Authors:
(1) UTKUCAN BALCI, Binghamton University, United States;
(2) MICHAEL SIRIVIANOS, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus;
(3) JEREMY BLACKBURN, Binghamton University, United States.
Table of Links
Abstract and 1 Introduction
2 Background & Related Work
3 Data
3.1 Identifying Tankie Subreddits
3.2 Identifying Ideology Subreddits and 3.3 Post Collection
4 User-Base Analysis and 4.1 Graph Construction & Community Detection
4.2 Community Growth
4.3 User Migrations Over Time
5 Content Analysis and 5.1 What do tankies talk about?
5.2 Who are tankies talking about?
5.3 Misalignment Analysis
5.4 Toxicity Analysis
5.5 Domain Analysis
5.6 Lemmygrad Analysis
6 Discussion & Conclusion and 6.1 Limitations
6.2 Implications & future work, and References
A DATA
B NAMED ENTITIES
C MISALIGNMENT ANALYSIS
D DOMAIN ANALYSIS
The rise of online social media platforms has had a substantial impact on the way individuals consume and produce political content. In particular, the ability for individuals to self-select into ideologically-homogeneous online communities has led to the proliferation of extremist groups on the Internet. While there has been a significant amount of research on right-wing extremist groups on social media, there has been relatively less focus on left-wing extremist groups. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by examining the online behavior of a left-wing extremist community known as “tankies.”
What is a “tankie?” Tankie was originally a pejorative term referring to communists who supported the USSR’s invasion of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 [34, 50, 94, 100, 105, 107]. Over the years, the context of the usage of tankie evolved. For example, it has been used to show derision towards pro-Soviet hardliners [43], to describe communists who support China’s policies [72] (e.g., supporters of China’s actions on Uyghurs [104] and the Hong Kong protests [10]), as well as young, online Stalinists in general [44].
Thus, tankie is now used to describe much more than the set of communists who supported specific events from the Soviet era. The term tankie now covers communists who support “actuallyexisting socialist countries” (AES); especially those with a Stalinist or authoritarian leaning. Although there is not really a concrete definition, recent work by Petterson [94] provides a succinct description of tankies:
“Tankies regard past and current socialist systems as legitimate attempts at creating communism, and thus have not distanced themselves from Stalin, China etc.”
Studies on Extremist Online Communities. Online communities have led to an increased ability for individuals to express their views and connect with others who share similar ideologies. Although the vast majority of these communities are benign, a small subset of them are extremist in nature, espousing views that are well outside the mainstream and often promoting violence [41, 110, 111]. These extremist online communities can exist across the political spectrum, including right-wing and left-wing, as well as religious and other forms of ideologies. Furthermore, it has been observed that there can be similarities and overlap in the user bases of these communities. For example, research by Mame et al. has shown that anti-feminist communities can serve as gateways to the far-right, with significant overlap between the Manosphere and the alt-right observed in their studies on Reddit and Youtube [75]. Moreover, while the psycho-political profiles of left and right-wing extremists display considerable diversity [125], these extremist communities may exhibit similarities in their responses to specific events, e.g., left-wing and right-wing extremists fighting against ISIS in Syria [70].
Studies on Islamist extremism investigated the role of social media in the spread of extremist ideologies. Research has shown that these extremists use social media platforms to disseminate propaganda, recruit new members, coordinate attacks, amplify the voices of extremist leaders, and create a sense of community among like-minded individuals [16, 18, 95]. A comparative study [64] of the use of political violence by left-wing, right-wing, and Islamist extremists found that individuals and attacks associated with left-wing causes are likely to be less violent.
Imbalance in Research on Online Extremism. While research on online extremist communities has been increasing, there has been a particular focus on right-wing extremist communities, e.g., those affiliated with white supremacy or far-right politics [39, 46, 118, 119, 132]. These communities can be found on various social media platforms, including forums, blogs, and social networking sites. Social media platforms like Reddit, 4chan, Gab, Parler, and others have been found to harbor far-right communities, providing a gathering place for like minded individuals, recruit and further radicalize others, and even organize violent, real world activity [8, 47, 52, 131, 133]. Previous studies have demonstrated that domestic extremist groups in the United States, particularly those on the right-wing, tend to form networked clusters of websites that share similar ideologies. These clusters often contain prominent websites that connect different clusters, providing access and control to resources for members, sympathizers, and interested organizations [101, 135]. Another study that analyzes the posting behaviors in one of these websites find that the messages are assertive in tone and contain a variety of emotionally charged language, including words such as “bomb,” “kill,” “evil,” and “threat,” that are directed towards specific adversary groups, and often advocate for violence against Jews [109].
In contrast, research about online extremist left communities is relatively limited [32]. Studies have found that far-left extremist offenses share commonalities with common criminal acts like vandalism, theft, and arson [116], and a negative correlation between the timings of their cyberattacks and physical violence [55]. While there have been studies that analyze online far-left communities, they generally involve non-extremist far-left communities (e.g., supporters of European socialist parties), and are often limited to a specific country. E.g., a study of Greek far-left and far-right tweets did not find significant differences in network structure and sentiment during three different politically intense time periods [6]. Another study found that both online Australian far-right and
far-left communities become more active in response to major global events [30]. Additionally, a prior study reported that East Germany consistently ranked slightly higher than the West in terms of various extreme left-wing attitudes over time, despite the fact that absolute numbers have recently declined [67]. Regardless, to the best of our knowledge, no large-scale data-driven studies have been conducted to understand left-wing extremists on social media. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct a comprehensive study focusing to understand left-wing extremism on social media to fill this gap in knowledge and gain a better understanding of all forms of extremism in order to inform effective countermeasures.
