What is the relationship between algorithmic personalization and online radicalization?

Social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok use personalization algorithms to customize users’ experiences based on what users view, like, share, and comment on. This process can result in a negative feedback loop in which users are largely exposed to political content that reinforces their pre-existing views or, even worse, content that is more and more extreme. Studying the interaction between platform algorithms and social media users will help us understand whether and how individuals become radicalized online. This project aims to uncover the technological, psychological, and cultural factors that contribute to the radicalization of vulnerable groups on social media due to algorithmic personalization.

This research is funded by a 3-year grant from the Minerva Research Initiative. 

Select Publications

Chandio, S., & Nithyanand, R. (2026). Examining the role of YouTube production and consumption dynamics on the formation of extreme ideologies. In Proceedings of of the Twentieth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2026).

Keim, M., Chandio, S., Khalid, O., & Nithyanand, R. (2026). Measuring the semantic structure and evolution of conspiracy theories. In Proceedings of of the Twentieth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2026).

Maragh-Lloyd, R., Stoldt, R., Ssozi, J., Biddle, K., Ekdale, B., & Havens, T. (2025). “They’re trying to influence me to gain the more acceptable viewpoint:” The algorithmic imaginaries of politically activated social media users. New Media & Society.

Biddle, K., Ekdale, B., High, A., Stoldt, R., & Maragh-Lloyd, R. (2024). Beyond ‘Lulz’ and ‘Keyboard warriors’: Exploring the relationship between trolling and radicalization. Information, Communication & Society, 27(16),  2817-2833.

Habib, H., Srinivasan, P., and Nithyanand, R. (2022) How participation, interaction, and perception in online communities increase radical behavior. Proceedings of 2022 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2022).