley (1904: 191)

In recent years, the concept of an “online extremist ecosystem” has gained popularity in terrorism and extremism studies. Scholars and practitioners alike are turning to the natural sciences to understand the dynamic and fleeting yet interrelated and self-reinforcing nature of extremist communities and culture. For instance, recent studies have used the term “ecosystem” as: shorthand for the concept “complexity” (Watkin 2019); to map “the far-right internet” (Baele, Brace, and Coan 2020); to offer management strategies designed to counter the potential for violence to emerge from digital environments (Conway et al. 2021); or to describe the relationship between digital media and violent extremism (Awan, Hoskins, and O’Loughlin 2012). Yet, despite its popularisation, there remain fundamental gaps in understanding the benefits and limits of using ecology to analyse far-right extremism and terrorism. To be applied in a more rigorous and consistent manner, it is necessary to review ecology’s intellectual history – from its origins in the natural sciences until its introduction into adjacent but related social sciences. Understanding how ecology developed outside of terrorism and extremism studies offers invaluable lessons, advantages, and limitations to guide the use of ecological terms and concepts when applied in terrorism and extremism studies today.

This is important because the study of ecology brings order to natural and artificial environments. It cultures a holistic perspective of ever-expanding complex networks comprised of both biotic and abiotic beings. Yet, in fine detail it requires a precise mode of thinking to comprehend the nature of their interaction and development over time. Ecology is composed of useful theoretical framings and methodological approaches, and its utility is evidenced by the wide range of natural and social sciences to which it now finds residence. Because of their utility, however, the tenets of ecology were adapted to suit an array of disciplines and contexts since its conception. Such adaptations were thought of as necessary to gain a greater conceptual purchase on the beings and environments under study. However, these adaptions led to aspects of ecology being ignored, over emphasised, or misinterpreted overtime, and when applied, were at times neither rigorous nor recognised the intellectual tradition from which they derived.

This article provides the first systematic and genealogical narrative overview of the evolution of ecology since its conception in biology to far-right extremism and terrorism studies. Building on ecology’s intellectual history, this article presents a series of lessons, advantages, and limitations to guide the use of ecological terms and concepts in future research and related policies. This study finds little consistency with ecological terms and concepts among terrorism or extremism studies generally and in far-right extremism studies in particular, reducing its potential utility as a sophisticated theoretical and methodological tool for investigating the subject. In some cases, when ecology was introduced to extremism studies, the authors unwittingly carried across those lessons and limitations found wanting when ecology was previously introduced into the discipline or field from which they originally borrowed the concept or analogy. In the case of far-right extremism studies, even though ecology is used primarily as a biological metaphor, the underlying processes that structure how systemic relationships operate in extremist communities are largely unknown and, at the time of this writing, an “online extremist ecosystem” has not been conceptualised or theorised in a rigorous or consistent manner. However, with its hallmarks and history considered, ecology holds great potential as a theoretical and methodological tool in far-right extremism and terrorism research and policy.

Methods

Genealogy takes a historic perspective and method of inquiry that offers a unique understanding and critique. Genealogical methods offer the means to analyse the connection between nodes in historic networks and the conceptual tools to understand how they were shaped by networked and accumulative factors and forces (Haila 1998). Genealogical methods can also reveal our intellectual constraints or the contingencies we take for granted, the spaces or possibilities where intellectual innovations can be experienced, and the changes that can be made to those constructs and boundaries (Crowley 2009). Genealogy can become therefore, a systematic method to understand historic and conceptual changes that have and are unfolding in a discipline or field of study. More than a historical assessment, genealogical methods can illustrate trends and dynamics in intellectual history and their impact on the present and even future (see Haila 2002). When introduced to the discipline or field, new concepts give perspective on pre-existing problems, but they also represent a trajectory of conceptual sophistication that can be approached and understood in a systematic manner using genealogical methods. This is particularly important when an established term or pioneered concept in one discipline – such as “ecosystem” in ecology – comes to define the research priorities in another discipline or field of study, like terrorism and extremism studies and counter violent extremism policy.

To capture a wide array of diverse sources, the deductive genealogical method was designed to structure and stagger the collection, organisation, and systematic analysis of multiple natural and social science literatures into a series of waves. Beginning with a set of key terms, an initial 67 key primary sources were drawn from seven academic databases and categorised as “first wave”. These “first wave” sources were identified if they appeared in the database following the use of selected key search terms and if an ecological term or concept was identified in the author(s)’ writings. Curation of this initial wave of literature was reviewed in reference to several review questions, including:

• How do the author(s) characterise or conceptualise “ecology” or a “digital ecosystem”?

• What does the biological or digital ecosystem consist of?

• How do the author(s) analyse the biological or digital ecosystem?

• What sources do the author(s) use when referencing “ecology” or “digital ecosystem”?

This “first wave” of literature was drawn from terrorism, political violence, and extremism publications. Following the “first wave”, a secondary list of references was generated and categorised as “second wave”. These “second wave” sources consisted of references or resources that were used by authors within the “first wave” to introduce an ecological term or concept identified during the initial curation of literature, resulting in 121 additional new sources which underwent the same analysis as the “first wave”. This “second wave” consisted of a wide-variety of biology, socio-biology, media and communication studies, computer sciences, business and entrepreneurial studies, economics and law, and earlier terrorism and some extremism studies. Drawn from the “second wave”, another “third wave” was generated as per the procedure set out above. This “third wave” consisted of references used by authors within the “second wave” to introduce an ecological term or concept during the previous round of curation, adding another 75 new sources. This “third wave” of literature represented a diverse range of literature broadly contained within the natural and technological sciences such as biology and human ecology, media and communications, and the computer sciences. The use of ecological terms and concepts was then traced to identify which studies they had based their ecological frameworks and approaches on. Therefore, this study chronologically categorised and analysed each source for its historical and conceptual relevance to terrorism and extremism studies.

Approximately ten concepts and characteristics common to the understanding of digital ecosystems and ecological form and function were identified, including: classification; self-organisation; evolution; adaptation; complexity; emergence; scalability; sustainability with references to recursivity, feedback, complex hierarchical problem-solving; dynamism; swarm intelligence; networks with references to metapopulations and multi-actor networks; non-equilibrium dynamics and non-linear behaviour (see Hutchinson et al. 2022). This is an important yet limited registry of the component parts in ecosystems, with each conceptual process offering explanatory power and an abundant avenue for terrorism and extremism research. In order to situate this literature and these concepts, this article presents the first systematic and genealogical overview of how ecology moved from its conception in biology to become relevant in far-right extremism and terrorism studies today.

A side note on terminology

Ecological terms and concepts are used with little consistency. Ecology, used in its original context, generally denotes “the study of the interactions between organisms and their environment” (Keeton 1972, 635). Therefore, in this article, a lexicon is used to summarise findings from a multidisciplinary review of the research in a consistent manner. Ecology is considered a method of scientific study and classification system that encompasses both existing and emergent networks of biological and non-biological things and the nature of their interaction and development. An ecosystem is one aspect or segment nested within a larger environment, itself containing a hierarchy of systems comprised of networks of biological and non-biological things, and it connotes an assembly of scalable, interconnected ecosystems that continue to expand until the web of ecosystems encompasses the globe (biosphere) and then compose the universe. An ecological approach encompasses the interaction between intrinsic components vital to the individual, like molecular biological systems, but is more-so concerned with three units of scale: populations, “which are individuals belonging to the same grouping”; communities, “which are units composed of all the populations living in a given area; and ecosystems, which are communities and their physical environments considered together” (Keeton 1972, 635). Therefore, any investigation of human ecosystems ought to begin broadly with an examination of the human and non-human things that embody the networks that compose it; how are these networks imbedded within a hierarchy of systems; what the experiences of those within these networks are at different hierarchical levels; and in what ways do these things, networks, and systems interact and develop from internal and external pressures over time.

From flowers to far-right extremists

It begins in biology and empire building

Terrorism and extremism studies must accommodate for the philosophical tension and implications of using ecology and its methods in mapping. The term “oecologie” (or “ökologie”) was derived from the Greek word oikos to mean “house”, “habitation”, or “all-encompassing structure.” The house under study is the environment and its relation to the animals who dwell therein. The idea of placing an entire environment inside a terrarium through which to observe, experiment, and understand was intuitive to scientists in Enlightenment Europe, but it lacked a clear philosophy. Though humanity shares the environment with many, it was our relationship to the environment that became a matter of opinion. For instance, in the eightieth century, Carl Linnaeus, the “father of modern taxonomy”, advocated a mechanistic vision of nature (Calisher 2007). For Linnaeus, nature was constructed using the great cogs of biology and held together by great chains that transferred energy between inhabitants, an organic machine that could be commandeered, restrained, and redirected to benefit its principal occupant – humanity and society (Shapiro 1997; Calisher 2007). In the proceeding century, Henry David Thoreau and Charles Darwin shared aspects of Linnaeus’ mechanical view, with Darwin taking a particular interest in notions of relatedness and cooperative integration for a revolutionary theory of the natural world (Worster 1985).

Concurrent to Linnaeus’ mechanistic view, Gilbert White advocated for a holistic, almost transcendental vision of nature, one that advocated a “fundamental reverence for the world around them” (Shapiro 1997, 98). Continuing this vision into the next century, the German biologists, Ernest Haeckel and Alexander von Humboldt, emphasised the context in which networked organisms and environments coexisted. Inspired by holism’s view of nature “as a unified and balanced organism”, Haeckel and Humboldt each conceived of nature as a unique ecological assemblage, where organisms and environments maintained equitably important positions and all was conditioned by the limits of habitat (Marshall 1992, 334). In 1866, Haeckel applied this concept to plant communities, combining once separated concepts like “complexity”, “relativity”, “community”, and “development”, into a single scientific approach called “oecologie”. Distinguished as a wholistic yet precise mode of thinking about extensive networks, the approach arranged complex communities, dynamic relations, and co-dependent development into a structured and orderly manner. Twelve years later and after much deliberation, a dictionary editor decided the concept’s correct spelling must align with “economy” and thus, it became “ecology” (Anker 2001).¹

Soon after, in 1896, Eugenius Warming (1909) used the term to describe a community of different plant species as “practicing” a kind of natural economy. In unmatched detail, Warming (1909, 12) examined the communal existence exhibited by plant communities and conceptualised the varying degrees and styles of interdependence between organisms and environments. Two American biologists, Frederic Clements and Aldo Leopold, embraced Warming’s holism and applied it in new ways to the Great Plains of the American Midwest. In 1949, Aldo Leopold(1968) advocated the detection and dismissal of false dichotomies or unnecessary categories biasing ecological understandings of natural orders as “rightly” dominated by humans. Following on from Leopold, Rachel Carson used holistic versions of ecology to warn of humanity’s anti-environmental tendencies in 1962, their collective writings creating the central ideological pillars of the “new” environmental movement. As holism continued to gain ground abroad, mechanistic visions persisted. For some, nature remained a machine-like assemblage of physical systems, economically governed by hierarchical dominance and competition, while energy cascade down so-called “food chains” (Bowler 1993, 530). This version of ecology merged with systems theory, mathematics, and applied physics, calling for maps of nature’s organic machinery and strategies on how humanity can manage them (Worster 1985).

From the air, ecologists mapped the natural order and made management strategies. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, a small group of ecologists from Oxford University used newly available commercial aeroplanes to observe environments from above (Anker 2001). From this perspective, a complex three-dimensional environment could be rendered into an orderly and easily understood two-dimensional diagram that explained relationship, structure, and taxonomy. Two-dimensional diagrams reduced complex realities into simplified abstractions enabling ecologists “to discover structures that would remain unknown if not mapped” (Robinson 1982, 1). However, this “master perspective from above” was not intended to reveal important aspects of the environment for the sole purpose of academic scholarship (Anker 2001). Once concealed in complexity, aspects of the environment now stood proud as valuable, economic properties that could be extracted or managed (Anker 2001). More than just a new way to understand plant communities, ecology became “an extension of economics to the whole world of life” and mapping was used to conceive of strategies on how to manage it (Wells, Huxley, and Wells 1931, 961). These expeditions translated the environment into a series of illustrated abstractions that could be managed and expanded the discipline until it eventually encompassed humans as a unique and core component.

It was through psychology that ecologists first found their opportunity to include humans. Prior to the 1920s, Arthur George Tansley unsuccessfully established ecology as a respectable and accepted field of study at Oxford University. However, being Sigmund Freud’s mentee, Tansley synthesised Freud’s research in psychology and turned the concept inward. In his book, Tansley (1920a) applied the ecological approach to arguably the most controversial aspects of social life (God and sex) to push it into notoriety (Anker 2001). Thinking of the human mind as organised by an interconnected circuit of stimulus-response mechanisms discharging psychic flows of energy, Tansley (1920a) used industrial analogies to explain Freudian psychology and social behaviour. Tansley (1920a, 22) admitted that these analogies were an “illogical and contradictory procedure” that served only to reduce “the bewildering complexity of mental phenomena to something like order.” Tansley (1920b) continued to draw on the ecological tradition, comparing plant communities to society, to justify a mechanistic view of human psychology and social life. Tansley’s attempts to project ecology inward represents the first occasion where an “ecosystem” encompassed human relations (Anker 2001).

Tansley derived from his analysis of the mind a systems version of ecology that would come to serve the British Empire and later defeat another version of ecology. As Anker (2001, 29) notes: “After naturalising the human mind in his psychology, Tansley turned towards a process of humanising nature in his ecology.” Tansley (1920b, 127) superimposed ecosystem thinking onto humanity, suggesting that humans like “all living organisms may be regarded as machines transforming energy from one form to another.” Viewed like a machine and akin to nature, human psychology and society contained an economy of properties suddenly vulnerable to mapping and management strategies. However, to render society two-dimensional and implement systems of control necessary to extract the economic value therein, the British Empire’s colossal colonial powers were required. John Harley (2002, 57) succinctly described the importance of this practice: “As much as guns and warships, maps have been the weapons of imperialism.” Mapping was essential to the British Empire’s “pacification, civilisation, and exploitation” of lands once imagined or claimed and then seized and defended in practice. The “very lines on the map,” wrote Harley (2002, 59), “exhibited this imperial power” and the language of conquest in which “the invaders parcel the continent among themselves in designs reflective of their own complex rivalries and relative power.” Ecosystem thinking naturalised British imperial exploitation of human resources, while ecologists were contracted to map and offer strategies on how to manage the Empire’s various colonial projects (Anker 2001).

While ecosystem theory ascended to buttress the British Empire’s administration, a holistic version of ecology was being resurrected. South African botanist, Jan Christian Smuts, drew on the tradition of holism to conceive nature as fixed, permanent, and a collaborator rather than something to be commandeered and ordered for the Empire (Anker 2001). Like Tansley, Smuts (1926) saw nature as self-adjusting, in search of equilibrium, and humanity similarly subject to lowly biological constraints. However, Smuts saw nature as equal to humanity and even suggested the relationship ought to be maintained instead of being manufactured, and if done so, this relationship would solve the Empire’s social, racial, and environmental issues in South Africa. In contrast, Tansley viewed the human mind and society as unique, exceptional, and prevailing over nature, dismissing the alternative version as the “Holistic faith” (Blew 1996, 171). Despite efforts to defend holistic ecology against the mechanical ecosystem, such as John Phillips who rightly claimed the whole is not predictable from surmising the sum of its constituent systems, it would eventually end with ecosystem theory dominating ecological discussions and the demise of the holistic approach (Anker 2001). In the proceeding century, this system version of ecology continued to dominate research far afield from biology, even shaping the ways scholars map and devise management strategies for the “online extremist ecosystem.”

Ecosystems captured the imagination of those in a position to map and manage segments of society. Ecology’s philosophy of science was and remains in tension between an idealistic holism and a mechanistic ecosystem. This tension is acknowledged in biology with the following maxim: If humanity is believed to be separate from nature, users of ecosystem theories will mistakenly distinguish biological and non-biological interrelations, as if they share nothing in common but their interaction. In terrorism and extremism studies, this acknowledgement must be made to accompany the use of ecology to better understand the relationship between far-right extremism and digital environments.

The practice of mapping “online extremist ecosystems” must be met with an integrated philosophy. Maps do not merely store and transmit information but embody an intellectual ethic, and a series of assumptions that promote “a particular mode of seeing and thinking” that have profound effects on the minds and culture of their employers (McLuhan 2001; Carr, 2020: 41, 45). For the cartographer, or the social scientist who adopts a certain ecological approach, mapping is the instrument which reduce reality to two conditions: the map and oblivion. In other words, “if you are not on our map, you do not exist” (Zuboff 2019, 154). To eschew the dubious ethic encoded in early maps of human ecosystems, scholars in terrorism and extremism studies ought to temper their critical analyses of systemic relationships with an appreciation for the whole and appreciation for complex interconnectivity, illustrating these relationships with an appeal to cooperation rather than control. If collections of minds or populations in society are seen as separate or subordinate to the remainder of humanity, users of ecosystem theories and analogies will mistakenly map and then manage them like malfunctioning machines. This is increasingly important in a society where “smart” devices act like a small node in a socio-technological ecosystem systematically extracting and rendering extremist experiences being enmeshed in a tangled mixture of software, services, and networks (Zuboff 2019). Terrorism and extremism studies ought to appraise the introduction of ecology and account for the philosophical implications of their mapping methods, otherwise the “online extremist ecosystem” will remain misunderstood.

Science fiction and ecological fantasy

Science fiction writers fore-warned and well-articulated the fallout of governing segments or whole-of-society with unbridled ecosystem theories. In the early twentieth century, while ecology bridged the intellectual divide between plant and human communities, this systems version of ecology caught the imagination of various international politics, social and natural scientists, and science fiction writers. An ecologically organised society seemed like a harmonious means of public management and a biologically assured answer to the dismay, disorder, and utter destruction caused by World War I. Written in a popular textbook for biology students, titled The Science of Life, Wells, Huxley, and Wells (1931), alongside his son George Philip Wells and colleague Julian Huxley (Aldous Huxley’s brother), employed ecosystem theories to propose practical moral and political advice also based in behaviourism and Jungian psychology. In his book, The Fate of Man, H. G. Wells (1939: 15, 27) prophesized “human social life in the light of ecological science’ as capable of ‘analysing operating causes and forecasting events.” As their intellectual curiosity travelled across the web of ecosystems, Wells (1939: 27, 65) among others like J. Huxley, maintained that humanity’s social economy and the economy of nature ought to be integrated into one ecology of nations.

Evolving into an overarching management system designed to coordinate and structure minds and bodies with absolute certainty, the notion of an ecological society took on features of totalitarianism. Aldous A. Huxley (1932) wrote Brave New World to partially ridicule and reason Wells and his brother out from underneath their vision for an ecologically planned and governable “World State.” J. Huxley retorted with If I Were Dictator (J. Huxley 1934) and later The Uniqueness of Man (J. Huxley 1941, 2) to justify his ecosystems approach, writing that humanity’s “desperate need for some scheme of values and ideals may have prompted a more critical re-examination of his biological position.” Critics were quick to scrutinise the instruments that would organise and manage future “human ecosystems”. In response to H.G. Wells’ work, Edward Morgan Forster (1909) wrote the novel When the machine stops to partially direct public attention towards the conditions by which technology had become integrated in society, and what consequences may arise from its organisation of human psychology and social life. Reflecting on the consequences of European totalitarianism following World War II in 1949, George Orwell’s 1949 depicted a fictional land governed by the supreme “Party” who exercised two instruments of modern society – ideology and surveillance systems – to achieve absolute organisation and enforcement.

A year prior to Orwell’s cautionary tale, Norbert Wiener (1948) inaugurated the field of cybernetics. Wiener recognised certain principles must be applicable to all feedback-based, adaptive control systems, regardless of whether they are artificial or living, such as those embodied in ecological, technological, biological, and even social systems. Ecology bares important complementary methods and concepts with cybernetics. For instance, both disciplines are interested in the ways information flows are processed in self-regulating systems, in what ways information affects the systems’ behaviour, and how to approach and accommodate for system complexity, the qualities emerging out from self-organising and heterogeneous networks of interacting and evolving actors. However, they bear important distinctions, too. Early ecologists examined the systematic interaction between animals and their natural habitats, while cybernetic researchers are largely focused on relationships in and between human beings and their machines, including how they communicate and control one another. Though far from being science fiction, cybernetic research has emphasised the moral and philosophical implications hidden in these relationships, including whether and in what ways can or should human beings and their machines be integrated and automated? Accordingly, in the year following Orwell, Wiener (1950) forewarned the dehumanisation and subordination to human beings who integrate themselves into socio-technical ecosystems in his second book, The Human Use of Human Beings – Cybernetics and Society.

Scientists and science fiction writers have all illustrated the peril of unbridled ecological fantasies. Foster, Huxley, Orwell, and Wiener offered their own cautionary tale of one or another dystopian future where governing bodies extract enough “information” about how socio-technical societies “operate”. Having mapped the appropriate ecosystem, these governing bodies quickly assume their “master perspective from above” to manage their subjects. These governing bodies systematically distribute an “idea” or “technology” with little-to-no consideration to preserve humanity’s relationship with reality, because the organising socio-technical systems “knows better”, resulting in a catastrophe for their collective psyche. Central to most of these contributions and what is inherent in ecosystem theories are notions of hierarchical dominance, and the use of machines to compartmentalise and shape undesirable conditions or subjects. Those at the top of the hierarchy can organise various classes into manageable, artificial ecosystems and in the process, are awashed with hubris or ethical blindness. The technology they use to instrumentalise their ecological fantasies ought to remind us that our weaknesses are overwhelmed much sooner than our strengths, and much to their disgruntled disbelief, everyone in the hierarchy is susceptible. Despite the relatedness of ecology and cybernetics, including their presence in media, cognitive-psychological, and socio-technological studies, the concepts control and complexity remain untheorised as a contributor to online far-right extremism. Without drawing too close an analogy, terrorism and extremism studies can learn valuable lessons from this era of science fiction and socio-technical science, especially for those who experiment with ecology with the precise intention to map and manage “undesirable” populations. As this debate continued to rage in science fiction circles, ecology became “a social, without ceasing to be a biological, science” (Park, 1952: 252).

Soldiers and the developing human

If terrorism and extremism studies adopt a systems version of ecology, it is essential to recognise every aspect of the ecosystem as uniquely responsible for their subject’s development. Following his experiences in World War I, Kurt Lewin – known as the “founder of social psychology” – regarded psychological growth as intrinsic to the setting and the meaning someone draws from their situation. For instance, even though the scene is relatively unchanged to the travelling solider, the soldier’s perception of reality is transmogrified as he nears the front line. This led Lewin (1951) to suggest that analyses of human psychology and social life must account for the effect of relative perception on development. This is particularly pertinent if those under study undertake “common, complimentary, or relatively independent tasks” as a community and yet, yield entirely different psychosocial trajectories (Bronfenbrenner 2005, 46). This does not mean the environment is mute when it comes to the development of human beings. However, Lewin stressed that static descriptions of either setting or subject are unable to capture relative perception and thus, are devoid of insight regarding development. Lewin went further to distinguish perception as more important than reality, and in being sensitive to changes in development, Lewin’s psychological observations would later form a core component of human ecology – an approach prominently cited in terrorism and extremism studies.

The concept of “society” was said to comprise of sociological and biological trends and dynamics. During the early twentieth century, certain inventions were praised as proof of humanity’s resistance to nature’s restraint on societal progress. A major contribution to this view was the invention of modern cultural society – a society rooted in ideology, custom, and tradition, assisted by ever-more sophisticated technology, and facilitated by bureaucratic institutions. Early theorists in human ecology viewed these components as integral, interconnected parts of the whole community, subsequently labelling society a “superorganism”. In this situation, “superorganism” denotes groups of individuals who can find ways to sufficiently suppress their competitive urges and free riding tendencies so they can “cooperate, work as a team, and divide labour” (Hölldobler & Wilson, 2008: 233). Individuals in the superorganism therefore progress based on their coherence with the collective, whereas unexpected changes in cohesion can “radically redecorate the psychic interior of the individuals who form its constituent parts” (Bloom 1997, 238–239). Based on these dynamics, human ecologists initially sought to understand how networked institutions mediate social cohesion and the organisation of society in ways that effected a person’s development (Park 1952). Ecology was henceforth mobilised to understand and organise society.

Coming into the mid-twentieth century, the intelligentsia at this time were somewhat favourable towards ecologically planned societies (Wells 1939). Robert Park (1952, 14), alongside Roderick McKenzie, used ecology to understand how social and natural forces created “orderly and typical grouping” when applied to humans, social institutions, and geography. These relationships and entities were studied using taxonomic accounts to map their interrelation, as if it resembled Darwin’s web of life. Park (1952, 66) observed that their distribution was not always organic and instead, suggested human ecologists can advise governments on how best to “direct and control the ecological organisation” of society. Although Park and McKenzie were sensitive to how society was shaped as a consequence of relative perception, its effect on societal development was assumed to be additive. As the field progressed, a more comprehensive approach was required to guide “the course and consequences of development” in society (Bronfenbrenner 2005, 69).

A development-centred perspective of human ecosystems necessitated an interdisciplinary methodology. A decade prior to Park’s comments on the cultural society, another theorist started to expand the field in a different direction. Urie Bronfenbrenner (1943) sought to encompass unique bio-social factors found in fringe layers of the ecosystem thought to contribute to human development. Like Park and McKenzie, Bronfenbrenner (1943) focused on the stability and continuity of social contexts and analysed the behavioural patterns that arose from their network of internal and external conditions. In contrast, Bronfenbrenner (2005) constructed a model to account for yet unknown factors and unexplored levels of human-based ecosystems, such as tracking changes at different levels in simultaneity, and assessing bi-directional developments among individuals and among the whole and over a lifetime. To empirically substantiate this model, Bronfenbrenner needed yet undiscovered insights from the social and natural sciences, like genetics, biology, psychology, sociology, and behavioural studies. Over the following twenty-five years, Bronfenbrenner (2001) worked alongside various colleagues to synthesise multiple disciplines into this model of human development. These insights later culminated in a biopsychosocial model that, in contrast to his canonical work, centred on a spatio-temporal and reciprocal understanding of human and ecosystem interaction. Drawing inspiration from Lewin’s research, Bronfenbrenner later championed phenomenology as a defining element of their interaction (Bronfenbrenner 2005, 5).

Bronfenbrenner’s model is based on the observation that humans co-create the ecosystem in ways that – for better or for worse – make humans curators of their own development. Bronfenbrenner (2005, 3) defined human development as “the phenomenon of continuity and change in the biopsychological characteristics of human beings, both as individuals and as groups” over a lifetime. Human development was said to “take place through processes of progressively more complex reciprocal interaction between an active, evolving human organism and the persons, objects, and symbols in its immediate external environment” (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998 996). Therefore, behaviour is a product of human development arising from an individual’s reciprocal interaction with certain areas of the ecosystem and the ecosystem as a whole (Bronfenbrenner 2005). As each layer of the ecosystem evolves, this incrementally influences the person’s development and alters their niche or position in society. Valued among terrorism and extremism scholars, the outer layer of Bronfenbrenner’s ecosystem consists of belief systems that constitute a critical feature of the developmental model (Bronfenbrenner 2005, 149). When using ecology to analyse human ecosystems, Park and Bronfenbrenner converge on these crucial parameters: to understand what factors, levels, relations, and activities uniquely characterise the development of an agent over time, an in-depth and continuous descriptive understanding of every layer in the ecosystem and the agent’s experience of the ecosystem is required. Though such a study does not exist in terrorism or extremism studies, this approach to human interaction and development continues to appeal to scholars (e.g. Boyd 2014).

Human ecosystems are civilisation stratified. Stratification allows ecologists to examine and estimate the degrees of influence each layer plays in shaping a person’s development and behaviour. In previous decades, the occasional use of ecology in terrorism studies broadly stratified society to understand how each layer contributed to or represented an aspect of terrorism. For instance, Crenshaw (1981) developed an ecological framework to explain terrorism on the individual, the group, and environmental levels to situate individuals within terrorist groups and these groups within countries. At the same time, however, the whole ecosystem constituted a united and driving force on the development and behaviour of the humans therein. The (quixotic) standards laid out by Park and Bronfenbrenner require a researcher to record the developmental changes in subject(s) and setting(s) and encompass known, newly discovered, and yet unknown factors, layers, perceptions, and dimensions of the ecosystem under study. This presents an economic problem that cannot be easily overcome. Rather than pursue a comprehensive assessment, studies using human ecology analyse segments of the context that govern psychosocial development, producing significant insight into the developmental effect of terrorism (e.g. Boyd 2014).

Human ecology shares a core purpose with terrorism and extremism scholars – to analyse and address the interrelation between humans and their physical and intellectual environments. Like human ecology, resident scholars must recognise every aspect of the ecosystem as uniquely responsible for extremism and terrorism. The future of ecological research on far-right extremist communities should aim to: produce some account of observable levels of the ecosystem; concentrate on the immediate, consequential, or defining layers; explore how the subject and setting co-create one another; and gauge the accumulative effect of all layers on their bio-psycho-social development.

What do you mean by ‘organism’ and ‘environment’?

The adoption of ecology into terrorism and extremism studies must be accompanied by cautionary tales of classification. In 1953, Eugene Odum released his book titled, Fundamentals of Ecology, which among its contributions pioneered ecosystem thinking into public consciousness. Odum’s (1953) writings were later referenced as a simple metaphor to understand networked components that compose functional wholes. Here, ecology denoted a general meaning; the study of the systemic relationship between organisms and their environments. The study of “systemic relationship” affords an array of principles and properties that can be applied to any “ecosystem”, whereas the “organism” and the “environment” was suddenly open to classification. Guided by the following descriptive definitions, environments embraced everything “extrinsic to the organism that in any way impinge upon it” and anything not a part of the environment was considered integral to the organism (Keeton, 1972: 635). Theorists in media studies leaped at the opportunity to re-conceptualise the media landscape.

Characteristic of ecology’s entry into new areas of research, media scholars classified the ecosystem differently depending on their focus. During initial discussions, media was classified as the “environment” and its ability to “play a leading role in human affairs” emphasised humans as “organisms” (Strate 1999, 1). Humans are not the only entity to be classified, however. Casey Lum (2000) framed media technology as “organisms” in an evolutionary pursuit to carve out their own ecological niche, with society being the “environment” through which technologies struggled for survival. Aside from the human-technology divide, culture and cognition also represented two distinct yet overlapping dimensions that continue to compete for importance. Media cognitively restricts our ability to engage fully in social reality and yet our engagement contributes to a shared cultural society. Media ecologists seem to agree that “change is not additive; it is ecological” and in effect, alters the ecosystem at every level and at different rates, depending on the degree of change (Scolari 2012, 205). However, the degree of change and the specific ways (digital) media affects us, in either cognitive or cultural domain, remains a point of contention because it depends on how the ecosystem is classified.

Like other disciplines or fields of study, media ecology is caught in contradictions of classification and the efforts to comprise them. A glossary of natural science terms was introduced to support the studies’ recapitulation of the media landscape. For example, in biology a “medium” can be considered “a substance within which a culture grows”, while in media studies a “medium” became “a technology within which human culture grows” (Milberry 2017). Likewise, terms like “extinction”, “hybrid”, and “co-evolution” were coupled with computer science terms like “interface” to address gaps in the ecological framework (Scolari 2012). An alternative is to compartmentalise and re-construct the ecosystem. However, media constructivism is not free of complication either. Without re-unification, this approach resulted in an eruption of new constructs and bounded micro-plains across (digital) media ecosystems, such as the “new media ecology”, the “social media ecology”, the “new screen ecology”, the “online attention ecology”, and the “information disorder ecosystem” (e.g. Christopoulou 2019). Rather than carve out sub-sections, theorists found the point of convergence between media studies and ecosystem theories in order to better unify them, whether this be theory-based, areas of study, or media types (e.g. Mercea, Iannelli, and Loader 2016). Soon after its adoption, media ecology diversified into various disciplines, definitions, and disagreements over differences in the classifications. Indeed, ecology does offer a tapestry of conceptual tools to any discipline; however, it is also accompanied by this cautionary tale of classification.

‘Like’ biology

Terrorism and extremism scholars who adopt ecological terms and concepts must accommodate aspects core to their meaning, such as avoiding the mistake of approaching artificial systems like biological ones. As we approached the new millennia, ecology was thought to improve the performance, increase the value, and optimise certain functions, in systems of production. Rather than humans being the primary focus of development, economic and computational mediums were reconceptualised to serve the humans who inhabited a newly dubbed ecosystem. For instance, abundant in answers to complex design problems, nature remains an elegant example to artificially emulate when optimising artificial systems. Biological systems are generally considered to be “robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve complex, dynamic problems” (Briscoe 2009: 15, 16). Nature’s desirable properties encouraged the establishment of biomimicry – a field of study dedicated to learning how biological systems operate, identifying what properties, designs, and processes may be useful in human-made products or systems, and artificially re-creating them (Benyus 2003). When accomplished in computer science, however, biomimic technicians do not literally re-create synthetic biology in computational systems, but are inspired to use their ecological elegance to create “successful design strategies” in their technology (Briscoe 2009, 23). These strategies continue to influence the design and conceptualisation of computational systems. For instance, recent studies created virtual space designed to maintain complex agent-knowledge networks, known as “digital ecosystems” (Briscoe 2009). Though elegant in theory, building biology-inspired systems is a slow, complicated process often flawed in practice (Briscoe 2009).

Social technologies and intellectual properties are currently being ecologised. Social media platforms are increasingly systemically associated with the intellectual properties of an imagined “far-right online ecosystem”, properties like ideology, morality, and emotion. Well-established social media companies do strategically design their platforms to incrementally manipulate and profit from the intellectual changes of every user, resulting in pathological ideas, values, and behaviours spreading at disconcerting speeds (Zuboff 2019). However, relying on ecology to analyse artificial systems can give the mistaken impression they resemble biology and can be compared without clarification. For example, self-organisation is considered “a foundational quality and underlying enabling function that makes all other ecological functions possible in biological systems” (Yackinous, 2015: 87–88). In computer science, self-organisation remains foundational to digital ecosystems but is rigorously conceptualised and clearly distinguished from biological ecosystems (Briscoe 2009). Recent studies in terrorism and extremism used ecology to understand how and to what effect extremist communities are dwelling in “social media ecosystems” (Baele, Brace, and Coan 2020; Conway et al. 2021). However, these studies do not clarify what ecological concepts are employed during analyses of the newly dubbed “social media ecosystem”, in what ways are these concepts applied to the artificial ecosystem and are they applied in different ways to the biological beings who are dwelling therein, and if these really are ecosystems; nor do these studies recognise that social media companies do not disclose how their self-organisation systems operate.

An ecological look at extra-ordinary behaviour

Around the same time as terrorism and extremism studies, criminology also introduced ecological terms and concepts to analyse contexts where crime occurs and the relevant contributing variables. In 1985, Wikström used an ecological approach to assess how situational factors like socio-cultural and political events influenced criminal behaviour in Sweden. The author found younger-aged offenders tended to travel much shorter distances to commit crime when compared to older-aged constituents. Moving away from criminal types or characteristics of crime, an ecological approach was used to explain the distribution of crime in local areas. Concentrating on neighbourhoods with consistent levels of crime (despite an inter-generational turnover of the population), Stark (1987) considered physical spaces and social structures to be foundational to sustaining deviant behaviour and criminality.

Following the focus on physical space, researchers considered whether crime arose “naturally” as a consequence of being human in artificial ecosystems. For instance, Cohen and Machalek (1988) referred to behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology to explain the “normality” of crime. Viewed as an expression of natural selection, the authors (1988) proposed that deviance and crime are best viewed as a diverse range of strategies adopted and adapted to meet the needs of inhabitants in the ecosystem – otherwise known as an ecological niche. Used in various ways, ecology has supported analyses of crime, context, and human nature. Far-right extremism studies may benefit from greater collaboration with criminologists who specialise in an ecological approach.

Terrorism and extremism studies must also integrate advancements in fields involving biological sciences and the development of technology. Moving into the new millennia, criminology drew on ecological approaches to explore the connection between humans, technology, and crime. Broadhead (2018) applied ecology to the realm of cybercrime, conceptualising a “cybercrime ecosystem” to increase the capability, efficiency, and effectiveness of cybersecurity. In the same year, Schwarz (2018) challenged the notion that drone strikes and suicide bombing are characteristically juxtaposed in the “ecology of violence.” Rather than two antithetical modes of violence, Schwarz (2018) reconceptualised their position within the ecosystem as operating in the same technological niche. With advancements in software technology, research returned to answer how physical spaces influence crime. Onat (2019) merged ecological criminology with actuarial risk prediction techniques to produce software designed to forecast crime based on spatio-temporal and environmental conditions. Further, advancements in natural sciences encouraged Snipes (et al., 2019) to consider newly understood aspects of human biology and society, namely epigenetics, neurology, political history, and technology, when using an ecological model to understand how criminality evolves. Though the criminological literature discussed here emerged out of ecology’s intellectual history, advancements in science and technology may support new ecological models and practices in future far-right extremism studies.

The ecology of terrorism

Terrorism and extremism studies ought to learn the advantages and limitations of using (human) ecology to explicate extremist violence emerging from different environments. Ecology features intermittently in the history of terrorism studies. In the 1970s, ecology was used as shorthand to account for interactive factors that contributed to terrorism. Segre and Adler (1973, 178) proposed that “the application of classical terminology to a radically different situation [of terrorism] persists in obscuring new and pertinent analyses and impedes, in our view, the elaboration of appropriate preventive and control measures.” Five years later, scholars like Lawrence Hamilton (1978, 5) used the term “ecology of terrorism” to empirically test various questions on the causes and effects of terrorism, writing that terrorism has “a variety of causes […] its most likely effect appears to be the intensification of government repression. Thus, it is poorly chosen as a tool for revolution or reform.”

From the 1980s, the term expanded into a frame of analysis which gained utility as a classification system to stratify society into “layers” or “realms” and understand how each layer contributed to or represented an aspect of terrorism (Crenshaw 1981). Organised into a hierarchy of causal systems, an “ecology of terrorism” allowed counterterrorism interventions to be strategically positioned at points within the hierarchy (Sadik et al. 2020). While ecology first surfaced as fashionable shorthand, it evolved into an effective theoretical framework to reduce complexity while establishing structure and relationship in terrorism and extremism studies. This pattern features in other disciplines, re-emerging later when ecological terms and concepts are introduced to far-right extremism studies.

In the new millennia, the study of human ecologies was influenced by psychological and behavioural observations in terrorism studies. Terrorism was now considered to be an expression of human ecosystems, emerging from the interaction between a unique constellation of variables (e.g. Bohorquez et al. 2009). In addition, patterns of people, institutions, and cultural values were all correlated with rates of terrorism, represented as the “foetal stage of terrorism” or an “ecosystem of extremism in which terror thrives” (Wilner 2013). Based on prominent human ecology models, terrorism studies adopted ecology to understand the development of violence and how it may emerge from a combination of once disparate factors.

In the 2010s, human ecology was used as a conceptual framework to analyse conditions said to cultivate discrimination and violence. Akin to Crenshaw’s research three decades prior, ecology was again used to separate and classify a hierarchy of causal systems in order to examine the relationship between terrorism and environments. During this time, such analyses were useful in distinguishing between various aspects of terrorism in society, contextualising their development in relation to environmental “factors” and “forces” (Boyd 2014). For instance, Kluch and Vaux (2017) employed an ecological approach to identify forces, factors, values, norms, institutions, and practices in various countries that hosted terrorism, determining that culture’s ecological effect was to increase the number and lethality of attacks (depending on the character of local culture).

At this time, ecology was employed to understand how systematised factors shaped the motivations, justifications, and technologies among terrorists. For instance, Bouhana (2019) theoretically described violent extremism as a combination of non-linear relationships between component parts of a broader “moral ecosystem”. However, what mechanisms manufacture or manage these relationships and interacting systems remain problematic to define or clearly identify with their emergent properties (i.e. external and internal mechanisms in a casual chain of influence from interpersonal experience to extremist violence). Understanding how external and internal mechanisms interact is not the imperative of Bouhana’s (2019) “moral ecology”. Bouhana (2019) traced specific extremist acts and defined a multilevel “moral ecology” that could theoretically enable them. Again, while the “online extremist ecosystem” is not the priority here or the pinnacle of the “moral ecology”, such conceptions must contend with the constructive and complex nature of human biology and technology. However, it must be highlighted that terrorism and extremism studies is increasingly incorporating public health sciences to, in part, explain how certain environments lead people towards political violence (Morrison 2020).

Ecology was digitised to understand online extremist communities

Ecology offers great conceptual potential to understand the bi-directional development of extremists and social technologies. When social media was made available on mobile phones in 2009, the technology gained sudden global popularity, stimulating deep interconnectivity in cyberspace. What emerged was the concern that extremist social networks would grow in sophistication at a rate greater than normal adoption. Following this wholesale adoption of social media in society, scholars digitised ecological concepts to better understand extremism and terrorism.

In the 2010s and 2020s, researchers primarily used ecology as an analogy to explore the relationship between violent extremists and social technologies. Looking to ecology for assistance, scholars conceived of how extremist communities and terrorist groups could adopt and thrive among “social media ecosystems” (Macdonald, et al., 2019). In some way or another, ecological concepts were used to examine social media technology and rates of radicalisation or instances of terrorism (Awan, et al., 2012; Fisher and Winterbotham 2020). While ecology remained primarily metaphorical, a growing number of studies refer to terrorist or extremists inhabiting the “far-right online ecosystem” (Baele, Brace, and Coan 2020). In related research, Johnson et al. (2016); et al., 2019) relied on chemistry to characterise extremist online communities – who dwelled in the newly dubbed “global online hate ecology” – as self-organising and adaptive. Rather than analyse how these “ecosystems” emerged, or in what ways do social media landscapes create and shape the development of extremists, research continued to produce static descriptions (Clifford & Powell, 2010).

Though ecology was extensively employed, what remained elusive is the realisation that an extremist’s relationship with social media is bi-directional and co-evolutionary in nature. By the second decade of the new millennia, scholars focused on the evolution of the Internet. Ecological and evolutionary traditions were soon deployed to describe how extremists familiarised themselves with and harnessed the utility of the Internet as their instruments of persuasion and violence (Dominici 2017; Hamid 2020). The field also recognised the capacity for an “online ecosystem” to encourage extreme worldviews among alternative platforms and websites (Ging 2019). These important descriptive findings grounded ecological terms and concepts in analyses of things like social media interfaces, algorithms, and networked practices, being situated in “invisible” yet “embedded in the layers of infrastructure” (Bowker 1999, 229; Ochara, Odhiambo, and Kadyamatimba 2020). For example, Shradha Sahani (2018) compared offenders with no contact with those readily exposed to social media personalisation algorithms, finding those who were exposed more often were statistically far more likely to commit violence because these digital environments created a disproportionately important context for learning extremist worldviews. Though the relationship between terrorism and technology is often conveyed as human dominant, accounting for a few variables or relations, new findings have encouraged scholars to use ecology to explain technology’s sway.

The “right” side of the online extremist ecosystem

Far-right extremism studies has traditionally focused on a single platform, behaviour, or ideology. Recent studies have focused on either one or a pair of platforms or websites, identifying trends in behaviour, capturing the ideological schema, or examining how these communities engaged with ideas (Amarasingam and Scrivens 2020; Ballsun-Stanton, Waldek, and Droogan 2020). However, like most users of social media, the far-right maintain multiple accounts across a network of public and private platforms for necessity and ideological aims. Terrorism research therefore constructed macro-level theories to encompass additional variables and relations with the aim to better understand how far-right extremism propagates in digital environments (Perry and Scrivens 2016). In this context, some scholars started to reference “ecosystems” to address the integrated nature of social technologies.

Here, the term “ecosystem” is metaphorically used to map online typologies consisting of a network of ideologically heterogenous spaces, or describe how socio-cultural variables correlate with far-right extremism (Baele, Brace, and Coan 2020; Hutchinson et al. 2021). Studies do not always directly allude to “online extremist ecosystems”, but instead, scholars reference networked environments using ecological concepts. For instance, when ecology is invoked outside the field, extremism and terrorism are contextualised within nested layers, such as connecting broader digital media economies to designs in the software interface (Bayer, Triệu, and Ellison 2020). Other studies who drew from media ecology usefully described the relationship between radicalisation, extremist violence, and digital environments (Awan, Hoskins, and O’Loughlin 2012). However, if these studies intended to utilise ecological terms and concepts, there was little consistency in their application to far-right extremism and terrorism.

This is consequential because any ecosystem will shape, constrain, and enable far-right extremism and terrorism in ways previously unlikely or unattainable when viewed in a single platform or website. Far-right extremists dwell within an interactive network of platforms and websites said to cultivate their moral and ideological guidance (Ging 2019; Bouhana 2019); diversify their use of automated sociotechnical systems to mass-circulate extremist contacts and content (Gaudette et al. 2020); attain unprecedented access to a broader sweep of online communities (Droogan, et al., 2022); be inculcated in and contribute to a transnational far-right perspective (Perry and Scrivens 2016); be delivered instructions in warfare tactics and open-source intelligence techniques to improve their strategic and tactical capabilities (Singer and Brooking 2018); and publish evidence of their attack designed to be appreciated online (Hutchinson 2019). The growing threat of far-right extremism and terrorism emerging from cyberspace elevated ecological methods such as mapping to develop management strategies.

Understandably, the researcher must define their ecosystem, and as studies into far-right extremism evolve, “so will the definition of ‘ecosystem’ evolve with it” (Blew 1996, 173). And yet, “[i]t is important that we not allow the definition of ‘ecosystem’ to become so restrictive nor so diluted that it loses relevance to either science or management” (Blew 1996, 173). As aforementioned, ecology is accompanied by a cautionary tale of classification. Introducing additional terms can be useful to define the scholar’s view of the ecosystem, but can also further complicate the burden of classification because the boundaries it seeks to define are blurred, built into one another, and bridging new areas all the time. Ecosystems in general contain an interminable number of repertoires, each imbedded and critically connected to one another. Without an understanding of ecology’s intellectual history – such as the cautionary tale of classification from media and communication studies – this results in an ever-expanding catalogue of definitions in an infinite regression concerned with naming and labelling newly “found” ecosystems.

When ecology was introduced to far-right extremism studies, certain authors unwittingly carried across those aforementioned faults when ecology was previously introduced into the discipline or field from which they originally borrowed the concept or analogy. For example, Baele, Brace, and Coan (2020): 2, 3) used an ecological metaphor and method to recapitulate “the far-right internet” as the “far-right online ecosystem”, introducing a glossary of biology-like terms to “map” the boundaries (“biotopes”) and leading questions for future research. The elasticity of ecosystem metaphors does allow for creative intellectual licence but can surrender a universally agreed typology or comprehensive description, and make the conceptualisation of the “online extremist ecosystem” unachievable.

These and other analytical dangers seem “new” in the scheme of terrorism and extremism research, but were forewarned in the experience of other natural and social sciences. However, the field can avoid these problems by revising and reflecting on the concepts fundamental to ecosystem theories, in addition to ecology’s intellectual history and conceptual tradition. For instance, ecology holds great potential as a theoretical and methodological tool when bearing in mind the following observations:

1. Address and accommodate for the philosophical tension and implications of using systematic and holistic versions and practices of ecology.

2. If we believe violent extremists are separated from nature and uninfluenced by their devices, we will mistakenly distinguish their interrelations as if they share nothing in common but their interaction.

3. Appreciate the whole ecosystem when analysing socio-technological relationships and appeal to cooperation rather than control during interventions.

4. Be wary of unbridled or underdeveloped ecological concepts or practices, especially in instances where researchers and policy makers experiment with different ecological approaches with the intention to map and manage undesirable populations.

5. Acknowledge that every component of the “online extremist ecosystem” is uniquely responsible for far-right extremism and terrorism.

6. Adoption of ecology in extremism and terrorism studies must be accompanied by a cautionary tale of classification and remain as consistent as possible.

7. Accommodate for aspects core to the meaning of “ecosystem” and avoid the mistake of understanding artificial systems to be “like” biological ones.

8. Advancements in science and technology will support the introduction of ecology and its application in future studies and policies.

9. When disciplines are over-simplified into analogies or reduced to certain methods of enquiry (mapping), great vigilance must be exercised to avoid burdening future researchers or betraying reality.

Conclusion

This genealogy of ecology speaks to the advantages and adversities of adaptation over consistency. A sub-branch of the biological sciences investigating how plants relate to one another and to their surroundings was the original conception of ecology. As the focus expanded, ecology was turned inward to explain human psychology and social relations, inspiring a mechanistic version called the ecosystem. In the biological tradition, ecosystem is used to understand the systemic relationship between organisms and their physical environments. Outside of biology the term has come to refer more broadly, and in a popular fashion, to any complex and interconnected system or network regardless of its composition. In other words, where once the study of ecology was used to explain how plant communities retained a state of equilibrium on riverbanks in Enlightenment Europe, it now draws attention to the destructive nature of far-right violent extremism emerging from today’s digital media environments.

Ecology has historically been used to: describe components of a complex whole; map and manage human affairs; offer philosophical warnings of its misuse; enhance systems of production; stratify society and technology; and contextualise anomalous acts of criminality and violence, among many others. For example, in the context of social media, ecosystem is used to describe the systematic interaction between people (organisms) and digital software and infrastructure (environment), to gauge how their relations influence one another or improve specific aspects of the operating system. In this way, the term has been effective at reducing complexity while bringing structure, relationship, and order to environments characterised by concepts like complexity, networks, and dynamism (Droogan, et al., 2022). At the same time, ecosystem has and is being used with little consideration for any set of underlying processes that structure how systemic relationships operate; consideration for what is classified as “organism” or “environment” and why; or conceptual components core to its meaning. In these instances, scholars quick to adapt ecological terms and concepts to suit their research interests are likely to, at times, lose its conceptual or methodological utility and empirical potential.

This article presents the first genealogical narrative overview of the ecological tradition. To achieve this, this article designed a genealogical method and wave-like strategy to collect, structure, and analyse literature from across a range of disciplines and fields. This article does not contain the full breadth of work contained in each discipline or field of study, because to “give an accurate historical account of a scientific discipline is impossible” (Fleck, 1981: 15). However, this article has explored the relevant lessons, advantages, and limitations with the intention of delivering scholars and practitioners with the knowledge and guidance to incorporate ecology in future examinations of far-right extremism and terrorism. Importantly, this article found ecology is theoretically highly appealing and elastic in social sciences. If consistent with their intellectual tradition, ecology can be useful in analysing complex systems made up of networks of extremists and technological forces. To date, the “online extremist ecosystem” has not been conceptualised or theorised in any rigorous or consistent manner. When the term features in the literature it is primarily used as an analogy, metaphor, descriptor, or shorthand classification system to map and manage extremist communities in cyberspace.

Therefore, moving closer to consistency, terrorism and violent extremism scholars must create a shared vocabulary with an accurate understanding of ecology. With a shared vocabulary, scholars will gain a greater theoretical grounding in ecology’s intellectual history and avoid diverging those terms and concepts needed to explore mechanisms involved and gauge their anticipated influence. This is consequential when an established term and concept in the ecological sciences – like “ecosystems” – comes to define the research priorities in terrorism and extremism studies as well as counter violent extremism policy. Variety is inherent to terrorism and extremism studies and the preliminary use of ecology represents a constructive process of increasing conceptual sophistication in the field. In keeping with this view, scholars must critically reflect and appraise their use of ecological terms and concepts, or as Arthur Tansley (1920b, 120) once remarked: “We must never conceal from ourselves that our concepts are the creation of the human mind that we impose on the facts of nature.”

Acknowledgements

This article’s methodology and observations were shaped in conversation with Asst. Prof. Julian Droogan, Lise Waldek, Dr. Brian Ballsun-Stanton, Asst. Prof. Alastair Reed, and Kateira Aryaeinejad during a project sponsored by the RESOLVE Network in partnership with the United States’ Institute of Peace. The author’s understanding of ecology was grounded in conversation with Prof. Michael Gillings from Macquarie University, and Asst. Prof. Bharath Ganesh and Prof. Marcel Broersma from Groningen University with regard to the author’s grasp of media ecology and communications.

Disclosure statement

In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy and my ethical obligation as researchers, I am reporting that a portion of this article’s methodology and observations were conceived during a contracted project sponsored by the RESOLVE Network in partnership with the United States’ Institute of Peace. I have disclosed those interests fully to Taylor & Francis, and have in place an approved plan for managing any potential conflicts arising from any accusations of conflict of interests.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jade Hutchinson

Mr Jade Hutchinson is a Cotutelle PhD Candidate in the Department of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University (Australia) and the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). Jade’s research is focused on understanding far-right violent extremism in the context of an ‘online ecosystem’ and in what ways social media platforms and associated devices shape far-right extremist disposition and engagement in terrorism. He is currently the Chief Research Scientist in Defence Applications at EyePathDx Company (Australia) and holds a position as a Visiting Fellow and Guest Lecturer at The Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University (The Netherlands).

Notes

1. The first conceptualisation of the ecological approach is disputed. In 1911, Francis Wall Oliver suggested British botanists had already attained the ecological standpoint because they seemed to “have been alive to the importance of” and “lay in the direction of what is now called Ecology… long before ecology was invented” (Oliver 1913, 7–182).