Nothing in Common? Identity Formation in Far Right & Jihadi Extremist Rhetoric

• In Event: Reputation, Representation and Rhetoric of Violent Non-state Actors

Abstract

Promoting political action, forging affiliations, and propagating hatred and misinformation online is rather a common phenomenon amongst far right and jihadi extremists. While there is an extensive body of literature on the online rhetoric campaigns of jihadi extremist groups and the online ecosystem of the far-right, less is known about what sets the discourse of these extremist groups apart. How do emotional, cognitive, psychological and social dimensions of the textual discourse in the online ecosystem of far right and jihadi extremists compare with each other? What function do these dimensions play in the construction of group identity? In this paper, we conduct a semiotic comparative analysis of online text material by eight selected far-right groups (American Renaissance, Britain First, Daily Stormer, Front Page Magazine, Heritage and Destiny, Knights Templar International, Rebel Media) and jihadi extremists such as ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Tahrik-e Taliban Pakistan. Our data corpus consists of more than 3,000,000 words. We adopt a mixed method approach of qualitative and quantitative analysis (Natural Language Processing) in analysing the data. This paper highlights similarities and differences between the far right and jihadi extremist narratives particularly in association with construction of us versus them while also focusing on the construction of identity through an active engagement with the reader, i.e. “you”.

Authors

• Weeda Mehran, University of Exeter

• Stephen William Herron, Queen’s University Belfast

• Ben Miller, Emory University