ICA 2025 Preconference: "Social Media Radicalization: Definitions, Theories, Methods"
Date: Wednesday 11 June 2025, 9am–5pm.
Location: Metropolitan State University of Denver (1 mile from the ICA conference hotel)
The ways we talk about "radicalization" have changed significantly in recent years. Much of the foundational literature on radicalization equates it with violent terrorism (Borum, 2012; Kundnani, 2012; Marwick, Clancy, & Furl, 2022; Meleagrou-Hitchens & Kaderbhai, 2016); yet recent research and popular discourse is more closely related to theories about partisanship, polarization, and extremist beliefs (Almagro, 2023; Biddle et al., 2024; Dalgaard-Nielsen, 2012; Roose, 2019; Tufekci, 2018). This pre-conference aims to bring together scholars of radicalization and social media to 1) interrogate conceptualizations of radicalization on social media, 2) diversify perspectives of radicalization online, 3) highlight work that focuses on more "mundane" and "everyday" forms of radicalization online, and 4) consider radicalization as an attitudinal or perceptual variable rather than solely an outcome.
The preconference is open to both conceptual and empirical submissions. Topics may include:
- How to define and operationalize radicalization online
- Hyper-partisanship and polarization as forms of radicalization online
- Misinformation and disinformation and radicalization
- Methodologies for studying radicalization online and overcoming difficulties in sampling from "radical" populations
- Intersectionality, social media, and radicalization
- Perspectives on radicalization and social media from the Global South
- Political economy of social media and radicalization
- Critical perspectives on the concept of radicalization
- Deradicalization efforts on and by social media platforms
- Computational approaches to studying radicalization
- The communication context and the effects of radicalization on social media
- The interplay between mass media and radicalization on social media
Extended abstracts (1000-word max) or full paper submissions (8000-word max) are due February 1, 2025 at 11:59pm. Questions and submissions should be sent to cp3-info@uiowa.edu.
For more information, visit: https://cp3.org.uiowa.edu/ica-2025-preconference