Researchers who closely follow homegrown extremism are increasingly painting an alarming picture and pointing out that many recent acts of violence are no surprise: The warning signs and threats are hidden in plain sight on the internet. Those red flags led Joel Finkelstein to change his path in 2016, abandoning his pursuit of a career in neuroscience psychology to put together a team that would track hate groups on the internet.
Finkelstein went on to co-found the Network Contagion Research Institute, which already has done groundbreaking work identifying viral outbreaks of online extremism and is also focusing on social media giants like Facebook and Google whose algorithms track people’s movements. We asked Finkelstein about his work as part of Exploring Hate, our ongoing series on antisemitism, racism, and extremism.
Major funding for Exploring Hate has been provided by the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism, The Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund and Patti Askwith Kenner.
