The Long Tail of Online Religious Extremism

Athens.
The next speaker at WebSci '09 is Kieran O'Hara, who begins by noting the perception of an increase in the activity of extremist groups on the Web, but with very little clear actual evidence supporting that perception. (Extremism is defined here as living in great tension within an embedding society.) How do extreme ideas - for example of a religious kind - spread on the Web?

One approach to this is to view this - with David Hume - as a marketplace of religious ideas, in which the most extreme are the most visible. But against this, Adam Smith suggests that there is also a drive to the centre in the contest of religious ideas, with the aim to attract a larger number of followers. There may be, in fact, a church/sect cycle, and Kieran points to the Mormons as a former sect which has become an established church, while new more extreme splinter groups have also hived off from this church in recent time. Religious moderation means a lower cost of participation for church members, while extremism means higher costs, but also greater cohesion and contribution from the smaller number of committed supporters.

This is a new type of online religious 'market' which it appears can be described with reference to Chris Anderson's long tail model - there are far more niche goods than 'hits' (major churches), there is a lower cost of reaching niches; filters drive demand down the long tail; exploitation of the long tail flattens the demand for hits; niches add up; and the long tail reveals the true nature of demand.

But long tail theory appears not necessarily to be supported by evidence - online markets are not as long-tailed as originally thought, and recommendation systems appear to lead to a shortening of the long tail (as recommendation shift attention back towards the blockbusters). Intra-market communication appears to be important, therefore, and this may apply to extremism as well: in order to make the religious market shorter-tailed, there would be a need for the religious analogy of recommendation systems. (However, it should also be noted that the empirical critique of the commercial long tail does not disconfirm the hypothesis of the long-tailed religious marketplace.)

Extremism cannot be eliminated, of course; the Web neither caused extremism nor can eliminate it. Its ability to cater to niche tastes is useful for religious extremists, of course, and it may have changd the terms of the religious 'trade'. The long tail theory is explanatory in this space, and may lead to new policy suggestions; the development of filtering systems and other creative systems for encouraging religious opinions to be evaluated against one another may be beneficial, but more empirical work is clearly required.

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