Persuasive Storytelling by Hate Groups Online

Abstract

Increasingly, hate groups have used the Internet to express their viewpoints, sell their paraphernalia, and recruit new members. This study explored the effectiveness of persuasive storytelling found on White supremacist Web pages. One hundred eight adolescents participated in a longitudinal study (pretest, Time 1, Time 2) conducted online. A 3 (receptivity: negatively inclined, neutral, predisposed) × 2 (narrative: high vs. low perceived) × 2 (message explicitness: implicit vs. explicit) factorial design found that immediately following exposure, high-narrative and implicit messages were more persuasive than low-narrative and explicit messages. Interestingly, high-narrative and implicit effects decayed, whereas low-narrative and explicit message effects endured or increased slightly over time. In addition, people's receptivity interacted with the message factors to further mediate persuasion. For example, disagreeing individuals resisted low-narrative, explicit messages significantly more than any other condition. The article concludes with a discussion of the social implications of these findings.