Editor’s Note: Recalibrating Your Resilience

In 2021, I wrote an article about how meme culture and online communities are hijacked and manipulated to spread extremist viewpoints. It works like a contagion, poisoning individuals’ perspectives (and social media feeds) as they follow a breadcrumb trail of conspiracy theories and radical viewpoints masked by humor. Before taking on the article, I knew that there were dark and dangerous corners of the Internet, but I didn’t think about them too deeply. After filing the piece, I had extremely mixed feelings about the nature of online communities and my fellow human beings.

That was just one article—maybe 15 to 20 hours of my time. I find it hard to imagine how content moderators, extremism researchers, and security analysts cope with the ongoing and repeated stress and emotional strain of viewing this content day in and day out. It is unsurprising that researchers and analysts face high levels of psychological and emotional harm.

For a 2023 report from VOX-Pol, Online Extremism and Terrorism Researchers’ Security, Safety, and Resilience: Findings from the Field, researchers interviewed individuals who study online extremism and terrorism—especially far-right and violent jihadist online activity. The report found that the researchers experienced a range of harms, including online harassment, threats to their personal safety (nine interviewees reported death threats), psychological turmoil, and professional repercussions because of these stressors.

The researchers interviewed were largely from academic institutions, but the harms experienced cross sectors. A quarter of the interviewees said the nature of their work resulted in a loss of work-life boundaries, feeling unable to switch off from thinking about extremism and their research.

When researchers studied online extremist or terrorist content for intense short periods without breaks, they noted immediate harms. When studying online materials for years, cumulative harms build up. In the most severe cases of psychological harm reported by the interviewees, they noted intrusive thoughts about conflict scenarios, being hyper-vigilant about the possibility of attack, hearing voices that were not there, loss of trust, and paranoia. 

One interviewee told the VOX-Pol researchers, “I’ve seen a number of [jihadist] execution videos and stuff, but you can, kind of, mentally prepare yourself for that. You know something incredibly gruesome is going to come. Whereas just watching hours and hours of far-right videos, just does, kind of, wear you down… By the end… [I]… just felt, kind of, very apathetic about life and just didn’t really want to engage for a while afterwards.”

Few institutions provided adequate formalized training, care, or support for extremism researchers, who were often left to develop their own coping mechanisms for vicarious trauma.

Researchers had to take steps to ensure their own privacy and safety, including deactivating social media, avoiding online controversy, or using burner phones. To maintain mental wellbeing, they tried to set official work hours, reduced volume or screen brightness when viewing extremism content, reached out to others in the same field to discuss the impact of their work, or got professional help.

Although most wanted to see more support from their institutions, the researchers pointed out how deeply important they considered their work—that without it, contemporary extremism would not be adequately understood. They almost uniformly said that the overall benefits of the research outweighed any personal costs.

So, how are you supporting your analysts, intelligence professionals, and researchers? In her article on how viewing footage of violent events affects the brain, Diana Concannon, PCI, outlines some of the key effects and solutions to these challenges, including the value of time away.

“Ignoring our affective response also places us at risk for experiencing burnout, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and depression and suicidality,” she writes. “Affective responses to traumatic material are normal warnings that we are bearing witness to something dangerous. They also provide a barometer for when we need to take a break.”

So, are you providing adequate breaks, mental health support, and space to regain perspective? At the same time, how are you supporting your own balance? Share your tips online via LinkedIn—I’d love to hear them and use them the next time I’m digging into research about misused memes.

Claire Meyer is editor-in-chief of Security Management. Connect with her on LinkedIn or email her directly at [email protected].