Social Media on Violent Ideological Group Websites

Recent research has shown dramatic benefits to incorporating social media in public facing websites. Using a perspective based on the duality of goals, we argue that social media, with emphasis on facilitating visitors’ unconstrained exchanges, may undermine the communicative purpose of an organization’s website and may not be desirable in some cases. We tested these ideas by examining the social media features on 105 websites that are supported by nationwide or international groups. Some of the websites are supported by ideological groups that have a strong interest in controlling their messages and clearly articulating their ideology to the public. A subset of the ideological groups also promoted or were affiliated with acts of violence in support of their ideology. As we predicted, we found that desire for control outweighed the benefits of social media, but only for the violent ideological groups. Nonviolent ideological groups and non-ideological groups were nearly identical.