Unsorted Significance: Examining Potential Pathways to Extreme Political Beliefs and Communities on Reddit

Violent political extremists often point to online communities as motivating their behavior. However, researchers studying exposure extremism through structural mechanisms such algorithms have not found strong evidence of influence. At the same time, models offline radicalization processes emphasize importance personal motivations, desire for significance and community, but do fully account contexts. The authors integrate these approaches, which are both interested in worsening extremism, asking, (1) What pathways extreme content online? (2) perceptions communities? Through interviews with politically active Redditors, identify three motivations initial engagement fringe communities: unsorting self, exceptionalism, virtuous participation. argue potentially important seeds discuss implications supporting healthy discourse online.