The contentious knowledge production on online extremism and its prevention

Online extremism has become a relevant subfield in the study of extremism. As several new extremist phenomena are difficult to understand without examining the digital cultures from which they emerge, there is a growing market of actors producing knowledge and disseminating analysis. With limited access to data and strict ethical considerations, academic knowledge often struggles to keep up with current trends in the field, while security agencies, platforms and practitioners generate insights into online extremism and ways to counter it. Each of these sectors has different logics and ambitions, while different interests and policy implementations are at play. This paper aims to unravel the competing knowledge regimes from a sociology of knowledge perspective. Using the gaming-extremism nexus as a case study, it presents initial findings from focus group interviews and cross-sector workshops conducted with German actors from civil society, security agencies and the games industry who are producing knowledge about right-wing extremist radicalization on gaming platforms.