Enter At Your Own Risk: The Impacts of Joining a Hateful Subreddit

The Internet has become one of the extreme right’s most valuable assets in disseminating information to a broader audience. We are interested in whether hateful alt-right online communities are simply rendezvous of individuals who already subscribe to hateful ideology, or if the existence of these online communities has the capacity to radicalize previously neutral individuals. Our preliminary findings show that joining a hateful subreddit does show evidence of increased hate word usage. These findings have broad implications on the role of the Internet in not only supporting, but growing the alt-right movement.