Social Media Radicalization ICA Preconference Submission Deadline Extended to February 7
Title: "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)
Submissions: Extended abstracts (1000-word max) or full papers (8000-word max) sent via email to cp3-info@uiowa.edu by 11:59pm on February 7
Organizers: Center for Publics, Platforms & Personalization (CP3)
Keynote Speaker: Samuel Wooley (Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh)
Featured Panelists: Kurt Braddock (Assistant Professor, American University), Kiran Garimella (Assistant Professor, Rutgers University), Becca Lewis (Graduate Fellow, Stanford University), and Meredith Pruden (Assistant Professor, Kennesaw State University)
Description: 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 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
For more information, visit: https://cp3.org.uiowa.edu/ica-2025-preconference