Role of Social Media in Spreading the Culture of Extremism

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of social media in spreading the culture of extremism among high school students from the teachers’ point of view. A questionnaire confirmed to be valid and reliable was devised, consisting of 30 items in three domains: religious extremism, social extremism and political extremism. It was distributed to a randomly selected sample of 288 high school teachers in the Governorate of Irbid, Jordan. The role of social media in spreading the culture of extremism among high school students was found to be generally moderate from the teachers’ perspective. A statistically significant (α = 0.05) difference was found between the total averages of the sample’s estimates as a whole and each area of the subject instrument, by variables including specialty, years of experience and gender, in favour of the male respondents.