Online Harmful Content: A Study on Violent Fan Communities on Social Media

People use social media globally. Currently, social media has become increasingly responsible for growing rates of deviant behavior, violence, and hatred. The authors analyze online social network communities of individuals who admire and glorify aggression, violence, and school shootings. The mentioned fan communities employ a wide range of strategies to survive, including creating “mirror communities” on social networks. Therefore, machine search methods based on linguistic markers aimed to identify communities containing harmful content do not always work. The paper aims to present an alternative methodology for identifying violent fan communities on social media.