Beware the sting in the tail. Explaining political violence: the role of new social media

The present study applies social learning to the explanation of political violence, focusing on exposure to extremist content through NSM (ENSM) and controlling for key variables derived from rival theories. Data are gathered using 1) a paper and pencil study among high school students and 2) a web survey targeting youths between 16 and 24 years old. A total of 6020 respondents make up the dataset. Binary logistic regression is used to analyze the data. Results show that even when controlling for background variables, strain variables, personality characteristics, moral values and peer influences the statistical association between measures of ENSM and self-reported political violence remains significant and fairly constant. The most persistent effects are found for those measures where individuals actively seek out extremist content on the internet as opposed to passive and accidental encounters using NSM. Furthermore, offline differential associations with racist and delinquent peers are also strongly directly related to self-reported political violence. However, the effect of NSM is mediated by real-world associations. Also some direct effects from other (offline) mechanisms from rival perspectives can be noted. First this indicates that political violence can only partially be explained by social learning and second this suggests that the impact of NSM is mediated by real-world associations and that the offline world has to be taken into account when explaining political violence.The present study applies social learning to the explanation of political violence, focusing on exposure to extremist content through NSM (ENSM) and controlling for key variables derived from rival theories. Data are gathered using 1) a paper and pencil study among high school students and 2) a web survey targeting youths between 16 and 24 years old. A total of 6020 respondents make up the dataset. Binary logistic regression is used to analyze the data. Results show that even when controlling for background variables, strain variables, personality characteristics, moral values and peer influences the statistical association between measures of ENSM and self-reported political violence remains significant and fairly constant. The most persistent effects are found for those measures where individuals actively seek out extremist content on the internet as opposed to passive and accidental encounters using NSM. Furthermore, offline differential associations with racist and delinquent peers are also strongly directly related to self-reported political violence. However, the effect of NSM is mediated by real-world associations. Also some direct effects from other (offline) mechanisms from rival perspectives can be noted. First this indicates that political violence can only partially be explained by social learning and second this suggests that the impact of NSM is mediated by real-world associations and that the offline world has to be taken into account when explaining political violence.C