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Tracking Extremism Online

Last Saturday, a gunman carried out a racist attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people and injuring three others. Almost all of the victims were Black.

The shooting has again reignited the debate about gun policy in America. And because the suspect appears to have been radicalized online, the attack has also sparked discussion about the internet's role in stoking extremism and hate.

RAND researchers have been studying this problem. They recently developed a scorecard that rates websites and social media platforms based on how receptive they are to extremist content.

“There's this idea that there's a dark part of the internet, and if you just stay away from websites with a Nazi flag at the top, you can avoid this material,” said RAND's Alexandra Evans. “What we found is that this dark internet, this racist internet, doesn't exist.”

In other words, although sites vary in how much hateful and violent content they host, extremist content can be found just about anywhere online.

“Most of those who ascribe to these types of violent extremism do not clearly associate themselves with an organized group,” RAND's Heather Williams told NPR this week. “This, combined with the fact they can self-radicalize from the internet, complicates prevention.”

RAND's extremist-content scorecard may help. Individuals can reference it to better understand how to avoid extremist content online. Social media companies could also use the scorecard as a checklist to help strengthen their defenses against extremist content. And advertisers could use it to decide which sites they may or may not want to do business with.