Terrorism, hate speech and 'cumulative extremism' on Facebook: A case study

The growth of online communication over the last two decades represents arguably the biggest shift in human interactions since the introduction of the printing press (Delamothe 1995). The ‘digital revolution’ has created unprecedented opportunities for collaboration, cooperation, and commerce, opening new markets and allowing groups and organisations to flourish in a way that was impossible in the geographically and socially bounded spaces found offline (Wellman et al. 2003). The many and varied pro-social benefits of these changes have been subject to sustained research interest over the last two decades, with a substantial body of scholarship affirming the internet’s role in delivering benefits as varied as increased political participation (Ferdinand 2013) and social activism (Earl and Kimport 2011), expedited international trade (Keeney 1999), and quicker communications (Mann and Stewart 2000).