Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, Lecturer in Media Studies, has just been interviewed last week by Grazia about her research on Incel culture.
Grazia is a weekly fashion magazine that also covers other topical issues of interest.
In the piece, entitled ‘Incel Extremism Should Be Treated The Same Way As Religious Extremism‘, Kaitlyn outlines the way in which the Incel ideology has become popularised online, and calls for digital platforms to take responsibility for the way in which online misogyny is spread through the ‘echo chamber’ phenomenon.
Kaitlyn explains that people who feel lonely and isolated often search for support groups and can at times, end up on the darkest corners of the internet where hatred of women is normalised.
Kaitlyn says: ‘The internet functions as an echo chamber. We all curate what we see online, on our Facebook and Twitter feeds, and it means that people who think like us and talk like us and believe in the things we do, for the most part, are echoing back our own perceptions and ideas to us. If your echo chamber happens to be a space that is promoting actual physical violence against women… that is going to normalise those ideas.’
To read the full piece, please see the Grazia page here:
https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/in-the-news/how-to-stop-incel-community/