Examining the influence of violent extremist group membership on online behavior among violent and non-violent right-wing extremists

Identifying violent extremists online before their engagement in physical violence is an ongoing need for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers around the world. Yet the evidence base about their posting footprints or differences in their online behaviors compared to their non-violent counterparts is noticeably scarce. Even less is empirically known about the relationship between their posting behaviors, membership in a violent extremist group, and risk for categorization as violent. This study drew from a unique sample of violent and non-violent right-wing extremists to examine the effect of violent extremist group membership on posting behaviors and risk for violence categorization within a sub-forum of the largest white supremacy web-forum. This study also examined how violence status and violent extremist group membership predicts time to going dormant in the online space. Firth logistic regression modeling was used to examine whether group membership predicted risk for violence categorization. Hazard modeling and survival analysis were then used to examine extremist group membership and violence status as predictors of time to dormancy. Several noteworthy posting patterns were identified in the data that may assist law enforcement and intelligence agencies in identifying credible threats online.