Radicalization in the Digital Society: A Social Psychological Analysis

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, it has existed for more than two millennia, developing, changing and acquiring new features and peculiarities of a particular historical period. Nevertheless, terrorism has kept one feature unchanged: it still poses a serious threat to humanity. The way a person comes to recognize the legitimacy of terrorist activity describes the process of radicalization. This article is focused on a social psychological analysis of the impact of information strategies on the process of radicalization in modern society. The relevance of addressing this problem is explained by the fact that measures to counter terrorism are necessarily based on knowledge of the psychological patterns by which radicalization occurs. The article consists of two parts: in the first part, the specifics of the problem of terrorism and radicalization within the framework of social psychological knowledge are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the fact that the process of radicalization is a form of collective response to a situation of intergroup conflict (real or imaginary). In addition, in this part of the article, the role of communication in the process of radicalization is indicated. The second part deals with the specifics of communication processes (their content and form) in connection with radicalization in the digital society.