Professor of Computer Science
Elon University
Expertise: Data mining, cybersecurity, social media, extremism
Dr. Megan Squire is a professor of Computer Science at Elon University (North Carolina, USA). Her main research area is applying data science techniques to understand niche and extremist online communities, particularly radical right-wing groups on social media. Dr. Squire is the author of two books on data cleaning and data mining, and over 40 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, including several Best Paper awards. In 2017, she was named the Elon University Distinguished Scholar. She currently serves as a Senior Fellow for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and as a Belfer Fellow for the ADL.
đ Best paper award, ACM Web Science conference. How do right-wing extremists use video streaming to make money? This is a deep dive into the network of streamers and donors using the DLive service. (Conference, PDF)
PBS Frontline and ProPublica examine how far-right groups were emboldened and encouraged by former President Trump and how individuals were radicalized and brought into the political landscape (13:50 mark)
BBC Click investigates extremism in online gaming. (September, 2021)
TedX talk outlines some basic data science techniques for studying extremism online. (Feb, 2020)
How are extremist groups organizing online? Who are the key players and what do they believe? Which groups are growing and which are shrinking? Why are some online communities more toxic than others?
I collect, store, and analyze data - mostly from social media, but other sources as well - so we can understand how extremist and niche online communities work.
Here are a few of my latest research papers and findings.
đ Best paper award. How do right-wing extremists use video streaming to make money? This is a deep dive into the network of streamers and donors using the DLive service. (Conference, PDF)
Describes our dataset of 27.8K channels and 317M messages from 2.2M unique users, designed to study social movements, protests, political extremism, and disinformation. (Read More on Arxiv)
Describes our dataset of Reddit's millions of subreddits, millions of users, and hundreds of millions of comments(Read More on Arxiv)
đ Best paper runner-up. Is it possible to understand the structure of a clandestine network, for example Proud Boys, using just their social media trace data? (Read More)
At what rates and in what capacity do women participate in extreme far-right ("radical right") political online communities? (Read More)
How do anti-Muslim political groups use the Facebook social network to build their own online communities? Do they crossover with other far-right political ideologies, such as anti-immigrant or white nationalists? (Read More)
How "united" is the far-right? Which groups share members? Which ideologies tend to attract the same people? Which groups are responsible for uniting such distinct far-right ideologies at an event like the Charlottesville rally? (Read more)
How do the leaders of the Linux Kernel project write in email? What are the salient features of their writing, and can we discern one leader from another? (Read more)
Here are some long-term projects I'm working on that have not yet been published.
My work as a Belfer Fellow for ADL will uncover what happens after bad actors are removed from social media or other online environments.
For this work we mine decades of Christian Identity historical documents to create a social network of key players. We then compare that to the current CI landscape on the social media platform Telegram.
Analysis of donation patterns and habits of early adopters of crypto, including Stefan Molyneux, Greg Johnson, Andrew Anglin and others. For Southern Poverty Law Center Techwatch. With Michael Edison Hayden.
Uncovering the network of tech workers keeping Infowars, America First, and Epik afloat. For Southern Poverty Law Center Techwatch. With Michael Edison Hayden and Hannah Gais.
Long-term study of 4000 episodes and 900 cast members on 18 different right-wing extremist podcasts. 4 parts. For Southern Poverty Law Center Techwatch. With Hannah Gais
Blockchain analysis project. For Southern Poverty Law Center Techwatch. With Michael Edison Hayden
Another example of alt-tech infrastructure supporting extremism. For Southern Poverty Law Center Techwatch. With Jason Wilson
Tracking donations to peddlers of election disinformation. For Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch. Southern Poverty Law Center Techwatch. With Hannah Gais.
Summary of platforms and techniques enabling extremist fundraising. For Southern Poverty Law Center Techwatch. With Cassie Miller and Hannah Gais
The rise of Telegram as the preferred method of spreading white supremacist terror propaganda. For Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch. With Hannah Gais.
What are the key technical features that make the Telegram app so appealing to hate and terror groups? At Center for Analysis of the Radical Right
Inside the radical right's video addiction: Moving from Youtube to DLive & Entropy. At Center for Analysis of the Radical Right
Why are radical right groups shifting to "alternative" tech? At Center for Analysis of the Radical Right
Why is it still so easy to find violent white supremacist content online, even though social media companies keep claiming that they are working overtime to delete it? At Brookings Institution
It's difficult to track the spread of digital materials, and new technologies will make it even harder. At Salon and others for The Conversation
I also blog as a Senior Fellow for the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR) where my work has been reposted in Rantt and Sage Ocean.
In addition to many research papers and articles for popular media, I have also written two books, Clean Data, and Mastering Data Mining with Python.