Peer-Reviewed Study

In(cel)doctrination: How Technologically Facilitated Misogyny Moves Violence Off Screens and on to Streets

Oct 2020 🌐 New Media & Society (SAGE) PEER-REVIEWED PAYWALLED — LINKED, NOT HOSTED

In this 2020 peer-reviewed study in New Media & Society, UCL researcher Kaitlyn Regehr draws on video ethnography and long-form interviews from a year-long documentary project to trace how online Incel ('involuntarily celibate') communities are associated with a pattern she describes as radicalization: young men experiencing loneliness are drawn into forums that Regehr's analysis links to escalating anger and, in a minority of cases, real-world violence. The paper proposes a five-step behavioral pattern by which she argues internet echo-chambers and the online celebration of past attackers reinforce this progression, and argues these patterns are identifiable and interceptable before they turn violent. TechKids Foundation includes this study as an early, peer-reviewed account of the association between online community dynamics and offline harm that later informed Regehr's TikTok algorithm research, not as proof that any single online community causes violence.

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CITATION

Regehr, Kaitlyn. "In(cel)doctrination: How Technologically Facilitated Misogyny Moves Violence Off Screens and on to Streets." New Media & Society, October 1, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820959019

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