Weaponized Conspiracies: Mapping the Social Ecology of Misinformation, Radicalization and Violence
Abstract
The spread of conspiracy theories has reached critical proportions in the United States and globally as individuals who become radicalized by false beliefs seek to engage in violent acts of terrorism. Since conspiracies across the political spectrum employ the Internet to disseminate their views, this basic research project proposes to scrape, analyze, and assess open source materials from the surface net, semi encrypted platforms, and the dark web, in order to build a model of conspiracy radicalization, recruitment, and operational planning and understand the social ecology of misinformation. There will be a particular focus on how conspiracy theories become weaponized. The project will generate behavioral models of conspiracy virality; how conspiracies spread -- mapping and tracing their movement across the social ecology of the Internet, from the surface web -- where radicalization tends to occur, to theencrypted platforms (e.g. Telegram, Gab, Parler, Hoop, 8Kun, or 4Chan) -- where targeted recruitment occurs, to the Darknet -- where the acquisition of supplies (e.g., weapons, explosives) to carry out attacks occur.Approved for Public Release
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 05, 2021
- Source ID
- N000142112339
Entities
People
- Mia Bloom
Organizations
- Georgia State University
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy