Everyday Extremism Scale

This repository contains supplementary files for the documentation regarding the Everyday Extremism Scale in WP6 of the OppAttune project. OppAttune is a Horizon-Europe funded project involving 17 partners across Europe and beyond which aims to develop an innovative Attunement Model which will track, attune, and limit the spread of extreme political narratives.The focus of the project is not on discourse which incites violence or engages in hate speech. Rather, on the spread of extreme narratives through seemingly ‘common sense’ discussions about polarising issues which create an ‘everyday extremism’. Everyday extremism is the gradual inclusion of extreme narratives, sentiments, and attitudes into the conversations of political actors and the general public, which then become normalised and acceptable.

The files contained in this repository are organised as follows:

Data Files

Reddit_data.xlsx - This file contains the data extracted from Reddit and the thematic analysis relating to it.

News_data.xlsx - This file contains the data extracted from online news sources and the thematic analysis relating to it.

Data_1stround.xlsx - The file contains the data collected from the first round of expert ranking. It also contains the descriptive statistics relating to this data.

Data_2ndround.xlsx - The file contains the data collected from the second round of expert ranking. It also contains the descriptive statistics relating to this data.

Analysis Files

MeansSignificanceTesting_1stround.spv - This file contains the SPSS output for the analyses carried out after the first expert ranking exercise. The statistics tests pertaining to this output are primarily multiple pairwise comparisons.

FactorAnalysis_2ndround.spv - This file contains the SPSS output for the analyses carried out after the second expert ranking exercise. It contains the output relating to the factor analysis which was conducted to identify the actions that are most strongly associated the underlying latent variable, Everyday Extremism.

WilcoxonSignedRankTest_2ndround.spv - This file contains the SPSS output for the analyses carried out after the second expert ranking exercise. It contains the output relating to the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test which was carried out to determine whether the observed median was significantly different than the hypothetical median.

Cronbach_Output.spv - This file contains the SPSS output for the reliability test carried out on the final list of 12 actions that comprise the Everyday Extremism Scale.

Methodology Summary

The process of developing the measure of Everyday Extremism involved seven distinct stages, briefly summarised as:

1) data collection from Reddit followed by data collection from online news platforms;

2) data cleaning and identifying actions and themes;

3) a first round of ranking in which experts were asked to rank the actions, that emerged from stage 2, from the most extreme (smallest rank) to the most everyday (largest rank);

4) an initial data analysis exercise to reduce the list of actions from stage 2 to a shorter list of actions, as informed by the results from stage 3;

5) a second round of ranking in which experts were asked to rank the actions, that were reduced in stage 4, from the most extreme (smallest rank) to the most everyday (largest rank);

6) a second data analysis exercise to reduce the list of actions from stage 4 to a final list of actions, as informed by the results from stage 5;

7) cognitive interviewing to assess comprehension of the final set.