Contemporary Radicalism Between Offline and Online Mobilization

Abstract

The Internet allows for new forms of political participation (Laer and Aelst 2010) as well as provide the opportunity to organize collective actions more easily (Dolata and Schrape 2015). This is even truer for radical actors, which often work between legality and illegality and can find on the web and social media an arena where make their views heard. Online platforms help, among others, disseminating messages, organizing and mobilizing for protests and symbolic actions or "provide an opportunity to express oneself in ‘online communities’" (Krämer 2017:12). Studies show that the Internet reduce cost of extreme right mobilizations, (Enikolopov, Makarin and Petrova 2016, Berntzen and Weisskircher 2016) moreover actors are able to build an active and potent self image with little efforts (Arzheimer 2015, Berntzen and Weisskircher 2016), propagate their ideologies and creating 'cyber communities' (Caiani and Kröll 2015). Research on social movements argues that the Internet can help in generating collective identities by facilitating the exchange of resources and information, creating solidarity and shared objectives (della Porta and Mosca 2006: 538, in a similar vein see Mercea 2016). This panel will explore these issues concerning radical mobilization either off line and online.