Group Processes Underlying Deviance in Online Public Spaces

This project examines social processes underlying deviance on digital platforms. New forms of digital communication have fundamentally shifted the arenas and mechanics of public conversations. Widespread adoption of voting systems and user-managed communities on social media can create group processes that normalize and protect societally unacceptable ideas and behaviors.

This grand shift begs for a research agenda on deviance with a new theoretical scope and empirical relevance. Drawing on linguistic and sociological theory and computational methods, the project will enhance our knowledge of the mechanisms and determinants of online deviant behavior and extremism. Findings will serve the public interest by shedding light on governance decisions that affect behavior in online public spaces.

A complete conversation database of posts and comments from a large online information-sharing and discussion website will be used to investigate the empirical puzzle of divergence and polarization on digital platforms. The main theoretical aim is to understand a transition to deviant ideologies or behaviors within communities in which non-deviance is the norm and actively enforced by members.

The central hypothesis is that deviant communities create localized conversations and incentive structures in which cultural meanings of deviant linguistic codes and extremist behaviors can be formed, shared, and enforced. The project will explore the conditions and processes of the transition by connecting micro-level conversation dynamics with macro-level ecological competition.

Two specific questions will be addressed: 1) What conversational dynamics underlie the shifts in linguistic conventions, normative standards, and cultural interpretations of deviance? 2) How do inter-community interaction and exclusion contribute to group deviation and polarization? By simultaneously adjusting the lens at the conversational level and ecological level, the project aims to offer a set of middle-range theories explaining the emergence and solidification of deviant, and in certain cases extremist, behavior in online public spaces.

This award is supported by the Sociology, Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, and Human Networks and Data Science – Research Programs.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.