HYPE Spaces: How Social Media Can Enable Hybridised Prefatory Extremism

The final speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Mikkel Bækby Johansen, whose interest is in hybridisation of extremism on social media. Hybridisation is a term which has emerged from terrorism studies, pointing to the increasingly complex nature of terrorist threats; however, the role of social media in such hybridisation remains poorly understood. Hybridisation connects ideological and religious views with conspiracist beliefs and concepts of who the enemy is; QAnon is a useful example of this more complex and potentially contradictory form of extremism.

Extremism is now especially closely linked to conspiracy theories, and conspiracy beliefs often end up being seen by extremists as a legitimisation for political violence. Online environments then provide a space for what Mikkel calls prefatory extremism: exploratory, experimental, and sceptical perspectives which are not necessarily extremist or violent yet – they may develop into violent extremism, but there is no automatism for their doing so.

There are multiple aspects to hybridity, then: content, technological, aesthetic, and digital practice hybridity; spaces for hybridised prefatory extremism (HYPE) enable counterpublics, are platform-dependent, have participatory features, and support multimodal and adaptable affordances. HYPE spaces are in the mainstream, and may be encountered through influencers, communities, and memetic content; they can serve as an entry point to the extremist rabbit hole of alternative media, the dark Web, and finally even hostile and violent action.