/pol/

/pol/
Type of site	4chan imageboard
Available in	English
Owner	Hiroyuki Nishimura
Founder(s)	Christopher "moot" Poole
Key people	RapeApe
URL	4chan.org/pol/
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Optional
Launched	October 23, 2011
Current status	Offline

/pol/, short for Politically Incorrect,^[3]^[4] is an anonymous political discussion imageboard on 4chan.^[5]^[6]^[7] As of 2022, it was the most active board on the site.^[8]^[9]^[10] It has had a substantial impact on Internet culture. It has acted as a platform for far-right extremism;^[11]^[12]^[10] the board is notable for its widespread racist, white supremacist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, misogynist, and anti-LGBT content.^[24] /pol/ has been linked to various acts of real-world extremist violence.^[10]^[25]^[26] It has been described as one of the "[centers] of 4chan mobilization", a title also ascribed to /b/.^[22]

^ Lagorio-Chafkin, Christine (2 October 2018). We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of REDDIT, the Internet's Culture Laboratory. Little, Brown Book Group. p. 323. ISBN 978-0-349-41635-9. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
^ Arthur, Rob (2 November 2020). "The Man Who Helped Turn 4chan Into the Internet's Racist Engine". Vice. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
^ Papasavva, Antonis; Zannettou, Savvas; De Cristofaro, Emiliano; Stringhini, Gianluca; Blackburn, Jeremy (2020). "Raiders of the Lost Kek: 3.5 Years of Augmented 4chan Posts from the Politically Incorrect Board". Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. 14. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence: 885–894. arXiv:2001.07487. doi:10.1609/icwsm.v14i1.7354. ISSN 2334-0770.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Vincent, James (8 June 2022). "YouTuber trains AI bot on 4chan's pile o' bile with entirely predictable results". The Verge. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Merrin, William (2019). "President Troll: Trump, 4Chan and Memetic Warfare". In Happer, Catherine; Hoskins, Andrew; Merrin, William (eds.). Trump's Media War. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 201–226. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-94069-4_13. ISBN 978-3319940694. S2CID 158349744.
^ ^a ^b Baele, Stephane J.; Brace, Lewys; Coan, Travis G. (2021). "Variations on a Theme? Comparing 4chan, 8kun, and Other chans' Far-Right '/pol' Boards". Perspectives on Terrorism. 15 (1): 65–80. ISSN 2334-3745. JSTOR 26984798.
^ ^a ^b ^c Elley, Ben (March 2021). "'The rebirth of the West begins with you!'—Self-improvement as radicalisation on 4chan". Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 8 (1). Springer Nature: 67. doi:10.1057/s41599-021-00732-x. ISSN 2662-9992.
^ Hagen, Sal; Jokubauskaitė, Emilija (18 January 2021). "Dutch junk news on Reddit and 4chan/pol". The Politics of Social Media Manipulation. Amsterdam University Press. pp. 174, 180, 188, 202–203, 207. doi:10.1515/9789048551675-007. ISBN 978-90-485-5167-5.
^ Macaulay, Thomas (8 June 2022). "An AI chatbot trained on 4chan has sparked outrage and fascination". TNW. The Financial Times. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
^ ^a ^b ^c Tuters, Marc; Hagen, Sal (2021). "Us and (((Them))): Extreme Memes and Antisemitism on 4chan". Digital Hate: The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech. Sahana Udupa, Iginio Gagliardone, Peter Hervik. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-05925-3. OCLC 1267403418. [/pol/] was connected to various acts of extreme violence (Hankes and Amend 2018)...
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Corsi, Giulio (9 July 2021). "Climate change communication on 4chan's /pol/ board 2015-2019: An automated content analysis". First Monday. 26 (8). doi:10.5210/fm.v26i8.11082. ISSN 1396-0466.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Colley, Thomas; Moore, Martin (1 January 2022). "The challenges of studying 4chan and the Alt-Right: 'Come on in the water's fine'". New Media & Society. 24 (1): 5–30. doi:10.1177/1461444820948803. ISSN 1461-4448.
^ Cite error: The named reference Hine-2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ ^a ^b ^c Cite error: The named reference Siegel-DailyBeast-2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Cite error: The named reference TheConversation-2016 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Cite error: The named reference AntiAsianACM was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Cite error: The named reference Thorleifsson2021 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ ^a ^b ^c Cite error: The named reference TimeMag23J was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ ^a ^b Cite error: The named reference FirstMondayShootings was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Cite error: The named reference WSJBuffalo was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Krafft, P. M.; Donovan, Joan (3 March 2020). "Disinformation by Design: The Use of Evidence Collages and Platform Filtering in a Media Manipulation Campaign". Political Communication. 37 (2): 194–214. doi:10.1080/10584609.2019.1686094. ISSN 1058-4609.
^ ^a ^b Beyer, Jessica L. (10 November 2021), Rohlinger, Deana A.; Sobieraj, Sarah (eds.), "Trolls and Hacktivists: Political Mobilization from Online Communities", The Oxford Handbook of Digital Media Sociology, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197510636.013.47, ISBN 978-0-19-751063-6, retrieved 22 May 2022
^ Milton, Josh (8 March 2021). "Super straight: Transphobic trend has links to the far-right". PinkNews. Archived from the original on 8 March 2021. Retrieved 10 March 2021.
^
The board has been noted for widespread^[11] content that is:
- Racist^[13]^[14]^[15]^[16]^[11]^[12]^[17]^[18]^[4]
- White supremacist^[5]^[14]^[7]^[19]^[20]^[12]^[17]^[21]
- Antisemitic^[6]^[19]^[7]^[11]^[12]^[17]^[4]
- Anti-Muslim^[17]
- Misogynist^[5]^[14]^[22]^[12]^[17]^[18]^[4]
- Anti-LGBT^[12]^[23]^[5]^[18]
^ Zhang, Xinyi; Davis, Mark (7 June 2022). "E-extremism: A conceptual framework for studying the online far right". New Media & Society. 26 (5): 2954–2970. doi:10.1177/14614448221098360. ISSN 1461-4448. S2CID 249482748. 4chan and 8kun's 'politically incorrect' (/pol/) boards have become a major source of inspiration for (self-)radicalization towards violent extremism and terrorism ...
^ Zahrah, Fatima; Nurse, Jason R. C.; Goldsmith, Michael (25 April 2022). "A comparison of online hate on reddit and 4chan". Proceedings of the 37th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing. SAC '22. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1797–1800. arXiv:2202.01302. doi:10.1145/3477314.3507226. ISBN 978-1-4503-8713-2. S2CID 246485533. Retrieved 16 July 2022. [T]he Politically Incorrect (/pol/) board, which has also been associated with spreading online hate, and has even been linked to violent acts of extremism...

[1] Lagorio-Chafkin, Christine (2 October 2018). We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of REDDIT, the Internet's Culture Laboratory. Little, Brown Book Group. p. 323. ISBN 978-0-349-41635-9. Retrieved 15 July 2024.

[2] Arthur, Rob (2 November 2020). "The Man Who Helped Turn 4chan Into the Internet's Racist Engine". Vice. Retrieved 15 July 2022.

[:1-3] Papasavva, Antonis; Zannettou, Savvas; De Cristofaro, Emiliano; Stringhini, Gianluca; Blackburn, Jeremy (2020). "Raiders of the Lost Kek: 3.5 Years of Augmented 4chan Posts from the Politically Incorrect Board". Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. 14. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence: 885–894. arXiv:2001.07487. doi:10.1609/icwsm.v14i1.7354. ISSN 2334-0770.

[TheVergeGPT-4] Vincent, James (8 June 2022). "YouTuber trains AI bot on 4chan's pile o' bile with entirely predictable results". The Verge. Retrieved 16 July 2022.

[Merrin-2019-5] Merrin, William (2019). "President Troll: Trump, 4Chan and Memetic Warfare". In Happer, Catherine; Hoskins, Andrew; Merrin, William (eds.). Trump's Media War. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 201–226. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-94069-4_13. ISBN 978-3319940694. S2CID 158349744.

[Baele-2021-6] Baele, Stephane J.; Brace, Lewys; Coan, Travis G. (2021). "Variations on a Theme? Comparing 4chan, 8kun, and Other chans' Far-Right '/pol' Boards". Perspectives on Terrorism. 15 (1): 65–80. ISSN 2334-3745. JSTOR 26984798.

[Elley-2021-7] Elley, Ben (March 2021). "'The rebirth of the West begins with you!'—Self-improvement as radicalisation on 4chan". Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 8 (1). Springer Nature: 67. doi:10.1057/s41599-021-00732-x. ISSN 2662-9992.

[:12-8] Hagen, Sal; Jokubauskaitė, Emilija (18 January 2021). "Dutch junk news on Reddit and 4chan/pol". The Politics of Social Media Manipulation. Amsterdam University Press. pp. 174, 180, 188, 202–203, 207. doi:10.1515/9789048551675-007. ISBN 978-90-485-5167-5.

[:16-9] Macaulay, Thomas (8 June 2022). "An AI chatbot trained on 4chan has sparked outrage and fascination". TNW. The Financial Times. Retrieved 16 July 2022.

[:15-10] Tuters, Marc; Hagen, Sal (2021). "Us and (((Them))): Extreme Memes and Antisemitism on 4chan". Digital Hate: The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech. Sahana Udupa, Iginio Gagliardone, Peter Hervik. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-05925-3. OCLC 1267403418. [/pol/] was connected to various acts of extreme violence (Hankes and Amend 2018)...

[FirstMondayClimate-11] Corsi, Giulio (9 July 2021). "Climate change communication on 4chan's /pol/ board 2015-2019: An automated content analysis". First Monday. 26 (8). doi:10.5210/fm.v26i8.11082. ISSN 1396-0466.

[NMaSWater-12] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Colley, Thomas; Moore, Martin (1 January 2022). "The challenges of studying 4chan and the Alt-Right: 'Come on in the water's fine'". New Media & Society. 24 (1): 5–30. doi:10.1177/1461444820948803. ISSN 1461-4448.

[Hine-2017-13] Cite error: The named reference Hine-2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[Siegel-DailyBeast-2015-14] Cite error: The named reference Siegel-DailyBeast-2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[TheConversation-2016-15] Cite error: The named reference TheConversation-2016 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[AntiAsianACM-16] Cite error: The named reference AntiAsianACM was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[Thorleifsson2021-17] Cite error: The named reference Thorleifsson2021 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[TimeMag23J-18] Cite error: The named reference TimeMag23J was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[FirstMondayShootings-19] Cite error: The named reference FirstMondayShootings was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[WSJBuffalo-20] Cite error: The named reference WSJBuffalo was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[21] Krafft, P. M.; Donovan, Joan (3 March 2020). "Disinformation by Design: The Use of Evidence Collages and Platform Filtering in a Media Manipulation Campaign". Political Communication. 37 (2): 194–214. doi:10.1080/10584609.2019.1686094. ISSN 1058-4609.

[OxfordPress-22] Beyer, Jessica L. (10 November 2021), Rohlinger, Deana A.; Sobieraj, Sarah (eds.), "Trolls and Hacktivists: Political Mobilization from Online Communities", The Oxford Handbook of Digital Media Sociology, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197510636.013.47, ISBN 978-0-19-751063-6, retrieved 22 May 2022

[PinkNewsSS-23] Milton, Josh (8 March 2021). "Super straight: Transphobic trend has links to the far-right". PinkNews. Archived from the original on 8 March 2021. Retrieved 10 March 2021.

[content-24] The board has been noted for widespread^[11] content that is:
Racist^[13]^[14]^[15]^[16]^[11]^[12]^[17]^[18]^[4]

White supremacist^[5]^[14]^[7]^[19]^[20]^[12]^[17]^[21]

Antisemitic^[6]^[19]^[7]^[11]^[12]^[17]^[4]

Anti-Muslim^[17]

Misogynist^[5]^[14]^[22]^[12]^[17]^[18]^[4]

Anti-LGBT^[12]^[23]^[5]^[18]

[25] Racist^[13]^[14]^[15]^[16]^[11]^[12]^[17]^[18]^[4]

[26] White supremacist^[5]^[14]^[7]^[19]^[20]^[12]^[17]^[21]

[27] Antisemitic^[6]^[19]^[7]^[11]^[12]^[17]^[4]

[28] Anti-Muslim^[17]

[29] Misogynist^[5]^[14]^[22]^[12]^[17]^[18]^[4]

[30] Anti-LGBT^[12]^[23]^[5]^[18]

[25] Zhang, Xinyi; Davis, Mark (7 June 2022). "E-extremism: A conceptual framework for studying the online far right". New Media & Society. 26 (5): 2954–2970. doi:10.1177/14614448221098360. ISSN 1461-4448. S2CID 249482748. 4chan and 8kun's 'politically incorrect' (/pol/) boards have become a major source of inspiration for (self-)radicalization towards violent extremism and terrorism ...

[26] Zahrah, Fatima; Nurse, Jason R. C.; Goldsmith, Michael (25 April 2022). "A comparison of online hate on reddit and 4chan". Proceedings of the 37th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing. SAC '22. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1797–1800. arXiv:2202.01302. doi:10.1145/3477314.3507226. ISBN 978-1-4503-8713-2. S2CID 246485533. Retrieved 16 July 2022. [T]he Politically Incorrect (/pol/) board, which has also been associated with spreading online hate, and has even been linked to violent acts of extremism...

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