On the Tightrope: Multivocality Use by Extremist Ideological Groups on Digital Platforms

Abstract

Extremist ideological groups strategically communicate across platforms and face the decision of whether to diversify their focus to appeal to a broader audience or narrow it down to achieve specific objectives. One approach involves adopting multivocality: communicating about diverse issues but emphasizing a limited set of issues on each platform. Using qualitative and computational analyses of social media communications (203,730 tweets) of extremist ideological groups (N = 44), Study 1 found that most extremist ideological groups engage in multivocality by emphasizing different issues on their X feed compared to their website. Study 2, a controlled, randomized laboratory experiment of individual reactions to a simulated ideological group's online messaging (N = 196) indicated that when these groups adopt a multivocal strategy, viewers perceived the messages and the group as less credible but recalled and disseminated the messages more.