News
Researching the Radical Right online: Stormfront and the Women's Forum
Department of Sociology & Criminology
Researching the Radical Right online: Stormfront and the Women's Forum
Lorraine Bowman Grieve (Waterford Institute of Technology)
28 February 2022: Askive 01.
This seminar presents an overview of two research projects undertaken to gain a greater understanding of the Radical Right online, with a specific focus, in both projects, on the discourses created and constructed within the virtual community of Stormfront.
Right wing extremists have been using the internet to communicate both with each other and with audiences more broadly since the technology became mainstream and widely accessible. The number of websites, forums and virtual communities in support of some form of the ‘Radical Right’ are arguably too many to number. This seminar provides a snapshot of two pieces of research from one of these communities. Stormfront was established in 1996 and despite the proliferation and use of other communication platforms by the ‘Radical Right’ Stormfront remains a popular space. This seminar will outline early research undertaken by the speaker within the Stormfront community, outlining ethics, methodology and findings. Additionally, women in terrorism and specifically in the Radical Right will be discussed. Drawing on research findings from a study of the Stormfront sub forum “Women Only”, women’s conceptualisations of their identities within this space will be discussed.
Bio: Dr Lorraine Bowman Grieve, PhD, CPsychol, FHEA
Dr Lorraine Bowman Grieve is a lecturer in Psychology at Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland. With a background in applied, social and forensic psychology, Lorraine has previously worked at University College Cork (Ire), Leeds Trinity University College (UK), and University of Lincoln (UK). Lorraine has been involved in terrorism studies and online extremism research throughout her career and has published research on the concept of cyberterrorism, anti-abortion extremism, Irish Republicanism online, and, Right Wing Extremism. Lorraine maintains a particular interest in understanding the nature, content and function of extremist discourses online, and is primarily interested in the application of social psychology to understanding behaviour and phenomena related to terrorism, counter-terrorism and the range of ethical issues related to such research.