Extremist Radicalization in the Virtual Era: Analyzing the Neurocognitive Process of Online Radicalization

Abstract

Emerging research on the etiology of violent radical political behavior has begun to explore the role of empathy in shaping an individual’s beliefs, attitudes, and intentions that culminate in radicalization. The existing studies focus on persuasive influence upon an individual, but they overlook the centrality of empathy and that in the absence of empathy, persuasion is not salient. If an individual empathizes with a message then when it is processed by the receiver, the message is more likely to be considered realistic, relatable, believable, and therefore, persuasive. However, very little is known as to how messages should be designed to stimulate empathy in order to optimize their persuasive impact, which is particularly relevant to terrorist and extremist messaging given the lethal outcome of successful persuasion. This study examines the neurocognitive process of radicalization, specifically as it occurs within virtual online space, and how message content and production features have the potential to arouse empathy and generate radical-persuasive outcomes among the target audience. The findings of this research demonstrate how emotions, specifically that of empathy, can be stimulated in order to facilitate the process of radicalization, thus increasing the potential for violent radical political behavior.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In this study, violent radical political behavior can be defined as a deliberative act with the intent to coerce and intimidate a government or civilian population, or some segment of it, through violence, or the threat of violence to further a political or ideological aim. This definition builds upon Geoff Dean’s definition of violent political extremism, See Geoff Dean, Neurocognitive Risk Assessment for the Early Detection of Violent Extremists (New York: Springer Briefs in Criminology, 2014), 12. Violent radical political behavior encompasses several conceptual terms, including, terrorism, violent extremism, violent political extremism, and extremism, so in this paper, violent radical political behavior will sometimes be used interchangeably with radical behavior, terrorism, and extremism. Similarly, the term ‘violent radical political actors’ encompasses several conceptual terms, including terrorists, violent extremists, violent political extremists and extremists, so in this paper violent radical political actors will sometimes be used interchangeably with terrorists and extremists.

2 Kurt Braddock, “Fighting Words: The Persuasive Effect of Online Extremist Narratives on the Radicalization Process” (PhD diss., American University, 2012); Travis Morris, “Extracting and Networking Emotions in Extremist Propaganda,” Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference (EISIC), European IEEE (2012); Tiffiany Howard, Brach Poston, and Stephen D. Benning, “The Neurocognitive Process of Digital Radicalization: A Theoretical Model and Analytical Framework,” Journal for Deradicalization, Summer (2019): 122–48.

3 Rose Campbell and Austin Babrow, “The Role of Empathy in Responses to Persuasive Risk Communication: Overcoming Resistance to HIV Prevention Messages,” Health Communication 16, no. 2 (2004): 164.

4 Lijiang Shen, "Mitigating Psychological Reactance: The Role of Message Induced Empathy in Persuasion,”Human Communication Research 36, no. 3 (2010): 397–422.

5 Gaetano J. Ilardi, “Redefining the Issues: The Future of Terrorism Research and the Search for Empathy,” in Research on Terrorism: Trends, Achievements & Failures, ed. Andrew Silke (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 214–28.

6 Susan Herring, “Content Analysis for New Media: Rethinking the Paradigm,” in New Research for New Media: Innovative Research Methodologies Symposium Working Papers and Readings (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication, 2004), 47–66; Susan Herring, “Web Content Analysis: Expanding the Paradigm,” International Handbook of Internet Research (Netherlands: Springer, 2009), 233–49; Arab Salem, Edna Reid, and Hsinchun Chen, “Multimedia Content Coding and Analysis: Unraveling the Content of Jihadi Extremist Groups’ Videos,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 31, no. 7 (2008): 605–26.

7 Reactive emotions are generated in response to something, such as an event or information. Whereas, affective emotions are generated through a bond or relationship. Affective and reactive emotions exist on a continuum and can be either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. See James Jasper (1998). “The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and Around Social Movements,” Sociological Forum 13, no. 3 (1998): 397–424.

8 Nicole Tausch, Julia C. Becker, Russell Spears, Oliver Christ, Rim Saab, Purnima Singh, and Roomana N. Siddiqui, “Explaining Radical Group Behavior: Developing Emotion and Efficacy Routes to Normative and Non-normative Collective Action,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101, no. 1 (2011): 2.

9 Erin Buckels and Paul Trapnell, “Disgust Facilitates Out-group Dehumanization,” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 16, no. 6 (2013): 771–80; David Matsumoto, Mark Frank, and Hyisung Hwang, “The Role of Intergroup Emotions in Political Violence,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 24, no. 5 (2015): 369–73; Julia C. Becker, Nicole Tausch, and Ulrich Wagner, “Emotional Consequences of Collective Action Participation: Differentiating Self-directed and Outgroup-directed Emotions,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37, no. 12 (2011): 1587–98; Howard et al., “The Neurocognitive Process of Digital Radicalization.”

10 Tiffiany Howard, “Failed States and the Spread of Terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 11 (2010a): 960–88; Tiffiany Howard, The Tragedy of Failure: Evaluating State Failure and its Impact on the Spread of Refugees, Terrorism, and War (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010b).

11 Tiffiany Howard, Failed States and the Origins of Violence: A Comparative Analysis of State Failure as a Root Cause of Terrorism and Political Violence (New York: Routledge, 2014).

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14 Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest,” 401.

15 Mark H. Davis, “Measuring Individual Differences in Empathy: Evidence for a Multidimensional Approach,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, no. 1 (1983): 113–26; James Jasper and Jane Poulsen, “Recruiting Strangers and Friends: Moral Shocks and Social Networks in Animal Rights and Anti-Nuclear Protests,” Social Problems 42, no. 4 (1995): 493–512; Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest”; Buckels and Trapnell, “Disgust Facilitates Out-group Dehumanization”; Matsumoto et al., “The Role of Intergroup Emotions in Political Violence.”

16 Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest,” 405.

17 Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest.”

18 Davis, “Measuring Individual Differences in Empathy,” 114.

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23 Mbemba Jabbi, Marte Swart, and Christian Keysers, “Empathy for Positive and Negative Emotions in the Gustatory Cortex,” Neuroimage 34, no. 4 (2007): 1744–53; Preston and de Waal, “Empathy.”

24 Decety and Jackson, “A Social Neuroscience Perspective on Empathy”; Singer et. al., “Empathic Neural Responses are Modulated by the Perceived Fairness of Others”; Zillmann, “Empathy: Affective Reactivity to Others’ Emotional Experiences”; Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation; Ahmed Abbasi and Hsinchun Chen, “Analysis of Affect Intensities in Extremist Group Forums,” in Terrorism Informatics, ed. Hsinchun Chen, Edna Reid, Joshua Sinai, Andrew Silke, and Boaz Ganor (Boston, MA: Springer, 2008), 285–307; Adam Smith, “Cognitive Empathy and Emotional Empathy in Human Behavior and Evolution,” The Psychological Record 56, no. 1 (2010): 3–21.

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26 Preston and de Waal, “Empathy”; Decety and Jackson, “A Social Neuroscience Perspective on Empathy”; Decety and Jackson, “The Functional Architecture of Human Empathy.”

27 Campbell and Babrow, “The Role of Empathy in Responses to Persuasive Risk Communication”; Chory-Assad and Cicchirillo, Empathy and Affective Orientation as Predictors of Identification with Television Characters.”

28 Taya R. Cohen, The Effects of Empathy on Intergroup Conflict and Aggression:

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29 Emily B. Falk, Lian Rameson, Elliot Berkman, Betty Liao, Yoona Kang, Tristen K. Inagaki, and Matthew D. Lieberman, “The Neural Correlates of Persuasion: A Common Network Across Cultures and Media,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22, no. 11 (2010): 2447–59.

30 Ibid

31 Lijiang Shen, “Antecedents to Psychological Reactance: The Impact of Threat, Message Frame, and Choice,” Health Communication 30, no. 10 (2014): 1–11.

32 The target audience includes current members, supporters, sympathizers, prospective members, and prospective affiliates.

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44 Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26, no. 1 (2000): 611–39.

45 This project was reviewed and granted approval by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Social/Behavioral IRB as indicated in Federal regulatory statutes 45CFR46. Protocol ID: 1717170-2.

46 Conrad Baldner and Jared J. McGinley, “Correlational and Exploratory Factor Analyses (EFA) of Commonly Used Empathy Questionnaires: New Insights,” Motivation and Emotion 38, no. 5 (2014): 727–44.

47 Evangelia G. Chrysikou, and W. Jake Thompson, “Assessing Cognitive and Affective Empathy Through the Interpersonal Reactivity Index: An Argument Against a Two-Factor Model,” Assessment 23, no. 6 (2016): 769–77; Davis, “Measuring Individual Differences in Empathy.”

48 See Daniel J. Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind, 1st ed. (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2012).

49 Ratio band power is measured 1–50. Higher number, higher state of arousal.

50 Rafael Ramirez and Zacharias Vamvakousis, “Detecting Emotion from EEG Signals Using the EMOTIV EPOC Device,” in Brain Informatics: BI 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol 7670, ed. Fabio M. Zanzotto, Shusaku Tsumoto, Niels Taatgen,Yiyu Ya (Berlin Heidelberg: Springer, 2012), 175–84; Jerzy Kosiński, Krzysztof Szklanny, Alicja Wieczorkowska, and Marcin Wichrowski, “An Analysis of Game-Related Emotions Using EMOTIV EPOC,” 2018 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS), (2018), 913–17; Wei-Long Zheng and Bao-Liang Lu, “Investigating Critical Frequency Bands and Channels for EEG-based Emotion Recognition with Deep Neural Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development 7, no. 3 (2015): 162–75.

51 Ramirez and Vamvakousis, “Detecting Emotion from EEG Signals”; Kosiński, et al., “An Analysis of Game-Related Emotions Using EMOTIV EPOC.”

52 Thomas Donoghue, Julio Dominguez, and Bradley Voytek, “Electrophysiological Frequency Band Ratio Measures Conflate Periodic and Aperiodic Neural Activity,” Eneuro 7, no. 6 (2020): 1; Theo Gasser, Christine Jennen-Steinmetz, Lothar Sroka, Rolf Verleger, and Joachim Möcks, “Development of the EEG of School-Age Children and Adolescents. I. Analysis of Band Power,” Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 69, no. 2 (1998): 91–9; Jony Saby and Peter Marshall, “The Utility of EEG Band Power Analysis in the Study of Infancy and Early Childhood,” Developmental Neuropsychology 37, no. 3 (2012): 253–73.

53 Ramirez and Vamvakousis, “Detecting Emotion from EEG Signals”; Kosiński, et al., “An Analysis of Game-Related Emotions Using EMOTIV EPOC”; Zheng and Lu, “Investigating Critical Frequency Bands and Channels for EEG-based.”

54 We used the Bonferroni test to confirm there is a statistically significant difference (p<.05) between the three levels of arousal.

55 Nan Yan, Jue Wang, Mingyu Liu, Liang Zong, Yongfeng Jiao, Jing Yue, Ye Lv, Qin Yang, Hai Lan, and Zhongye Liu, “Designing a Brain-Computer Interface Device for Neurofeedback Using Virtual Environments,” Medical and Biological Engineering 28, no. 3 (2008): 167–72; David L. Neumann, Raymond C.K. Chan, Gregory J. Boyle, Yi Wang, and H. Rae Westbury, “Measures of Empathy: Self-Report, Behavioral, and Neuroscientific Approaches,” Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Constructs, (2015), 257–89, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-386915-9.00010-3; David L. Neumann, and H. Rae Westbury, “The Psychophysiological Measurement of Empathy,” in Psychology of Empathy, ed., Danielle J. Scapalett (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2011), 119–42, https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/44076/77247_1.pdf%3Bsequence=1

56 Due its low frequency during awakened states, Delta waves are best captured using brain visualization software than with raw EEG data, which would overestimate beta and alpha waves in order to accurately measure Delta waves. The buffer would have to be set very low to make it more sensitive and would inaccurately measure beta and alpha waves. Thus, it would introduce a lot of noise, which is why we don’t use the EEG raw data for delta measures and it is also why we could not simultaneously use the brain visualization activity of alpha and beta waves alone without the corresponding raw EEG data measures. However, to record the raw EEG data of delta activity, we observed nodal activity in the F7 and F8 electrodes.

57 Toshiyuki Himichi and Michio Nomura, “Modulation of Empathy in the Left Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Facilitates Altruistic Behavior: An fNIRS Study,” Journal of Integrative Neuroscience 14, no. 2 (2015): 207–22.

58 Right frontal activation is important, but it is not essential for the measure of empathy. Therefore, if empathy is present, 2D imaging will reveal either left frontal activity, or left front activity in addition to right frontal activity.

59 There is speculation regarding whether the subject died in 2019. However, the subject was verified to still be living at the time of the study. Mainly we did not want to include videos of a defunct group and obsolete leader.

60 The reason for this is because we did not want a video that could only be viewed on the dark web.

61 This study is part of a comprehensive research project on empathetic responses to radical messaging produced by terrorist and extremist groups. While, this paper focuses specifically on radical Islamic extremism and Muslim victims, the broader project does examine far-right extremism, as well as victims of far-right extremism which also includes Muslim victims, as well as victims from minoritized groups in the U.S. However, due to space and page constraints it was important to limit our focus to just one type of extremist ideology for this paper.

62 “No Respite,” ISIS, filmed December 17, 2015, video, 04:14, https://nypost.com/2015/12/17/help-im-in-an-isis-propaganda-video/

63 “Christchurch Terrorist Attack,” Unknown, filmed March 17, 2019, video, 01:40, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHR8h_g3Mj4

64 “Al-Shabaab: Exclusive interview with Sheikh Ali Dhere,” Al-Shabaab, filmed December 16, 2013, video, 04:06,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIhHxlm_WZE

65 Allard R. Feddes, Liesbeth Mann, and Bertjan Doosje, “Increasing Self-esteem and Empathy to Prevent Violent Radicalization: A Longitudinal Quantitative Evaluation of a Resilience Training Focused on Adolescents with a Dual Identity,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 45, no. 7 (2015): 400–11; Moran Influs, Maayan Pratt, Shafiq Masalha, Orna Zagoory-Sharon, and Ruth Feldman, “A Social Neuroscience Approach to Conflict Resolution: Dialogue Intervention to Israeli and Palestinian Youth Impacts Oxytocin and Empathy,” Social Neuroscience 14, no. 4 (2019): 378–89; Anyerson S. Gómez-Tabares and Nicolasa M. Durán-Palacio, “The Protective Role of Empathy and Emotional Self-Efficacy in Predicting Moral Disengagement in Adolescents Separated from Illegal Armed Groups,” Anuario de Psicología Jurídica 31, no. 1 (2021): 127–36.

66 There are additional studies which also use the IRI in their research on violent radical political behavior, but the authors do not present their study participant mean scores on the IRI, so we are unable to observe any commonalities between our research and those studies. See Emile G. Bruneau, Mina Cikara and Rebecca Saxe, “Parochial Empathy Predicts Reduced Altruism and the Endorsement of Passive Harm,” Social Psychological and Personality Science 8, no. 8 (2017): 934–42; Cohen, “The Effects of Empathy on Intergroup Conflict and Aggression”; Arlinda Rrustemi, “Measuring the Impact of the Lifestory Approach on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism,” Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (2020), http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep24838 (accessed 15 October 2021); Sara Savage and Patricia Fearon, “Increasing Cognitive Complexity and Meta-Awareness Among At-Risk Youth in Bosnia-Herzegovina in Order to Reduce Risk of Extremism and Interethnic Tension,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 27, no. 2 (2021): 225–39.

67 For general interest studies that do allow for IRI data comparisons, See Davis, “Measuring Individual Differences in Empathy”; Kim De Corte, Ann Buysse, Lesley L. Verhofstadt, Herbert Roeyers, Koen Ponnet, and Mark H. Davis, “Measuring Empathic Tendencies: Reliability and Validity of the Dutch Version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index,” Psychologica Belgica 47, no. 4 (2007): 235–60.