A Lexicon for Studying Radicalization in Incel Communities

TL;DR

This paper develops a specialized lexicon of incel community terms to facilitate automated analysis of their online radicalization language, aiding future research on extremism dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive, text-based lexicon of incel-specific language derived from qualitative analysis of active online communities from 2016 to 2023.

Findings

Lexicon includes root words, prefixes, and affixes used by incels.

Derived from analysis of five active incel forums.

Supports future automated studies on radicalization.

Abstract

Incels are an extremist online community of men who believe in an ideology rooted in misogyny, racism, the glorification of violence, and dehumanization. In their online forums, they use an extensive, evolving cryptolect - a set of ingroup terms that have meaning within the group, reflect the ideology, demonstrate membership in the community, and are difficult for outsiders to understand. This paper presents a lexicon with terms and definitions for common incel root words, prefixes, and affixes. The lexicon is text-based for use in automated analysis and is derived via a Qualitative Content Analysis of the most frequent incel words, their structure, and their meaning on five of the most active incel communities from 2016 to 2023. This lexicon will support future work examining radicalization and deradicalization/disengagement within the community.