Intimate Communities of Hate: Why Social Media Fuels Far-Right Extremism. By Anton Törnberg and Petter Törnberg

In the early stages of the Internet and social media, many saw an opportunity in them for social dialogue and a potential revival of the Habermasian public sphere: people would deliberate in ‘digital coffeeshops’, and anyone would be allowed in democratic debates without intermediaries. It did not take long, however, for phenomena such as misinformation, increasing polarization and the rise of extremist groups capitalizing on new technologies to cast doubt on this. The diagnosis, however, still lay within the same framework of rational debate and shaped the dominant explanation for these unexpected outcomes: intensive like-minded interaction and homogeneous flow of ideas can lead people to echo chambers, missing out on other views and becoming more set in their beliefs. It would be, therefore, a process of isolation from dissent.