Megan Squire

Megan Squire is a professor in computer science at Elon University who studies online extremism.[1]

Megan Squire
Squire in 2017
NationalityAmerican
Board member ofCenter for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR)
Academic background
EducationCollege of William & Mary
Nova Southeastern University
Academic work
DisciplineData science, cybersecurity, online extremism
Websitefacstaff.elon.edu/msquire/

Education and early life

Squire grew up in a conservative Christian household near Virginia Beach, Virginia. She attended the College of William & Mary for her double major in art history and public policy. She then took a secretarial job at an antivirus company after becoming interested in computers. She received a PhD at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, and then moved to North Carolina for a brief job at a startup. Squire then began teaching at Elon University.[2][3]

Research

Squire researches how online extremism is mediated by social media networks, including Telegram,[1] Facebook,[2] and other platforms.

Squire performed research in 2018 on anti-Muslim Facebook groups, using Facebook's Graph API to create a dataset of 700,000 members from 1870 open and closed groups with ideologies ranging from anti-Muslim to white nationalist to neo-Confederate, and more. The data was gathered over ten months. She found that membership in one such group correlated highly with the chance of being in another sort of group, indicating that anti-Muslim sentiment acted as a "common denominator" for membership in related groups.[2]

Activism

Squire first engaged in activism at age 15, when she joined her school environmental club to protest pollution at an industrial cattle farm. While teaching at Elon, she protested the war in Iraq. In 2008, Squire campaigned for the future US President Obama. However, following Obama's handling of the Great Recession, Squire became disillusioned with electoral politics and began engaging with the Occupy movement.[3]

Amid a rise in fascist and neo-Nazi pamphleting of college campuses, Squire put together an interactive map of such events. By 14 November 2017, she had documented over 200 such occurrences.[4]

At an anti-racism protest outside the Alamance County Courthouse in downtown Graham, Squire was assaulted by two members of a pro-Confederate monument group described by the SPLC as a hate group. Both assailants were arrested and charged, with one charged for assault on a female and the other for disorderly conduct.[5][6]

References
  1. Hsu, Tiffany (9 October 2019). "2,200 Viewed Germany Shooting Before Twitch Removed Post". The New York Times. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  2. Daro, Ishmael (4 August 2018). "Here's How Anti-Muslim Groups On Facebook Overlap With A Range Of Far-Right Extremism". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  3. Clark, Doug Bock (16 January 2018). "Meet Antifa's Secret Weapon Against Far-Right Extremists". Wired. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
  4. Hayden, Michael Edison (19 November 2017). "It's OK to Be White: How Fox News Is Helping to Spread Neo-Nazi Propaganda". Newsweek.
  5. Brown, Maggie; Leah, Heather (21 June 2020). "Elon professor who researches right-wing extremist groups assaulted in Alamance County". WRAL.
  6. Duncan, Charles (22 June 2020). "Professor who studies hate groups attacked at Confederate statue protest, NC police say". The Modesto Bee.
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