Linguistic Markers of a Radicalized Mind-set Among Extreme Adopters

Linguistic Markers of a Radicalized Mind-setAmong Extreme Adopters

1Amendra Shrestha

1,2 Lisa Kaati 2 Katie Cohen 2 Tim Isbister

1Uppsala University

2Swedish Defence Research Agency

February 10, 2017

Outline Introduction Linguistic markers Data Method Results Conclusion

1 IntroductionRadicalized mind-set & Extreme adopters

2 Linguistic markersLIWC

3 Data

4 Method

5 Results

6 Conclusion

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- 2 -

https://www.migrationsverket.se


- 3 -


- 4 -

http://www.thelocal.se/20170208/new-stats-on-asylum-homes-torched-in-sweden-in-2016


- 5 -


Background

• Internet and anonymity

• Internet has played a prominent role in terrorist attacks

• monitoring of Internet

• European Union Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU)

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- 7 -


- 8 -

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/18/hate-crime-murders-website-stormfront-report


Radicalized mind-set & Extreme adopters

Extreme adopters

• uses substantially more jargon-words or expressions

• types:• high status members - active and create jargon• peripheral members - extensive use of jargon

• high degree of identification with community

- 9 -

Normal Users Extreme Adopters



Radicalized mind-set

• style of understanding that has often observed among violentextremists

• conspiracism, rigid binary thinking

• strong differentiation between groups

• sense of unfair treatment and injustice

• seen as a necessary but not sufficient precursor of violence

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- 11 -

Investigate whether extreme adopters are moreprone than others to use linguistic marker of aradicalized mind-set


LIWC

LIWC

- 12 -

• Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count

• a computerized word counting tool

• counts words in psychologically meaningful categories


LIWC

- 13 -

Psychologist User


LIWC

- 14 -


LIWC

- 15 -


LIWC

- 16 -


LIWC

LIWC Dimensions

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In our case

• detect indicator of leakage - a behaviour that has beensuggested to proceed an act of target violence

• swedish translation of LIWC dictionaries

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LIWC Categories

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Emotionality

• natural conversation contains almost twice as many positivethan negative emotion words

• previous work on al-Qaida texts showed a higher relativedegree of negative emotion words, mostly anger

• high level of emotion words correlate with high degree ofimmersion

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Third person plural

• frequent use in a group suggests that the group is definingitself to a large degree by the existence of an oppositionalgroup

• predictor of extremism

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Cognitive style

• exclusion words• reflect the depth and complexity of one’s thinking• used to categorize and make distinctions• less use by radicalized people

• inclusion words• used to connect and integrate parts of knowledge• high use by radicalized people

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Power

• power oriented people are concerned with questions of statusand who is in control and who is not

• violent group express more power motives than others

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Data

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• Swedish web forum

• integration and immigration

• discussants are negative towards integration

• 49585 members in sub-forum

• around 0.5 million posts between 2007-01-01 to 2015-04-27


Forum specific jargon

• way to express one’s sense of belonging to the group

• creation of forum jargon• 14 posts with more than 50 words from 7 different users were

chosen• user should be registered for at least 1 year and have more

than 500 posts• well understood by other forum users• not usually found in common discourse• used with different perspective than common discourse

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Forum specific jargon

• critical words referring to ethnic minorities or immigrantfriendly politics and media

• ranges from very crude and insulting to ironical words. eg:cultural enrichment

• neologism. eg: race-mixers

• regular words used metaphorically. eg: locusts

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Forum extreme adopters

• 583 users

• term frequency <0.005 and specific jargon frequency >30

• extreme adopters : 179 jargon words in average

• normal users : 3 jargon words in average

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Research Hypothesis

• H1 : extreme adopters (EA) differ from normal group (NG)with respect to identity

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• H2 : extreme adopters (EA) differ from normal group (NG)with respect to radical mind-set


Result : H1

Table: Results for testing H1.

Category µEA 6= µNG µEA > µNG µEA < µNG1st person sing ******* - *******

1st person plural ******* ******* -

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* when p <0.05- when p >0.05


Result : H2

Table: Results for testing H2.

Category µEA 6= µNG µEA > µNG µEA < µNG3rd person plural ******* ******* -

Power ******* ******* -

Exclusive ******* - *******

Inclusive ******* ******* -

Pos. emotion ******* - *******

Neg. emotion - - -

Anger *** *** -

- 30 -


1st

per.sing

1st

per.plural

3rd

per.plural

Pow

er

Exclusive

Inclusive

Pos.

emotion

Neg

.em

otion

Anger

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

Val

ue

Normal Group Extreme Adopters

Figure: Comparison of mean between the extreme adopters and thenormal group.

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Conclusion & Future Work

• extreme adopters seem to differs from normal users

• threshold for extreme adopters

• temporal relationship between changes in categories

• capturing the context of language

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Thank You

Data & Analytics

Linguistic Markers of a Radicalized Mind-set Among Extreme Adopters